THE SYCAMORE FILMS ARE NOW ON OPEN ACCESS

It’s a difficult time for everyone with the Coronavirus emergency – but also an important time to support one another in faith and to reach out to others beyond our communities.

In many places it has become impossible for group meetings to take place. Many Sycamore parishes have been asking us how we can make the Sycamore videos available for parishioners to watch at home and to participate in remote groups.

In an effort to support parishes and Catholic communities in every way possible, we have made all of the Sycamore films OPEN ACCESS so that they can be viewed online at home by anyone who wishes, without a subscription or log-in.

You can access the Film Pages here:

https://www.sycamore.fm/videos/

In this way, you can encourage people to watch the films at home to help them in their own faith. But above all you can think of how you can run remote groups in your parishes and communities.

This gives you many different possibilities as Sycamore leaders:

• To encourage parishioners to form their own Sycamore groups – watching the films in their households or discussing the films with friends remotely
• To organise groups centrally through the parish: asking people to register with you and then putting them into smaller remote discussion groups, each with a group leader
• Advising these groups how they can “meet” in an online group (via Zoom or Skype or a conference call or whatever). With the help of their group leader, members can arrange to view the films online at the same time, and then pause to discuss each section of the film in the online group, as you would in your normal Sycamore meetings.

We hope this open access will help parishes to build community when people are in isolation, as well as helping people to grow in faith.

More advice and resources to come soon:

Over the next couple of weeks we will try to develop some resources and share good practice – to help you set up and run Sycamore groups remotely in these ways.

If you have not done so, please join the Sycamore Leaders Forum on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sycamore.leaders

This will allow you to share ideas and see what others are doing in their own communities.

Let us pray for each other, and let us pray that in a small way Sycamore can help people come closer to Christ and to each other in these very difficult times.