Bishop Rod Green sharing a meal with guests at the Haven Supper Club

A SUPPER club for refugees and asylum seekers has been praised as a “blueprint” for community cohesion.

The feedback came from the Bishop of Stepney, Rt Revd Rod Green, whose episcopal area includes Islington and who visited the monthly Haven Supper Club at Church on the Corner in Barnsbury Road last week.

Home-cooked Mediterranean food was on the menu and entertainment was by local Polish-Romany family band the Romany Diamonds.

The supper club is run by minister Revd Idina Dunore and Fergus Burnett-Skelding, and started last September.

Mr Burnett-Skelding studied Persian at university and told how he wanted to use that background to help refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. “Islington being a borough of sanctuary, I thought [a supper club] was a fitting thing,” he said. “I looked at it from the perspective of my lens, which is Christianity, looking at stories about the table and hospitality, and I thought there could be a way of going beyond a service-delivery model.”

Supper club leaders Poppy Sharpe, Tommy Sharpe and Fergus Burnett-Skelding

Both long-time Islington residents and refugee guests are encouraged to contribute food, music and art to the supper clubs.

Mr Burnett-Skelding said: “Community has three dimensions – you need physical comfort, there’s belonging, but you also need empowerment, and sometimes we stop at the belonging bit and don’t go beyond that.”

He added: “At the moment we’re facing a lot of anti-migrant, anti-refugee feeling in this country. My personal view is that a lot of that is down to a lack of contact, just a lack of knowing and being invested in people’s lives and seeing other human beings who come from different places as complex.”

Part of his work involves trying to de-radicalise anti-migrant protesters.

“My dream is that people don’t slide into that radicalisation in the first place because they’ve had contact with people who are different from them,” said Mr Burnett-Skelding.

Polish-Romany family band the Romany Diamonds

Mina, who travelled to the UK from Iran alone, said she enjoys meeting people at the supper club.

“The main reason I like it is because I can have conversations with other people and practise my English and learn the culture, and maybe I can find friends, because in this country, I don’t have many friends.”

The Rt Revd Biship Rod Green sais: “Church on the Corner provides a fantastic blueprint that churches across London can replicate in their own communities.”

After a plate of lasagna and taboule, the he told the Tribune: “I met people from all over the world, and they felt like they belonged, and I thought that was really precious.”

He added: “There’s a history of immigration, and it has been true of Britain, true of London for hundreds of years.­­­­­

“It’s not new. I think there are players, ‘conflict entrepreneurs’, who like to exploit fears and anxieties for the future for their own ends.

“What I love about something like this, is that when you meet people face to face, when you eat with them, a lot of those fears and assumptions fall by the wayside. Some of that animosity which is easy to stoke online is much more difficult to do in real life.”