Preparing for the Bicentenary of the Birth of the Bab
Over the last few months, our community has consulted on how we can prepare for the upcoming Bicentenary of the Birth of the Bab. We reflected on letters and quotations, some included in the following sheet:
DOWNLOAD THE BICENTENNIAL HANDOUT
On July 27th, community members gathered for a workshop aiming to offer inspiration and practical tools to prepare for celebrating the Bicentenary with family, friends, neighbours and co-workers. The activities focused on sharing ideas and skills for using the arts and creativity in our celebrations.
First the group enjoyed a devotional program including lots of musical and a powerpoint presentation.
DOWNLOAD THE DEVOTIONAL PROGRAM POWERPOINT
Visit this youtube website with many quotes put to music here. You can download the audio from here.
Music from recent Heroes Teaching Conference in Brisbane can be found here. You can download the audio from here.
Planning Our Celebrations
Next the group brainstormed all the different ways people can celebrate the special occasion coming up. We used some celebrations from the Bicentenary of the Birth of Baha’u’llah two years ago for inspiration. View the powerpoint presentation used to lead these conversations at this link:
BICENTENARY PLANNING PRESENTATION
Then we filled out a worksheet to help us plan for the specific people we want to include in our celebrations. Some people deciding to plan a few different events, so they could invite people who might enjoy different activities! Download the planning worksheet below.
DOWNLOAD THE EVENT PLANNING WORKSHEET
The group then broke up into several smaller sessions throughout the morning, to explore different topics of interest such as:
Storytelling
In the storytelling breakout session, we explored different ways to make storytelling engaging, and practicing using several stories from the life of the Bab.
Arts and Crafts
In this breakout session, we made a list of ways we can incorporate arts and crafts into celebrations. Here were a few of the ideas shared, many of which could supplement storytelling: singing Persian songs, learning words/phrases/prayers in Arabic or Farsi, learning to write in Arabic or Farsi, having a dressing up station with time period clothing, using Persian forms of art (carpets, lamps, samovar, patterns) in our decorations, serving Persian tea or food, making a map to use while telling stories, memorising prayers or quotations through artistic representations, offering handmade gifts (like potpourri, almonds, roses, magnets etc), and even recreating the beautiful stained glass from the declaration of the Bab.
After our discussions, we put our ideas into practice by starting to make a display for the Children’s Room. We coloured Persian carpets and lamps, which will be on display for the Bicentenary period!
Music
In the music breakout session, the friends selected a quotation from the Bab and worked on putting it to music. We will enjoying hearing this new piece in celebrations.
Practicing Conversations
Lastly, we gathered again as a big group and explored what it means to have conversations about the upcoming Bicentenary. We did some role play to help us gain confidence sharing this special day with others.
Below you can see the document we used for the conversations workshop, mostly copy-pasted from bahai.org.au. You can download the document here: BICENTENNIAL WORKSHOP CONVERSATION THEMES.
At the end of the workshop, all the friends went away with a postcard to put somewhere prominent in their home to remind them of this special time period.
We hope you enjoyed seeing this overview of the first Bicentenary themed workshop, and hope you will join us for the next workshop where we will expand on the themes explored in July. Join us on:
7th of September 2019 from 9am-12pm at the Baha’i Centre