Materiality communicates complex information, often about the perspectives
of people whose voices are silenced, or left off historical records.
Material cultures provide indirect archives of such social histories, values
and feelings. Examining the expressive qualities of material culture,
we draw on data from the trans-national research project ‘Interfaith
Childhoods’. This project generates and documents community perspectives
on faith, identity and belonging. In response to our data generated
through arts workshops with children and focus group discussions with
parents, we develop a theoretical framework which observes how the
materiality of religion can shape the ways young people and their parents
build relationships with those from different religions. Here, we theorise
how our empirical evidence makes a case for thinking through visual and
material cultures of religion.