Quaker Week is an annual celebration of Quakerism in the UK put together by Quakers in Britain to stimulate awareness and encourage communities to embrace Quaker values. This year’s event is running from 27th September to 5th October with the theme of ‘Love Your Neighbour’ and culminates in World Quaker Day on Sunday 5th October.
As a Quaker school our students benefit from the calm, purposeful ethos and the shared values of Simplicity, trust, respect, integrity, peace, equality, and sustainability that are integral to everything we do. Although we live these humanitarian values each day, participating in Quaker Week is an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of Quakerism and what more we could each do to help make a difference to the world around us.
Leighton Park’s Quaker Week organiser and Head of Philosophy, Religious Studies & Values, Stephen Taynton, explained, “Quaker Week is an annual celebration across the UK and the theme for this year is: Love thy Neighbour. It encourages all of us to reach out to people in solidarity and service in creating a world where love is central to our actions. It allows the Leighton Park community to engage in making the world a brighter place and this can include a simple act of writing a thank you card to a friend, family or colleague, or simply to give a smile in thanks. Most of all, be kind.”
“We’re a Quaker school obviously but a lot of Quakerism is about change making and being upstanders and I think external people from the school who take that into their everyday life and protest and do things to be upstanders, it has an influence on the students and a good one. It helps us know what works and know what we have to do to make change.” reflected Ella (Lower Sixth).
Leighton Park Governor and Quaker, Naomi Iliffe, added: “I think Quaker Week is valuable because we need to give students Quaker values and I think it’s very important for them to see real people who really believe them.”
Launching the Week during Collect on Friday 26th September Stephen set out a variety of activities including a quiz, meet a Quaker session, a trip to Reading Meeting House for Year 7s and a poetry competition.
The Quaker Quiz was the highlight of Tuesday’s Tutor Time with students pitting their wits against other tutor groups in the hope of winning a home-made bake! The multiple-choice questions covered a variety of Quaker themed topics from historical facts about the founders of Quakerism to the commercial success of chocolate manufacturers like Cadbury, Rowntree and Bourneville. Anna (Upper Sixth) has kindly offer to make one of the cakes, alongside super chef Stephen, since there two winning groups!
The Quaker Week poetry competition aims to encourage students and staff to compose some verse on the theme of ‘Love Your Neighbour’. With National Poetry Day on the Thursday and the school’s Polyglot Poetry competition on the Friday, the Quaker Week compositions should benefit from the community’s current focus on creative, intellectual activity. We look forward to hearing some of the poems after the competition closes on 11th October.
See the photos from Quaker Week 2025.
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