| Committee for Conflict Transformation Support | CCTS
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The Adam Curle Memorial Meeting and Celebration It began appropriately with music and silence. Alan Pleydell, fellow Quaker and co-worker, played a Bach Prelude on guitar from one of the cello suites – music which shares that quality of quiet contemplation characteristic of a Quaker meeting at its best. Then the Meeting for Worship itself. Silence. Intermittent contributions from people moved to speak about Adam and his influence on their own lives and on the wider arena of society and politics. Some of those who spoke were former students from his early years at the School (now Department) of Peace Studies at Bradford University, which he helped to establish and of which he was the first professor. Several of them had been inspired to make peace and related work a central focus of their lives. Uri Davies, one of the original lecturers in the Department, spoke of Adam’s intellectual courage in including a pro-Palestinian perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in face of opposition from both inside and outside the university. The tributes were warm, heart-felt. However, at the end of this first part of the commemoration there was still something missing – the sense of Adam the convivial host and raconteur, Adam the beer-maker, Adam the writer of outrageous funny verses. Fortunately, that other Adam was amply represented in the rest of the proceedings. Opening the session, Tom Woodhouse, the Curle Professor of Conflict Resolution at Bradford and a close personal friend, soon had the Meeting Room resounding with laughter as he read passages from Adam’s school reports which showed he was the despair of his teachers, a frequent absentee, and bottom of the class in subject after subject. Other contributions, funny or moving or both, came from Kevin Clements a former co-director of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, Diana Francis, Chair of the Committee for Conflict Transformation Support, Oliver Ramsbotham of the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford, and Katarina Kruhonja, from the Centre for Nonviolence and Human Rights in Osijek, Croatia. Diana, in addition to paying her personal tribute, read passages from Adam’s writings which conveyed his particular approach to mediation and conflict transformation. Katarina paid tribute to his courage in making successive visits to Croatia, at the height of the Serb-Croat war, to provide encouragement and moral support, and above all to listen to her and to others at the Osijek Centre. More music followed, with an Evening Hymn to the music of Purcell sung by baritone Stephen Alder, and performances by a string quartet of a Chacony by Purcell. Then, in keeping with the Quaker traditions of equality in participation, one of the musicians divided us all into groups and coached us to sing an eight part canon by Thomas Tallis. Finally there was the tea and coffee, with sandwiches and homemade cakes, and a chance for people to meet and talk, and to browse through the beautifully produced booklet of Testimonies to Adam, prepared on the initiative of his local Kingston and Wandsworth Monthly Meeting, and put together by his daughter, Deborah with contributions, as she puts it, of Friends and friends. The booklet is published by Watershed Publications (Norwich) and distributed by Deborah. Her email address for anyone wishing to obtain a copy is: Deborah.curle@lshtm.ac.uk |
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