When John Jegasothy's 10-month-old son Edward came down with a fever, he had to face bullets fired by both sides in Sri Lanka's vicious civil war to obtain medical help.

"There were shots from the [Tamil] Tigers on one side, and the armed forces on the other," he says. "Eventually we had to take a white flag using a nappy."

A Uniting Church minister, Jegasothy came to Australia as a refugee in 1986, after enduring years of violence.

"I didn't want to leave. My people were dying," he says. "It was so hard but at that particular moment I thought 'I'll go mad and my wife will go mad if our children die before us'."

A Sri Lankan Tamil, Jegasothy works with asylum seekers at Villawood Detention Centre and in the community. His Christian belief drives his activism and work with refugees whose experiences echo his own past.

He is one of 27 people whose stories of faith are told in Urban Theatre Project's One Day for Peace.

Greek Orthodox couple Mina and Jerry Polites, gay Catholic couple Ben Oh and Nam Phan​ and devout Buddhist and car mechanic Duy Le also feature in the documentary film.

Muslim Tehara Chaudhary and her three children discuss the physical benefits of praying five times a day, while Sikh taxi driver Jaspul Singh reveals how his faith has helped him cope since the death of his son five years ago.

Filming took place at the Brotherhood Boxn gym at Greenacre during Friday prayers, the Murugan Temple in Mays Hill and the Sikh Centre in Glenwood, as well as inside people's homes.

The film will be projected outdoors throughout western Sydney at locations including Blacktown Train Station, Liverpool Library, Parramatta Town Hall and Saigon Place, in Bankstown.

UTP artistic director Rosie Dennis says the video work was inspired by the 2011 census, which found far higher rates of religious devotion among residents of western Sydney compared to the national average.

"Whether we believe in God or not, religion is a huge part of life for millions of people around the world," she says. "It's something that is in the news daily, particularly at the moment with the Syrian refugee crisis, gay marriage, abortion. Yet I don't think there is enough understanding around the individuality of people's connection to their faith."

However, artistic projects about western Sydney, such as One Day for Peace, may be threatened by the federal government's changes to arts funding and cuts to the Australia Council.

Dennis says funds available to UTP, based in Bankstown, will be cut by up to 20 per cent, curtailing the company's program.

"The growth of our company and other small to mediums, will be affected by these cuts to the Australia Council," she says, "which is disappointing given that UTP's home is in western Sydney, the fastest growing region in the country.

"The West is in dire need of greater financial investment in cultural content."

One Day for Peace will be projected outdoors throughout western Sydney from September 14 to 27.