Telling the Interfaith Story

Published: 29 May 2014

Region: Europe

Sweden2A fictional press conference, an elevator pitch exercise and a “speed-dating” were some of the activities that took place during the “Telling the Interfaith Story” Conference held in Stockholm between 16th and 18th of May.

Aim of the conference was the empowerment of the organizations working in the field of inter-religious dialogue as well as the strengthening of their network. Participants from different religions and nationalities have attended the 3-days event, representing a number of organizations from the UK, France and Sweden. Most of them work in the field for quite a long time and have experience in promoting diversity and tolerance in multicultural societies.

Since one of the conference topics was the improvement of communication policy of the organisations, Media Diversity Institute (MDI) run a session about how organizations can make their content more interesting and appealing to the media. At first, the participants have been asked to think of the reasons why they wanted to approach and be in media. Then, they had the opportunity to learn different ways of presenting their content using multimedia and innovative online platforms. The target for most of the participants is to promote the inter-religious dialogue in the media as they believe that one-sided presentation of religious matters can lead to the creation of stereotypes and prejudices.

During the conference, the organizations presented their activities and missions and had the chance to discuss about future collaborations and collective actions.