Sacred sites

You’ll need

A4 paper
Pens or pencils
Coloured pens or pencils
Sticky tack
Access to the internet
Camera or phone

Scouts is open to everyone. We don’t identify exclusively with one faith, and we welcome people of all faiths and of none.

We know it’s important for people to learn about each other, including understanding different faiths and beliefs. Scouts always respects people’s beliefs, faiths and cultures, and everyone should be open to learn.

As an inclusive and values based movement, we support our members to engage and learn about different faiths and beliefs in an exciting and meaningful way, even if they don’t have a faith themselves.

Celebrating and understanding differences, including differences in faiths and beliefs, is an important part of our Scout values, which are:

Integrity: We act with integrity; we are honest, trustworthy and loyal.
Respect: We have self-respect and respect for others.
Care: We support others and take care of the world in which we live.
Belief: We explore our faiths, beliefs and attitudes.
Co-operation: We make a positive difference; we co-operate with others and make friends.

Our value of Belief and its exploration helps Scouts to learn from other faiths and beliefs. This encourages them to develop or build their personal beliefs and understand their shared values, whether faith-based on not.

We know that learning about faiths, beliefs and different attitudes can help to break down barriers, helps us all to recognise what we have in common, and teaches us to value and respect other people. It also helps us to build up respect, acceptance and knowledge for each other, leading to a more co-operative and inclusive society.

In our diverse society, people can sometimes feel cautious talking about this sensitive subject. However, it's important that Scouts offers young people safe, exciting and open spaces to explore faiths and beliefs. They should be able to engage in personal reflection, as they question and develop their opinions and understanding of the world around them.

Making time for personal reflection and developing our beliefs means exploring the places, people, communities, celebrations or stories which hold meaning for us, and it may not necessarily mean exploring a faith.

For example, someone’s shared values may be their Scout Values and that person may choose to reflect on them at important times, such as when they make their Promise. Others may choose to reflect at certain times of the year, such as a faith-based festival, birthdays, meaningful events or at New Year. Some people may still celebrate events, such as Christmas, but use it as a time to celebrate family, friends and loved ones, as well as for charity and giving.

Discover more about Faiths and Beliefs in Scouts.

Before you begin

Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Take a look at our guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Planning and setting up this activity

An adult volunteer should plan a visit to a local place of worship. A place of worship can be a church, temple or mosque, or equally an outdoor space such as a monument or shrine. This should be a place of worship that regularly brings people together, or did so in the past.
See if anyone from the place of worship is available to give a talk about the site and the faith of the people who go there. If no-one is available, a volunteer should do some quick research to find out a little more about the place.

Running this activity

The group should come together in the place of worship. The person leading the activity should tell them to look around carefully at the features of the place. Everyone should look for different colours or shapes and things that you wouldn’t see anywhere else.
If anyone was available to give a talk about the place of worship, they should do it now.
Everyone should split into groups of four. The person leading the activity should give out pens or pencils, colours and paper. Each group should pick a wall or section of the place of worship and try to draw it together. Between them, the group should split the wall or section into four square pieces, with each member of the group drawing one piece.
Each group should sit together when they draw. This’ll help them stay within their own section and link up with the sections being drawn by others in the group.
Tell the groups to try to remember where the section they drew was in the building. Give everyone a moment to check this. If there’s any more paper, they could take notes to help them remember where the bits they drew were positioned, or to remember where each group was sitting. The person leading the activity should then collect up the drawings and make sure everyone’s ready to leave.
If you have and are allowed to use a camera, it may be useful to take a picture of the sections drawn by the groups. Remember to ask permission of what you can and can't photograph.
If using a camera isn’t possible, see if the place of worship has a free pamphlet or flier featuring a picture of the sections drawn. You could even look online, as you might find the place of worship with a picture on social media.
Everyone should return to the meeting place. In a large room with blank walls, everyone should take back their drawing and use sticky tack to stick it to the wall. They should try to put it in the position where the section they drew in the place of worship was. Everyone should work together to line up their drawings. If the person leading the activity got a photo of the place of worship, use this to help.
If walls are too high or far apart, lay out the pictures on the floor to make a 2D drawing of the place of worship.
Everyone should step back to see their drawings. See if the group have any questions about any of the features that they’ve drawn.

Reflection

The group has visited a religious place in the community. It may have been a church, temple or mosque that the group were familiar with, or it may have been a place of worship that was completely new to them. If you were new, what was it like to see a place where someone else in your community worships? Did it still feel special to you? If you knew the place, did you notice anything new about the place that you had never seen before?

Drawing a part of the place of worship meant that the group had to work together, with each member of each group working on a bit of a wall or section and then joining them together afterwards. Did your combined drawings look like the part you were working on? Does your combined drawing remind you of the place of worship? Was it tough to draw a quarter of a section, without accidentally drawing a part of someone else’s? How did you work around that problem?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Outdoor activities: You must have permission to use the location. Always check the weather forecast, and inform parents and carers of any change in venue.
Phones and cameras: Make sure parents and carers are aware and have given consent for photography.