Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Some of you may have been aware that there was recently a royal wedding.

Actually, I didn’t find the media coverage that overbearing. There was plenty of coverage of it, but then that is the media no matter what is happening – whether it’s the latest deadly pandemic, political scandal or international football competition.

What really annoyed me, was the amount of people who spent so long moaning about it. Every time I logged on Facebook, every time I looked at Twitter, every time I read someone’s blog, they seemed to be moaning about the amount of media coverage the royal wedding was receiving.

I mean, it’s not just me that thinks there is a certain level of irony that most of the coverage I have seen of the royal wedding, is people moaning about how there is too much coverage, right?

We’re pleased to announce that today we are launching the first in what will be a series of guides by the Humanist Action Group. HAG does great work in Leeds and if you have ever thought about running such a group in your local community, these guides are for you.

The guides have been under development for a while and we would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has contributed to them.

The first guide we are making available is the organiser’s guide which explains the basics of organising a group, finding and recruiting volunteers, staying on top of everything and making sure you have the correct paperwork in place.

The second guide we are launching today is the homeless guide which explains how to run a simple feed the homeless programme. If you would like to get a copy of these, just get in touch!

We have further guides under development also, to keep an eye out for those.

The Humanist Society of West Yorkshire is a society with considerable history, having been around for over forty years now. One thing it hasn’t had, at least in the past decade anyway however, was a logo. Which has proved somewhat annoying when launching the group onto social media platforms.

Wanting to rectify this, I asked Emma Bryce, currently serving as the president of Durham University Humanist and Secularist Society and press secretary of the AHS, to use her graphic design skills to come up with something for us. We’re pretty impressed with the result!

You can check out some more of her amazing work here.

Yesterday, the first session of Intimate Details took place at Leeds Atheist Society. Intimate Details is a course which looks at sex, relationships and surrounding issues from a secular perspective – and indeed given it covers a lot of the same material as UCCF’s Pure course, some have cheekily nicknamed it “Impure.”

Yesterday’s session looked at sexuality and the various sexual orientations that exist, taboos and fetishes and the attitude towards sex in society such as sex in the media and education system as well as pornography, prostitution and religion.

Next week’s session will be looking at dating, relationships and sex. You can join us for that at 7pm on Friday 10 December.

Just a quick post to say congratulations to my sister Katie who graduated with her bachelor’s degree in theatre costume design on Monday.

The degree is accredited by Teesside University which I’m told is currently University of the Year being the first new university to win the award. This to me seems somewhat analogous to Stewart Lee’s “world’s tallest dwarf” (very impressive in relation, but still never the less a dwarf, and therefore restricted by law from holding positions with a minimum height requirement such as a firefighter, or owner slash operator of an enchanted beanstalk).

Never the less, I’m sure most of us are all too aware of just how much work there is to earn a degree in any subject that doesn’t contain the word “media” in the title, so congratulations are certainly in order.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the new Perspective Course website! During interfaith week we will be launching the new version of the Perspective Course Leader’s Guide which will be made freely available to groups which are interested in running their own version of the course. You can request a pack for your group from the website.

In a very drunken state on New Year’s Eve I got up and announced to my good friends attending the bash that this year was going to be the year of the Chris Worfolk Foundation.

And I mean it.

As such the foundation is officially making 2010 the year which we make a name for ourselves. We have some very exciting projects on the way which we will be announcing soon alongside the exciting projects that we are already working on.

I find the current climate an incredibly interesting one, interest in making a difference in the world has never been higher, people are really passionate about improving quality of life. With the right opportunities being provided this can be put to work to do tremendous good and I fully believe we have the experience, the skills, the drive and the ambition to achieve this.

We’re already on our way building better links in the community. Next week Leeds Skeptics will be celebrating its first birthday and in February our first humanist community will launch – I can’t express how excited I am about opportunities such as these to bring people together in the spirit of celebrating shared human experiences.

Later this year we will be doing this on a larger scale and will expand our activities to other regions as well as continuing to drive forward with new projects, form stronger links with other organisations and inspire more people to get involved and make a difference.

2010 will be a year to remember. I hope you will join us on the journey.

Best regards,
Chris
Trustee, Chris Worfolk Foundation

Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” beats out the X Factor single to be Christmas number one. Win.

Yesterday we re-launched the Leeds Skeptics in the Pub group with a new venue, new format and new speakers. The event went quite well despite Ariane have cancelled us on due to illness earlier the week – we got a better than average turn out and it was thumbs up all round for the new venue. We also took a lot of feedback about how we can improve in the future so we will continue to improve from here.

Yesterday the new foundation website went live! I say that like it is a whole new website, it isn’t, it’s just a slightly updated version but now located at ChrisWorfolkFoundation.org. There is some new content too though lots more new content is on it’s way soon.