Description

This event brings together film, conversation and audience participation to explore how "British Muslim values" are lived, negotiated and expressed in everyday life, beyond polarised narratives and political rhetoric.

Drawing on an RCUK-funded collaborative film project with the BBC and the University of East Anglia, the event centres on a short documentary film created with British Muslims reflecting on family, faith, citizenship, gender, work, care and belonging. Rather than treating "values" as abstract or contested slogans, the films foreground lived experience, how people make ethical decisions, relate to others, and navigate public life in contemporary Britain.

The screening will be followed by a facilitated conversation between the filmmaker-researcher and invited respondents, opening out to audience discussion. Together, we will reflect on how values are formed through relationships, institutions and everyday practices, and how film can act as a bridge between academic research, public debate and community storytelling.

The event is designed to be accessible, reflective and dialogical, inviting audiences to think critically about representation, identity and what it means to live together across difference. It contributes to PeopleFest's focus on creativity, public engagement and anthropological perspectives on social life, while creating space for nuanced conversations that challenge reductive portrayals of Muslims and "Britishness" and centre the voices and experiences of British Muslims themselves.