‘I felt encouraged as a parent’: resourcing families for sustainable faith

The Hand in Hand conference this year (2024) was enjoyable, encouraging and engaging. The overall atmosphere was one of positivity and lifting each other up. I went along on the Saturday, not entirely sure what to expect, but was made very welcome, and felt really encouraged by the experience.

Here’s a quick run down of what I particularly liked:

The joy team: a big team of people who were there to spread joy throughout the day. This worked really well to keep people smiling as they moved around the building. They were particularly visible, from a red carpet welcome first thing in the morning, which was literally a red carpet along with a team of people cheering and greeting others by name (which was on their lanyards), to handing out pennies to those going into the toilets (to ‘spend a penny’), to cheering people going into different seminar rooms. It felt very unBritish in many ways, but it definitely was joyful! The team was a big one, which meant that they could be in many places all at once, included children and young people and wearing their orange t-shirts meant they were easy to spot.