Groups in this round received £750 each. This included groups who were still doing emergency work in response to the global pandemic, as well as groups doing more long term systemic change work. The round was open to groups who had not been previously funded as well as those who had.
Afro Scottish Integration Scotland, Scotland
Afro Scottish Integration Scotland aims to build together Afro Scottish life in Scotland, inviting other communities and sharing ideas which will help people to live in harmony together. It promotes youth voices and ideas from different communities, and entertainment in different cultural styles, with different music, food and dances of all genres.
Anti-Deportation Ireland, Ireland
Anti-Deportation Ireland's main activities involve challenging the dominant state discourse about asylum seekers and raising awareness of their plight. They run various events, with money raised going to fund aspects of activities, like paying for transport for ADI asylum-seeker members to attend advocacy and campaign/demonstration events in Dublin. Through COVID-19 they have continued to organise and advocate using social media, and in the past few months launched a 'Bring Back Mita' campaign after a woman was deported to Bangladesh after five years living in Ireland. They have been interviewed on local radio several times, and have been featured in a documentary about the effects of Direct Provision and the threat of deportation.
Anti-Racist City, Oxford
Anti-Racist City organises workshops and trainings with educators and student activists. They gather and disseminate resources on anti-racism work. They participate in and amplify protests and actions by their community groups. Their aim is to challenge and disrupt power structures that maintain and uphold racism. They do this by connecting people, centering the voices and agency of people and communities most impacted by racism in all its forms. They want to provide campaigns, advocacy, and media training so the people of Oxford can tell their own stories and have a stake in how their voice is heard.
Association of Black Parents of Disabled Children, North East England
Association of Black Parents of Disabled Children are a meeting point for Black parents of disabled children living in areas of Newcastle, Durham or Darlington. The main challenges for Black parents emanate from financial instability, as well as lack of knowledge regarding services and programmes for learning disabled children. They try hard to build capacity amongst members and make sure their voices be amplified, and their needs considered.
Brighton and Hove Black Women’s Group, South East England
Brighton and Hove Black Women's Group are ’woke’ Black women of Afrikan (African and Caribbean), Asian, Chinese, Middle Eastern and mixed heritage. They use their lived and work experience to fight white privilege and ‘white supremacy’ in society and in organisations so Black people can have their voices heard and their needs met.
Global Afrikan Congress uk (GACuk), UK Wide
GACuk is an organisation for Afrikan people, made up of organisations and individual members. They were established to fight the legacy of injustice emanating from the enslavement and the genocide of millions of Afrikans i.e. the Maangamzi. They are fighting the result of European expansionism from the 1500s until the 1900s and the continuous acts of racist violence prevalent not only in British society today, but globally. They charge the British government, in common with other European governments, with culpability for unjust enrichment through enslavement and colonialism.
Just Education Matters, UK Wide
Just Education Matters was set up to tackle inequalities in education, particularly in the area of school exclusions. They want to see an end to inequality in educational outcomes. They aim to achieve this by: changing the education landscape through reducing the incidents of exclusions for groups disproportionately excluded from education and reversing the trend of over-representation for these groups.
Kushti Bok, South West England
Kushti Bok is made up of Gypsies/Travellers/The Clergy and like minded supporters ages 20 - 75 years, both Settled and on the road members. They are fighting for human rights, stopping places, and the Right to Roam, and against hate and racism, the media and injuctions.
Lesbian Immigration Support Group, North West England
LISG is a support group for lesbian and bisexual women asylum seekers based in the Greater Manchester area. Their aims are: to provide a social network offering emotional support to lesbians and bisexual women currently applying for asylum and those refugees who have been granted leave to stay in the UK; to offer practical support and assistance to members with current asylum applications based on sexuality and to ensure that our members are treated equally and with dignity during the often inhuman asylum process.
Light Up Black and African Heritage Calderdale, North West England
Light Up Black and African Heritage Calderdale (Light Up BAHC) aims to empower, support and assist individuals and minority members of Black and African heritage, including Asylum Seekers, Migrant Workers and Refugees living in Calderdale, to develop skills and values that are needed in the wider community and to play a full part in the life of the mainstream community.
Liverpool Social Centre Collective, North West England
Liverpool Social Centre Collective exists to support anyone acting to defend themselves and their communities against attacks by business and government, locally and globally, and those acting in solidarity with them, through direct action, campaigning work, education, and sharing skills and resources. They work non-hierarchically, maintain their independence as far as is possible, claim to represent no one but themselves and seek to facilitate, not control, the resistance of others. They expect respect for each other; the centre should be a place of diversity and safety for all, wherediscrimination, oppression and violence will not be tolerated.
London Roma Youth Network, South East England
London Roma Youth Network exists to raise awareness of, and to stop hatred towards, young Roma. They do public speaking as well having started a short film about the discrimination young Roma are suffering. They also took part in 'Me for the World', a production at the Young Vic, to help share their personal stories and what they have had to over come in order to be accepted. A member also came third in a BBC competition, where he voiced and stood up for their Roma heritage.
London Trans+ Pride, South East England
London Trans+ Pride aims to fight for the equal treatment of trans+ people, putting the most marginalised at the forefront (black transgender women). They are looking to make the healthcare system more accessible for trans+ people, in order for them to receive the proper help and treatment they need. They are also actively opposing any transphobic legislation that is trying to be passed by the conservative government with a recent issue being Liz Truss and her damaging reform of the GRA.
Mixing Roots, Northern England
Mixing Roots is a grassroots sub-project within the Hive network led by African women working to readdress representation of black voices in the written and spoken word from a young age and relating to arts leadership. The project seeks to encourage diverse experiences, and to help level the playing field.
Museum as Muck, UK Wide
Museum as Much has two strands to their work. First and foremost, they act as a supportive network for working class museum people. The group offers help, advice, support and solidarity for those struggling with the class barriers of getting into, and being in the museum sector. Secondly, they have a public facing strand. They offer advice, talks, workshops and presentations to work with museums and galleries to make them aware of class related barriers and how they affect working class people. They use their lived experience and understanding of the sector to advise how to address those barriers to make museums more equitable institutions for its workforce and audiences.
No More Exclusions, UK Wide
No More Exclusions is a Black-led, Black Feminist, Abolitionist, grassroots coalition movement in education. Their mission is to bring about an end to the persistent race-disparities in school exclusions in the next five years and to affect change at legal, policy, practice and cultural level in education and society as a whole over the next ten years.
Northern Police Monitoring Project, North West England
Northern Police Monitoring Project are an independent grassroots organisation working to build community resistance against police violence, harassment and racism.
Other Ways To Care, UK Wide
Other Ways To Care works in solidarity and collaboration with people and collectives mapping, practising and investigating alternative care models. They assemble as a network of activists, researchers and practitioners, gathering through conversations taking place in and around annual assemblies, radio sessions, interviews series and film-screenings. They challenge structural inequalities and explore counter-hegemonic ideas and practices which oppose neoliberal interests that individualise, privatise and abstract mental health from social, economic and political conditions. They understand mental health as a public good and locate the struggle to provide and receive care within broader social, political and labour struggles. Their long-term aim is to continue developing their current practices, and multiply conversations through print publications, audiovisual materials, and workshops. They aim to expand their translation work, contributing to extending networks of solidarity and collaboration between collectives across languages. Simultaneously, they will pursue the necessary funding to make our work sustainable.
Positive Impact Community, South East England
Positive Impact Community is campaigning for justices for young people, predominantly those who are East african, and refugees who are facing deportation, as well as unjustified stop and search police activities. They support young people facing discrimination to seek justice through the legal means and judiciary system.
Radio Africana Group, North West England
The aims of Radio Africana Group are:
- To bring together and foster understanding amongst people from the diverse communities in Manchester and in particular African communities
- To promote creative activities, mutual support and joint aid among our members
- To establish radio shows, discussions, debates and stories as well as to participate in different community cohesion activities
- To use dance, drama and music to share and inform of African culture, heritage and experiences
- To operate on a not-for-profit basis, whereby all funds raised will be put back into the group
Radio AvA, South East England and Scotland
Radio AvA is a stigma-busting and isolation-dispelling sex workers radio project, amplifying their voices through streaming complex sex work realities. Founded in 2016 by migrant sex workers and collectively run, they promote the decriminalisation of sex work, while agitating against vile traffickers: capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and the nation state. Through producing live shows and around three podcasts monthly and running regular skill-share workshops, they also learn and teach how to become their own journalists, oral historians, advocates, and health experts. Radio AvA is a concoction of interviews, actions, culture, updates, histories, music, discussions, and stories. By generating an intimate space where identities are partly shielded, sex workers on Radio AvA materialise as a motley range of multidimensional feminists, not frequently chained to radiators, spreading community knowledge though working, playing, and ranting together.
Scottish Community and Activist Legal Project (SCALP), Scotland
SCALP want to see a thriving culture of resistance in Scotland, capable of defending their communities from criminalisation and repression, and creating the conditions for real change in the struggle for racial, gender, economic, environmental, and disability justice; trans and queer liberation; anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism.
They aim to achieve this by facilitating marginalised communities and activist groups in Scotland to:
- Access understandable guides and resources on Scots law
- Thoroughly understand their legal rights
- Challenge abuse of police powers
- Be supported during and after arrests and court processes, fostering a culture of collective care
- Be supported by Legal Observers during political actions, increasing scrutiny on police conduct and lessening repression
- Run community copwatch programs, explicitly challenging the role of police and policing in our communities
- Question the logic of criminalisation and policing through an abolitionist lens
They value collective care, mutual aid, freedom from state repression and intersectional, anti-oppressive collaborative organising.
Sharpen Her: the African Women's Network, Scotland
Sharpen Her would like to build the capacity of African women to become change agents and not wait for change to come to them. They hope to achieve this by educating them in raising awareness of issues that they face, advocacy and activism. They will also hold a campaign to highlight the challenges that women migrants face, especially in navigating the Home Office asylum system.
SOAS Detainee Support, South East England
SOAS Detainee Support's vision is a world with no borders or incarceration. They attempt to break the isolation of immigration detention, and supports people to take control of their cases and resist their imprisonment and deportation. They visit people who are being held in Harmondsworth and Colnbrook (Heathrow), Brook House and Tinsley House (Gatwick), and Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centres. They also visit people who are held in London prisons under immigration powers. The nature of the visits they provide depends on the specific needs, desires and circumstances of the person in detention. They offer emotional support and practical support that could include help with finding a solicitor or medical expert, bringing toiletries and other essential items, and campaigning alongside people in detention.
Soul Food Sisters, Scotland
Soul Food Sisters' manifesto is all about empowerment and women. They want to play a part in strengthening cultural links within their community and wider. Building on their pre-Covid plans, they reach out to female centric asylum seeker, migrant, refugee, BAME, and mental health groups offering workshops at no cost, including:
- Cooking and baking
- Basic IT skills
- Mindfulness/ yoga
- Creative arts sessions
- Music therapy
- Beauty and pamper sessions
- CV building
- Setting up an IT ‘on loan’ facility
- Events/ hospitality/ catering overview for those considering entering this field of work
- Plans to link with local colleges particularly ESOL students to offer work experience
- Guest speakers
- Sharing experiences in a safe and confidential environment leading to sharing help and signposting for support and networking
- Motivational and confidence building support and signposting
- Networking and building a support circle
South Asian Sisters Speak (SASS), UK Wide
South Asian Sisters Speak is a community of British South Asian women who can connect through common experiences and interests, fostering a safe environment to share and support one another in navigating the highs and lows of sometimes conflicting and confusing cultural expectations and experiences.
The Ethan Nedd-Bruce Foundation, South East England
The Foundation's aim is to provide young minds with pathways to mental, physical and spiritual wellness through education and healing whilst addressing the reality of knife and gun violence in London. Their values are to empower young people, our long-term vision is to work with young people to provide access to opportunities to enable a brighter future for them. The foundation was started by a mother after the tragic death of her son through gun violence, and she is working alongside healers and practitioners who have experience working with people in the UK.
TransActual, UK Wide
TransActual UK was founded by a group of British trans people in 2017 as a response to increasing press hostility, transphobia and misinformation. They are run by the trans community, for the trans community. Their long term aims are as follows:
- Share reliable information about trans people’s lives and about trans rights in the UK, as well as dispelling common myths
- Amplify the voices of trans people so that the wider world may hear the experiences of a wide range of trans men, trans women and non-binary people
- Educate people about trans people's lives and the issues we face
- Advocate for trans people
- Empower trans people to make bring about change in their lives and in the community
Unfair Debt Group, South East England
The Unfair Debt group consists of people affected by debt and worried about the impact of debt in their communities. They think no one should have to get into debt just to survive, and when people have to get into debt they should be treated fairly. They want to break the stigma attached to debt and make it into a political issue. Currently their demands are many, ranging from a cap on the cost of credit to a more human benefit system, and they are in the process of doing more listening in their communities to decide a priority campaign.
Valleys Underground, Wales
Valleys Underground is a Socialist organisation advocating for Welsh Independence. As part of this, their main ethos is to get boots on the ground helping the community. They regularly run free-food events/soup-kitchens, and regularly organize community clearups of derelict areas. They have worked with the Foundation for Jewish Heritage to clear up the abandoned Merthyr Synagogue - the oldest of its kind in Wales. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve been handing out supplies to people on the street (mainly tampons, razors, toothpaste/toothbrushes, tissues), as well as helping organize mutual aid groups across the Valleys. On top of this, they are currently in the process of getting needle trained, with the aim to volunteer in local needle banks – with at least three of their members signing up for training courses regarding this. They have been trying to launch a CV club for out-of-work people across Merthyr Tydfil, and are in the process of setting up a monthly Repair café.
World Stages Now, South West England
World Stages Now is a Southampton based organisation that provides a space for asylum seekers and refugees to collectively and creatively address issues of migration through drama and performance. They aim to develop plays and dramas to educate and engage with audiences on themes such as Black Lives Matter, migration and their personal stories.