Rose Castle and Princeton’s Journey of Cultural Change: 2024 Review

Rose Castle and Princeton’s Journey of Cultural Change: 2024 Review

From campus conversations to castle encounters, our partnership with Princeton University has continued to grow in depth and impact throughout 2023 and 2024. Whether reconnecting with alumni, training faculty and staff navigating real-time campus tensions, or welcoming a new cohort of students to Rose Castle in Cumbria, each moment has been part of a shared journey—one rooted in the slow, transformative work of reconciliation. Across these spaces, students and staff alike are discovering that cultural change doesn’t come through quick fixes, but through habits, hospitality, and courageous encounters that ripple outward long after the programmes end.

2023 Alumni refresher

It was a joy to start the year by engaging with our alumni. They are an incredible group of students who shared about the reality of their day-to-day on campus, and the many ways
they are showing up differently in public spaces, since their time at Rose Castle. We heard which habits feel more or less relevant based on their current life season, and dived into some practical planning for the types of spaces they are hoping to curate.

Faculty and Staff Winter Session

It was a privilege to be invited to deliver one of Princeton's Winter Session workshops. These
two days on campus were full of authentic and meaningful interactions, with a new cohort who threw themselves into this experience. We reflected together on what cultural change can
look like, and how to create 'Rose Shaped Spaces' on campus - for dialogue, deep listening and recognising one another's humanity.

Faculty and Staff June Session

In June we were invited back to work with a group of student-facing staff, many of whom have been deeply affected by the pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protests on campus. Participants were from the chaplaincy team, DEI team, health administration, student life and other departments. The hope was to create 'nodes' for reconciliation on campus, equipping support staff with the skills to defuse situations of unhealthy conflict, and to model a better quality of disagreement in a context of increasing polarity.

Rose Castle Encounter

In October we partnered with Princeton University’s Office of Religious Life (ORL), led by Dean Theresa Thames, to host 18 students at Rose Castle, Cumbria, UK, for an immersive
reconciliation programme. This initiative, part of RCF’s ongoing collaboration with Princeton, supports the student-led Princeton Rose Castle Society (PRCS) in fostering reconciling spaces on campus and to model authentic encounters across divides.

It is pleasing to see students start to recognise that the work of reconciliation and peace building is difficult, non-linear, and often fragmented. Put positively, it is a life-long commitment to a transformational process rather than a destination. One student captured this when they said:

“I still struggle to have the hope to imagine change in the world and particularly on campus.
However, I feel much more aware of my own conflicts and how I will move forward in
relationships with those different from myself.”

In light of this, it is perhaps important to remember that each cohort joining the PRCS
[Princeton Rose Castle Society] is at the start of a journey, and that they are contributing to a student-led dynamic of cultural change on campus that began before them and will go on
long after they have left Princeton."