#all-age

[educationaldm]

Tips and tricks: all-ages friendly TTRPG festival challenges

This article is to help give some ideas for all-ages-friendly festival challenges to include in your TTRPGs!  Festivals are great plot devic

Autumn is a good time for all sorts of festivals, both in the real world and in your homebrew fantasy worlds.

So here are some All-Age-Friendly Festival Challenges from Steph (TTRPGkids).

[comicsalternative]

Webcomics: Reviews of Isle of Elsi, Late Bloomer, and Carriers

Webcomics: Reviews of Isle of Elsi, Late Bloomer, and Carriers

[podcast src=”https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/5336859/height/90/width/550/theme/custom/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/autoplay/no/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/88AA3C/” height=”90″ width=”550″]

Time Codes:

00:00:28 – Introduction

00:03:03 – Eisner Award nominees announced

00:10:04 – Isle of Elsi

00:47:30 – Late Bloomer

01:09:44 – Carr…

View On WordPress

[georgeoliver]

The EMEYF All-Age Gathering 2016

Continuing our recap on my 2016, next up on my list of Quaker events was the one-off All-Age Gathering (AAG) organised by EMEYF, the organisation of young Quakers in Europe which I serve as secretary, and have done for almost two years now.

The AAG began slowly for me, as I had arrived early, and leant the organising committee a hand to set up the site and welcome the arrivals trickling in. Since I'm involved with the central committee of EMEYF, you might assume I had some idea what was coming, but I'd managed to keep out of the main organisation, only having helped to prepare a few sessions.. So I wasn't really sure how the week was going to turn out, but as people arrived from across the continent, from babes in arms to octogenarians, I could tell it was going to be a very particular kind of event.

Before I go on, some FAQ to cover the basics:

What was it?

The EMEYF All-Age Gathering was a week long event that took place in Haus Venusberg, Bonn, planned by a committee of (mostly) young Quakers (mostly) nominated by EMEYF the year before. It brought together 110 Quakers from across Europe to build a community together through games, theme sessions, worship and plenty else. It replaced EMEYF's normal Spring Gathering this year. There were three main differences between an SG and the AAG: first- you guessed it - spring gathering normally happens in springtime; second, SG normally caters for about 30 people; and third, normally those 30ish people are between the ages of 18 and 35ish.

Haus Venusberg

What was the theme?

The theme was The Adventures of Life, with each day (loosely) focusing on a different stage of life from childhood and youth to old age.

Why was it all-age?

There was previously a Europe-wide family gathering of Quakers in 2001 but not since. The idea of having an AAG in Europe to celebrate the 30ish-th (you'll notice that EMEYF doesn't really go in for precision..) anniversary of EMEYF as an organisation has been knocking around for a while, but never quite got to fruition. That is, until last Spring Gathering in Georgia, EMEYF took the plunge and decided to try and organise it ourselves. It's our birthday after all!

So we wanted to invite not just current EMEYFers to celebrate our birthday, but also past and future EMEYFers!

What did you actually do? What was the structure of the day?

Broadly speaking we started with Meeting for Worship – either the standard sitting in silence variety, or Meeting for Walking where we could worshipfully wander out into nature and appreciate our surroundings – before a theme session or a choice of optional workshops – all provided by the participants themselves. Scattered throughout the programme were also base group sessions, and there was lots of space for making our own fun with roomy lunch, dinner and kaffee & kuchen breaks.

Clear? Good. Now for some general reflections.

The all-age element

I don't think I've ever been to a Quaker event quite like the All-Age Gathering. I've been to other events with a range of ages – Quaker camps when I was little, Britain Yearly Meeting Gatherings, and other smaller YMs – but none of those had quite the same integration between age groups, with people of all ages joining the same sessions (perhaps this happened at Quaker camps and I don't remember, or at BYM, but I didn't have the same feeling). There were several moments at the AAG when I felt like we had built a really strong community that gave us an almost unique opportunity to connect with each other across the generations that we don't often get.

Two examples stick with me. One morning, I went on the Meeting for Walking rather than the standard MfW (admittedly partly to wake me up). As the rain started to patter around our small meeting, we walked towards the field and forest, and children and adults together we were invited to wander freely and collect any objects that caught our eye. I enjoyed hearing the rainfall on the trees, watching the children explore and appreciate nature, and seeing the collection of leaves, stones, sticks, berries (and litter) that we assembled at the end. It was good to have worshipful time that was accessible to even the smaller children.

My “meeting collection” that morning

The second example was the theme session we had, according to the programme, on Old Age. In reality though it was more about transitions between stages of life, and how we manage such changes – a challenge present in all parts of life (though perhaps less consciously in some than in others). I found myself in a small group with three others at completely different stages of life from me, and as we discussed the changes we were facing, or considering, I was struck by how little of this sort of sharing happens, at least in my experience. Very often we confine ourselves to people around our own age, whose current focus is largely similar to our own. Moments like this made me appreciate the diversity of the community.

Another part of the gathering related to its age inclusiveness was the profusion of games, from parachute games, to skipping, board games, ninja, and particularly the fact that nearly everyone threw themselves into them. A game of ninja with a number of bemused middle-late aged men sticks in the mind as particularly amusing, as does the newspaper fish race, and the bizarre, but enjoyable Proeij (pronounced prruuu-ey, rolling the r), involving people stumbling around with their eyes closed saying (specific) nonsense words to each other. If they received no response, they took the hand of the person they found, until everyone was in one long chain. Late night sessions of werewolves/mafia were more homogeneous in age, but were still a memorably part of my week.

The nature weaving made gradually over the course of the week

Before we end, an honourable mention for the bunter abend (“colourful evening”) - essentially a very informal talent show, with pieces ranging from Shakespeare to Cinderella in progressively shorter time (down to under 10 seconds by the end..) and the wonderful Quaker western, during on the films that had been shown on three evenings: High Noon (wherein the Sheriffs Quaker wife eventually overcomes her pacifist principles and shoots a guy), Friendly Persuasion (which I saw later, and which deals with pacifism rather more sensitively) and Angel and the Badman (which I haven't seen).

As ever, there was much more that happened in the week, but I think that captures the essence. The AAG was a great melting pot of perspectives, from across Europe and the world, and from all different points of life, joyously and willingly coming together to form an all-age community together.

[agnesgarbowska]

Peach and the Isle of Monsters! Wonderful review of the book can be found on Comic Book Resources!

You can currently download the book from Comixology for only $1.99! So go download it and enjoy. :) Great for the whole family! Enjoy!!!

[agnesgarbowska]

Web Comic Friday Update! Waking Up Abbey Page 34 now online!

[simplyintriguing-blog]

All Sorts with Claire Benton Evans

1) You are an Oxford graduate, you've been a housemistress and teacher in a public school, you've survived theological college and teaching in a state school, and now write, lead retreats... - have you enjoyed this journey? What have been the highlights

  It has been quite a rollercoaster ride! At Oxford I wanted to be an academic, but didn't get funding for my D. Phil. At the time, it felt like I'd fallen off the edge of a cliff, but I discovered that that moment of freefall, when all your plans fall apart, is when God can catch you and turn your life around. I landed at the boarding school where I worked as a housemistress. There I finally found time and space to think, and later that year I was confirmed. Having trained as a teacher, I moved to London and was taken to an extraordinary church - St Alban's Holborn. I learned there what it means to 'worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.' At St Alban's I met Jim and we were married there. Together we set off on the next stage of the rollercoaster ride: a move to Devon and the births of our two daughters, swiftly followed by Jim's move towards ministry and our family decampment to Ripon College, Cuddesdon. Living there taught me about community life at its best, especially when our son was born. We moved back to Devon and then to Cornwall, and I threw myself into the delights and challenges of being a full-time mum to three small children. At our church in Ivybridge in Devon, I became more involved with all-age worship and creative prayer, and grew more confident in my own ideas and my ability to communicate them. My big break came when Kevin Mayhew published Food for Prayer in 2008: since then, writing has become my career. I am enjoying my journey through the Lectionary for the All-sorts Worship series; I'm looking forward to the books I want to write next, and I'm excited about the workshops and training days I am now being asked to lead. 

  2) How would you define your style as a writer?

  Clear and imaginative. My thinking tends to be divergent, and I love making leaps from one thing - such as the interior space we enter in prayer - to something apparently unconnected which illuminates my point - such as Doctor Who's TARDIS, which is bigger on the inside. I enjoy finding the right words to make those connections for the reader.

  3) If your literary history were in a suitcase, what would you pack? 

  The poems of Dylan Thomas, Hamlet, Beowulf, Gawain and the Green Knight, Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood, The Screwtape Letters, The Go-Between God, Take This Bread by Sara Miles, Chocolat, Wolf Hall and a children's book, The Runaway Bunny.

  4) How did you begin writing liturgies?

  When I worshipped at St Alban's Holborn, I became very interested in the structure of the service and found Evelyn Underhill's book, The Mystery of Sacrifice, wonderfully helpful at explaining the different movements within it. I first got involved in all-age worship about 13 years ago, after my eldest daughter was born. I could see that all-age worship needed to be more than just a collection of child-friendly activities, and I became actively interested in how a service was put together. When my husband was training at Cuddesdon, I attended the Feminist Theology seminars and was involved in devising a liturgy to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the General Synod vote to admit women to the priesthood. That was my first experience of helping to create a whole liturgy, starting with the nuts and bolts and first principles.

  5) What do you read when you are writing?

  Reading for research and inspiration: favourites are Rebecca Nye on children's spirituality, Sara Miles, Ched Myers, Walter Brueggemann. For the pleasure of fine writing: I have loved everything by Hilary Mantel and savoured every page of Wolf Hall. Teleplays for The West Wing by Aaron Sorkin. I enjoy Joanne Harris and Sarah Waters, and witty writers who play with language: P.G. Wodehouse, Stephen Fry, Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell.

  6) Who has been the biggest influence in your Christian journey?

  My husband, Jim, for his conviction that the Church's job is to serve the powerless and marginalized, and that a priest's job is to empower people and be a voice for the voiceless.

  7) What is the good news that you are proclaiming?

  God is love and nothing can separate us from that love.

  8)Where do you imagine yourself being in ten years' time?

  Writing for Kevin Mayhew, leading workshops and training days and probably ferrying children to and from University!

[agnesgarbowska]

Web Comic Update!! Imagination Station Page 21 Now Online! New Mission in Pitch Darkness...Night light time!