Orison
I’ve just got back from a week at Momentum (Soul Survivor’s festival for young adults), talking about prayer in schools. I was there helping out with a prayer space called Orison, which is a really exciting prayer initiative designed for use in schools. “Orison is an interactive, spiritual experience which exists to encourage people of all ages to consider questions of spirituality and to engage with God through creative, hands-on prayer activities by working in conjunction with the National Curriculum Guidelines for Religious Education.”
Orison from Stuart Boreham on Vimeo.
Check out more on their site here, and access the resources for free here.
With activities ranging from bubble tubes to sand trays and mirrors, there are plenty of interactive ways of engaging children and young people in thinking about prayer. Coming soon on schoolswork.co.uk we’ll be featuring some of the resources used in Orison and a bigger conversation about how and why we want to engage students thinking about prayer in schools.
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looks fab!
Wow, what an inspiring video, I had tingles just watching it. Giving young people a safe space to ask questions where they are not going to be given answers but only the resources to work them out for themselves seems really exciting. I have been involved in community 24/7 prayer rooms where people who would not call themselves Christians have walked in off the streets and experienced prayer and God in an incredible way. I remember one guy at 2 am on a Saturday morning being blown away by how much God knew of him and loved him. Those dawn time memories are important to me, because I could see God working in the community through the presence of Christians praying in a visible and creative way. And isn’t that what we want for our schools? For the school community to be drawn in to an act of worship where they are free to respond and listen to God from where they are, whether that be belief or unbelief, doubt or faith, anger or love.
Thinking of my own schools, I wonder how this would work? Would the staff want their students to encounter such a space. I would like to think they would, but only because the team have spent years building up trust within the school and they expect what we offer to be appropriate. But there are many schools that we would struggle to sell the idea to, however R.E. curriculum focused it may be.
I wonder whether this problem could be overcome by encouraging our Christian young people to set up their own prayer rooms where they can access resources from Orison as they see appropriate. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have young people openly praying in the school through free times and their friends joining in and the staff encouraging their proactive and creative passion? This seems to be where effective schools work is heading.