We met again every month throughout 2024. The year focussed on discussions covering our usual range of topics which included the limits to human lifespan, existential question such as "Why Do We Exist?" and to debates on whether evolution and belief in a deity are compatible. We had two Speaker events. The Chief of the National Secular Society Stephen Evans talking to us In June about the importance of Free Speech and his fears about the re-emergence of de facto blasphemy laws disguised as calls for the criminilsation of 'islamophbia' and 'hate speech'. Our very own Peter Archibald entertained us with his talk about the Science of Chocolate in November.  We also held our traditional annual Summer Garden Party in July and our traditional Festive Dinner in December.

We continue to provide significant visibility for humanism and the non-religious perspective in our local area of East Berkshire. The big effort of the year was putting on the One Life Course in Humanism in a collaboration with Reading Humanists in October and November -  to encourage new members to get involved locally.  We remain active in the local Inter-Faith networks with Richard Doidge as our Representative in WAMCF and Sian Smith in the Slough Faith partnership.

Anthony Lewis was heavily involved in the updating of the Pan Berkshire SACRE RE Syllabus which is done every 5 years. Humanism is now covered at all key stages from 5 to 18 years of age whcih is a great step forward which better reflects that a third of people in the area are now non religious according to the 2021 Census. Our Humanist School Speakers have also presented to over 750 local pupils in the last year and at two Teacher Training Conferences. Various members have also contributed regularly to the international online humanist magazine Humanistically Speaking. Press the image above to go to Anthony Lewis's recent article on 'Humans: The Irrepressible Innovators' as an example.

I wish everyone a safe and healthy festive season and I am looking forward to gmeeting you all  at our monthly meet ups again in 2025!  

Take care and warm humanist hugs, 

Anthony

We met every month throughout 2023 and although attendance remains down on pre-pandemic levels we still had two Speaker events with John Barron giving us an enjoyable evening creating images like the one to the right generated by AI on a theme of 'childbirth' in the style of the Spanish artist Salvador Dali - a quite remarkable image! We held also our annual Summer Garden Party in July and our traditional Festive Dinner in December.

We experimented with several different formats and types of meetings in 2023 to try to get our numbers back up to pre-pandemic levels with videos (Hans Rosling  in March), discussions or debates (Woke in September), presentations (eg in April on Humanism by Alan Montgomery from Reading), and regular socials. We held a series of Lunchtime Debates jointly with Reading Humanists organised by Roger Heppleston from Windsor and David Goode from Reading. We are planning to jointly run the One Life Course via zoom in 2024 - watch for that in the new year!

We continue to provide significant visibility for humanism and the non-religious perspective in our local area of East Berkshire. We remain active in the local Inter-Faith networks with Richard Doidge as our Representative in WAMCF and Sian Smith in the Slough Faith partnership. Our Chair Anthony Lewis is now an approved permanent voting member of the local RBWM SACRE representing humanism in religious education in local schools. Anthony has also, together with other humanist representatives in our neighbouring SACREs been involved with updating the RE Syllabus for the whole of Berkshire.  Our Humanist School Speakers have also presentated to over 1500 local pupils in the last year across East Berkshire.

In addition we remain active regionally in the SCEHN (The South Central England Humanist Network), and nationally with the online humanist magazine Humanistically Speaking, and of course, with our ongoing partnership with Humanist UK and the NSS. 

I wish everyone a safe and healthy festive season and I am looking forward to getting back to normality and seeing you all at our monthly socials in 2024!  

Take care and warm humanist hugs, 

Anthony

We met every month throughout 2022 and although attendance was down on pre-pandemic levels we still had two Speaker events, a Summer Garden Party in July and our traditional Festive Dinner in December at the Cotes Brasserie.

We continue to provide  significant visibility for humanism and the non-religious in our local area of East Berkshire.

Our Humanist School Speakers went into about 5 schools during the year as the education sector began to get back to normal after covid.  We helped on the Reading Humanists stall at Reading Pride in August.  We liased with Farhnam and Reading Humanists to co-ordinate the filming of humanists talking about their beliefs for pupils from 5 to 14 years of age - Key Stages KS1, 2 and 3 - thanks to Roger Heppleston and Anthony Lewis. When the films are published we will share them with you.  We continue to sit on the RBWM SACRE to represent the non-religious worldview in RE education.  The 2021 Census data indicates that over a third of local residents are now non-religious and this will be discussed in more detail at the Sacre meeting in March 2023.

As our  Chair I gave the Council Prayers at the start of February which was an interesting experience with everyone referrring to me as the Reverend, I gave up correcting them!   I continue to write for the grass roots online secular magazine Humanistically Speaking and Rick my husband and I attended the Humanist UK Annual Convention in Belfast in July which was a first for us.

So as we head into 2023 its probably time to start putting the covids behind us and begin again to look to the future and restart growing Windsor Humanists membership and activities.  We are always open to help and assistance so as one of your New Years Resolutions why not get involved and volunteer - to help run our monthly events, be our secretary, operate our social media feeds or manage our website!

I wish everyone a safe and healthy festive season and I am looking forward to getting back to normality and seeing you all at our monthly socials in 2023!  

Take care and warm humanist hugs, 

Anthony

Well what a 2 years that has been!  A period dominated by the covid pandemic with no real sign of things abating anytime soon!  

We started 2020 innocently enough with 3 face to face meetings till the first lockdown at the end of March 2020.  We have held some 17 Zoom online events and 7 face to face session during pandemic  - with the zoom attendance varying enormously form 3 to 20!   We held our first ever Summer Garden Party at our place in Windsor in August 2021 to re-start our face to face sessions safely and it was great to meet everyone again after so long!  It has been quite a roller coaster ride for all of us.

The ‘boards' opposite summarises some of the key highlights from the last 2 years.  Press the image or go to "past events' to see more.  Each summary is linked to the relevant websites, videos, booklets and films so please use this link to tfind out more. 

I would like to wish everyone a safe and healthy festive season and look forward to meeting everyone in the New Year in 2020 - either face to face or on zoom depending on the covid restrictions!  We are still putting together our Q2 events so if you have any ideas please drop me a line and we’ll do our best to organise.  All feedback and input gratefully received.  Stay safe adn covid compliant,

warm humanists hugs,   Anthony

2019 was another busy year with 2 Speaker Events, our usual monthly Tuesday socials and the holding of the Community Street Showcases in Windsor and Slough Town Centre.   The graphic opposite is taken from our website windsorhumanists.com  and provides a summary of last years events. 

2019 highlights for me were:

• Events - Chief Executive  Stephen Evans from the National Secular Society visited to talk to us about their campaigns to promote secularism in the UK - it was an honour to have Stephen visit us and his talk was followed by a lively discussion which took an unexpected focus on genital cutting of children!  For the first time we had a film showing of the Islam and the Future of Intolerance followed by a great discussion.  We also for the first time had a book review evening in September which was enjoyed and generated a lively discussion. We’ll see if we can repeat these again this year on different topics.
• SWAMI17 - Windsor Humanists collaborated for the third year running with the WAMCF and SFP to run a series of successful Community Street Showcases during July in Slough, and Windsor. SWAMI is a visible example of people of faith and the non religious working together to connect the diverse communities across our local 3 towns - swami17.com
• Local Humanist School Speakers - we have been co-opted onto the local East Berkshire SACRE as a non voting member.  The hope is through this we will raise the profile further of the non religious perspective and increase our invites to speak in local schools.  Watch this space!

I would like to thank Roger Heppleston so much for stepping in to hold the reins so admirable organising two monthly presentations and discussions between March and August when I was indisposed (wrecked would be a better term!) getting a new right hip after a enduring a serious injury whilst walking in Ireland in March.  I did not see that one coming at all!  I’d also like to thank very much Andrea Sparrow from Slough Faith Partnership  and Paul Samuels from the WAMCF who both also stepped in to organise the SWAMI Community Street Showcases in Slough and Windsor respectively so that we did not have to cancel the events due to my mishap.

Our focus and theme for 2020 for our fifth year of existence will be ‘Humanism with Humour' - refer to our Meetup page for details.  Happy New Year Year everyone - lets have fun this new decade and move on from the dreaded B word lol   warmest humanists hugs,  Anthony

Windsor Humanists Annual Review 2018

2018 was another busy year with 6 Speaker Events, our usual monthly Tuesday socials and further development of our Dialogue Activities and School Speakers Campaigns.   The graphic opposite is taken from our website windsorhumanists.com  and provides a summary of these events. 

2018 highlights for me were:

• SWAMI17 - Windsor Humanists collaborated for the second year running with the WAMCF and SFP to run a series of successful Community Street Showcases during July in Slough, and Windsor. SWAMI is a visible example of people of faith and the non religious working together to connect the diverse communities across our local 3 towns - swami17.com.
• WAMCF 2018 Dialogues - a number of Windsor Humanists attended these well supported Dialogues where people of all faiths and none meet at local faith venues to discuss a topical life issue.  Windsor Humanists were able to represent the non religious perspective with people of faith in a respectful way.  I believe that many people of faith rarely encounter an ‘open’ atheist so I think it important that we participate in these Dialogues to locally raise the visibility of humanism.  In March this year Windsor HUmanists hosted the last in the 3 year series of Dialogues - with theapt title What Does it Mean to be Human?  Over 60 people turned out to the  at the Austen-Leigh & Baldwin Institute Community Hall ably parked by Roger and ably fed and watered by the team led by Lucy.  Thanks you to everyone for making this such a great evening.
• Local Humanist School Speakers - we have now spoken some 20 times in local Schools in the last few years. Through our involvement with the Slough Faith Partnership Windsor Humanist Chair Anthony Lewis was also invited to speak briefly at a multi faith schools conference in Eden Islamic Girls Acadmey  on British Values.  Also WIndsor HUmanists presented Humanism to the Slough Sacre RE Teachers Conference and made contact with the Berkshire Sacre Association.
• Local Visibility & Publicity - the Chair Anthony Lewis has again written a number of ‘Thoughts for the Week’ in the local Observer and been interviewed several times in 2018  on Radio Berkshire about Humanism - you can listen to this interview on the new dedidcated page for these types of events on our website.

Focus and theme for 2019 will be 'My Humanism' - watch this space for news of speakers, events, dicussions, debates and visits coming soon!  Happy New Year Year everyone. 

warmest humanists hugs Anthony