Future Faith(s)

This project sees religious spaces as more than just places of worship. We look at them as vibrant community hubs where people of many views, backgrounds, and beliefs come together. In these spaces, worldviews meet and change over time. Our research goes beyond the physical buildings.

We explore how religious places shape local culture through the beliefs, relationships and creativity they spark. We consider what people do and experience in these sites, individually and with others. The aim is to analyse how a religious site's whole environment - its physical features, history, and activities - inspires fresh thinking and grassroots projects meeting community needs. We want to find out how places of faith can drive positive social change.

The project is planned as a contemporary response to a seminal work of E. R. Wickham, 'Church and People in an Industrial City' (1957). Drawing inspiration from a contemporary reinterpretation (Engler & Gardiner 2017; Nörenberg, 2017; Nawratek 2018, 2023) of Rudolf Otto's seminal book "The Idea of the Holy" (1917), the research core goal is to identify existing hubs of religion-inspired creativity across Yorkshire and further cultivate the ethos and infrastructure that makes those innovation hotspots thrive. Key questions driving the research include: 1) What tangible and intangible factors allow religious spaces to nurture new ideas or grassroots responses to societal challenges? 2) How can collaborative sense-making occur within these creative contexts? and 3) How might spiritual infrastructure integrate principles of openness, collaboration and care to resonate with contemporary values while remaining grounded in faith-based traditions?