Author: Guest User

  • Goodbye London Quakers – Hello – What?

    Goodbye London Quakers – Hello – What?

    Submitted by Fred Ashmore – Clerk to London Quakers

    At the Close of the JLAM meeting of 13th June, London Quakers (LQ) will hold its final AGM after 15 years of serving The Quakers of London and lay itself down. The London Quakers Steering Group hope that Quakers in London will take over everything that London Quakers has been doing. Of course, the recruitment of Josh Selfe as our local Development Worker has been a huge vitaliser for all of us in London and the Being Quaker courses he has created are a great resource, long needed. QiL has decided
    to appoint two Friends to look after interfaith and interchurch work, which is another aspect of the LQ work that will otherwise be missed.


    At present the Arrangements Committee are looking after the website and issuing The Quill which replaces (rather better) the monthly LQ mailings that shared news, announcements and events. We don’t yet have settled arrangements for handling
    the miscellaneous queries that come in through the website and facebook and email of the Clerk of London Quakers (We‘ve had rather surprising requests, and suggestions believe me). In future staff will help with that but they will need to know who to go to for decisions.


    The most important thing that LQ Steering Group hopes as it lays itself down is that there will be a group to help create, organise and support community events for Quakers in London. You can’t dump this on Josh Selfe. It’s got to be us, Friends. There have been regular events for the past decade. Supporting older Friends,
    Housing Inequality, gender diversity, Refugee matters, Death and Dying, Assisted Dying. Someone made these happen. Who will do that for the next decade? We hope to pull together a thriving community of Quakers in London. We hope to cater
    for varied interests and groups. But none of it just happens.

    Over to you QiL!

    Fred Ashmore

  • Decision Making at KWAM

    Submitted by Susie Paskins (KWAM Clerk on 17th May) & Carol Griffiths (KWAM Clerk of trustees)

    KWAM agreed some time ago in principle to join the single Area Meeting for Quakers in London (QiL). We would like QiL to be a success and would like KWAM to participate fully in its arrangements, but there are still areas where further discernment is needed regarding its scope.

    We held a threshing meeting in April 2026, facilitated by Rachael Swancott of Woodbrooke, to address the question ’What do we need in order for KWAM friends to be able to make a decision on joining a unified London Area Meeting in a way that is acceptable to us all?

    The threshing prompted follow up discussions among us, and a positive re-engagement with the subject. It also highlighted a number of concerns which remain to be resolved, including finances, membership, outreach and community building, and nominations and appointments.

    At our May Area Meeting we reviewed a well-argued paper proposing a way forward. This outlined some areas in which we might like to retain responsibilities for activities within a ‘cluster’ of local meetings (as contemplated by the LDG). This included work on outreach/community building for Quakers in South West London; much has already been done in this area and there is a strong feeling that it should continue and be encouraged and funded. The idea of a cluster was greeted with enthusiasm.

    Friends are preparing proposals to help us to discern the precise nature of our cluster, including allowing existing KWAM funds to remain available to support this and other aspects of our current Area Meeting that are important to us.

    The final decision on whether or not to join QiL will be taken at our July Area Meeting.