July Actions
Dear lovely, anti-racist people,
We agreed that we needed to do more than bang a drum, paint a sign and make our presence known.
We have been so busy behind the scenes, it’s incredible how many hundreds of hours our volunteers have put in, and so in no particular order here are some of the many projects that SAR are involved in…
ECOTRICITY BANNER
Ecotricity have agreed to fly our banner! This giant piece of custom made cloth will cost £2.5K to make and install, and Ecotricity have already provided £1.5K of that massive sum! We will be fundraising to get the remaining £1K very soon, watch this space!
SHOP WINDOWS
As you walk around Stroud centre you’ll notice that shop windows are being taken over with anti-racist art murals. The wonderful Zed in the Clouds has managed to do this with materials he already owned, as well as some donated by SAR members. There are many more windows, and artists available, and we will soon be able to provide them with the resources they need through the sale of our t-shirts.
POLITICAL FIGHT
Some excellent headway has been made in to showing our public officials that statements exposing covert, insidious, racism are not met unchallenged. However, if we are to take this further than challenge, and force effective action, we are likely to need legal representation. Can you offer this?
ANTI-RACISM EDUCATION
There is ongoing work on producing, and sourcing resources to share with people who may not understand systemic racism, or even believe it exists. We are currently curating a library, of physical books in SAR HQ, and a virtual library will be available soon on our website.
BOOK CLUB
A SAR book club will be launched next week, with online meetings to discuss what we thought of the literature. After the initial set up, this will run every Friday.
MURALS
A beautiful mural has gone up on Studio 18’s back wall, along the canal path, by Zed in the Clouds, WXTTS Art, and Chalks. Go and check it out! We have the will, but not the walls. If you own a wall that you are happy for us to decorate, please get in touch. We have a wide variety of artists with many different styles to choose from and we do both text and image based murals.
EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS
Our educators are writing medium term plans, and collating resources, based around the current curriculum, which incorporate inclusive history throughout various subjects. These are aimed at primary and secondary level.
PARENT’S OPINIONS
A group of parents is talking with local schools about the literature given to their children to ensure that some racially insensitive texts are either removed, or given excellent context when used.
PRESS
We have a wonderful local author, Patricia Camp, who is currently writing pieces to go in to the SNJ to try an redress the balance and add some sanity to the systemic racism evident within it by sharing her experiences as a BAME person in Gloucestershire. We also have a very talented local journalist Natalie Clifford, who has been writing articles for the SNJ to help show Stroud what SAR is all about. She is now making contacts with other print media, and we hope to see her stories sprinkled through the local press organisations.
T-SHIRTS AND BAGS
There has been a real interest shown in T-shirts and bags with SAR logos on them, and we are making the first batch right now! Please support our many projects and buy one!
STROUD FAIR
We are underway arranging all the details to run a small, music and performance led, educational festival of arts. It’s shaping up beautifully and will include live music, DJ’s live art painting, dance, poetry and access to anti-racism educational guides, tours and reading. This will need promotion and again some resources to ensure it is properly conducted. This will now be on May bank holiday 2021.
STORIES PROJECT
A collective of artists and designers are producing a series of banners, posters and recorded stories to display around Stroud town centre to promote and explain the Black Lives Matter movement and highlight racial injustice in the area.
DECOLONISING THE LANDSCAPE: A WALKING TOUR OF STROUD
The encyclopaedic knowledge of Stuart Butler is being put to good use, and he is offering a walking tour of the town and its surroundings, putting Stroud’s local history into a global and colonial context. He is taking bookings now!
AMINISTRATION
We have researched and debated and finally decided to start the long process of applying for charity status so we can run SAR as a CIO. The constitution is done, and we have a clear goal in sight. The worrying thing was we couldn’t sort out our banking, luckily for us, there’s a group called the Open Collective that are positioned to help little blossoming organisations like us and they’ve agreed to support our banking needs for the interim period!