Re:Imagine Global Peace on Friday 26th September 2025 will be an experiment in public conversation with food, surprise, stories, and the search for lasting peace.
On Friday 26th September starting at 7:30pm, Bradford Cathedral will host Re:Imagine Global Peace, an intimate, experimental conversation held over food.
Rather than a lecture, panel, or formal Q&A, this gathering is about risk, surprise, and encounter. It will bring together expertise, uncertainty, and personal stories to allow new insights to emerge between the guests.
Our guest for this event, David Porter, Visiting Professor of Faith and Peaceful Relations at Coventry University, will be in conversation with Revd Canon Ned Lunn, Canon for Intercultural Mission and the Arts at Bradford Cathedral. Together, they will guide an evening of dialogue over food, inviting participants into a shared exploration of what it means to seek peace, locally and globally, in a fragmented age.
David Porter brings decades of lived experience in peacebuilding. A native of Belfast, he was closely involved in the long and arduous journey that led to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998; an agreement many had thought impossible after decades of violence and division. His role in the Northern Ireland peace process, including work with the Civic Forum and the Community Relations Council, reflects a rare capacity to help opposing sides imagine a different future. Porter has also served as Canon Director for Reconciliation at Coventry Cathedral—one of the world’s foremost centres for reconciliation—and later as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Director for Reconciliation, responding to conflict and division within the Church and wider society.
The pertinence of this conversation could not be sharper. At a time when conflicts around the globe, from Ukraine to the Middle East, from Sudan to ongoing tensions closer to home continue to cause suffering and deepen divisions, the lessons of Northern Ireland stand as both a beacon of hope and a sober reminder of the fragility of peace.
The Re:Imagine series, launched earlier this year, seeks to create space for courageous, creative, and collaborative conversations that tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time. Each event aims not just to discuss problems but to spark fresh imagination about possible futures.
“Peace is not simply the absence of conflict,” says Canon Ned Lunn. “It is about building trust across difference, weaving together diverse communities, and imagining new possibilities for how we live together. Bradford, with its rich intercultural life, is the perfect place to host such a conversation—and the Cathedral, standing at the city’s heart for over 1,400 years, has always been a space where people come together to seek meaning, connection, and hope. That makes it exactly the right place to ask how peace can be re-imagined afresh today.”
David Porter says, “Faced with the cost of conflict each generation says never again. Yet the elusive quest for peace continues. There is much to learn from the peace process in Northern Ireland, a conflict about identity, belonging and historical trauma lived out in the UK. While no conflict or peace process is the same, these deep themes resonate and fuel the violence of many of the conflicts we see today.”
Re:Imagine Global Peace at Bradford Cathedral takes place on Friday 26th September 2025 at 7:30pm. Tickets (£15 each + booking fee) can be found at: https://global-peace.eventbrite.co.uk