Canberra Celebrates Commonwealth Day Religiously

“Canberra does something that is a bit innovative” says Mr Steven Pickard, the Executive Director of Australian Centre of Christianity and Culture (ACCC) where every year Commonwealth Day is celebrated by inviting the representatives from different faiths to present their symbols. The theme changes every year and so do the symbols. Mr. Pickard has been the president of ACCC for the last two years.

Why combine the celebrations of the Commonwealth with multi-faith?

Mr. Pickard: Canberra is a bit unusual. It’s not a big city but there’s a lot of people who are connected to the commonwealth here. There are a lot of embassies here. Every year we invite all the embassies from the commonwealth. This year we had about 9 or 10 ambassadors.

Is there any other state that does this?

Mr Pickard: Every state I understand has a commonwealth day celebration. Whether they link it with multi-faith, I don’t know. Canberra is a bit unusual.

How did you come up with the idea of linking multi-faith to the Commonwealth?

Mr Pickard: It actually started about 10 – 11 years ago. Because all the religions of the world are present in the nations of commonwealth, the idea came that why not invite different faiths and celebrate the diversity.

Did you always have the practice of presenting religious symbols?

Mr Pickard:  No. From Last year, which was my first year, we thought we need to change. It was too much talk. So we thought why doesn’t each religious tradition be invited to bring the symbol and someone else speaks about the symbol and it’s supposed to relate to the theme. Last year it was diversity.

How was it last year?

Mr Pickard: It was wonderful. It was really good. People brought a symbol forward. Young people, dressed in their costumes and it was very easy to relate that to the theme of diversity because they were all different symbols from commonwealth. It was pretty easy.

How was it this year?

Mr Pickard: This year it was on youth. The baha’i one. Natalie is on the committee. She worked really hard to come up with a symbol solely relating to the youth. So there were about two or three who were able to be sharp on the theme.

Which one did you enjoy?

Mr Pickard: There was one from the Jewish tradition, the Jewish woman. She was very powerful. So some people are commenting on that and she was very strong and good and I really enjoyed that. She was a young person speaking about something that meant something to her.

She read a piece from Anne Frank’s diary written on 11^th April, 1944 from the original certificate of liberation from imprisonment of Nazi-rule.

How old is this idea?

Mr Pickard: The idea is more than a decade old.  The idea of symbols was a new innovation. I think next year we won’t do that. We’ll find something else.

How do you manage to put Christian hymns in a multi-faith celebration?

Mr Pickard: Each year we sing some hymns but we try to sing hymns which are a bit more universal so that people from different religious traditions don’t feel excluded. So the hymns we had this year one was St. Francis hymn which is about the earth and peace.

Its hard to get the music right and a lot of religious traditions don’t have community singing. Like the Jewish tradition doesn’t really do that and baha’I doesn’t. But we have special things.

What special things do you have at your event?

Mr. Pickard: Special things like dances, choirs, guitar. We have Samoan tongan singers. We had Hindu dancers, with people dressed in their costume. We’ve always had some things to celebrate different parts to people’s lives. And each year we’ll do that.

Why do you want to continue increasing the items?

Mr. Pickard: Today we said in the meeting, “Why don’t we have dancers dancing up and down the centre piece?” I think we’re going to increase the number of items. Just to jazz it up a bit more. Bit more colour, little bit more sound. Rather than have just too many words.

Why do you invite young people to present the symbols?

Mr. Pickard: On the committee we’re all old. Mostly men. But then in two thirds of commonwealth the  average age is 22. It’s time for us to try and connect with the young people of the commonwealth. I think that’s a very important thing to do. This year, particularly with the theme like youth, it was very important that the youth were represented.

What do you think is a way to connect to the youth in your events and invite them in?

Mr Pickard: Doing some other items is another way of inviting them. We’ll always keep on exploring that.