The UK network of the ALF held our latest meeting in Liverpool last weekend. This was attended by approximately 20 network members from across the UK (we received a lot of apologies, too), plus three special international guests. We were honoured to welcome Iman Noureldine, a freelance cultural activist from Egypt, Oussama Jadayel from the University of Balamand in the Lebanon, and by Ann Luttrell, who is Head of the ALF network in Ireland. For the wonderful presentations by our guests (and for other sessions of the meeting) we were joined by a large group of international youth delegates, who were in town to work with one of our members on planning for a major intercultural arts festival. In addition the cultural centre which hosted us had a full programme of public events and exhibitions over the weekend which provided a very engaging and stimulating back-drop to proceedings.

Our guests gave very personal, emotional and provocative accounts of current events, mindsets and needs in their respective countries. We were able to identify a number of practical areas where partnership will be possible and useful, and members will be pursuing these in the next few months. In addition we used the meeting to inform the final stages of development of the ALF UK network website, which we hope to launch very soon. One of the main aims of the website is to take care of most network communications online, including allowing members to discuss and debate issues and projects or share information about events or funding with each other directly. We hope that this will reduce the need to spend lots of money on network meetings, thus releasing a larger share of the network budget for common operations.

Our thanks go to ALF HQ (especially Rasha) for helping make it possible to bring our guests to the UK - they added so much to the quality and significance of the event. Please see attached my report on the meeting for members.

Richard Shotton