City of Sanctuary UK holds the vision that the UK will be a welcoming place of safety for all and proud to offer sanctuary to people fleeing violence and persecution. We support a network of groups who provide activities and streams of sanctuary. Covid-19 has severely impacted our work and challenged us to work in new ways to support our community.

Following on from our successful summer series of Connect & Create online workshops we have received funding from the Barrow Cadbury Trust to further develop the model in response to the ongoing Covid-19 health pandemic.

Our initial workshops included theatre, song-writing, filmmaking and a ‘rest & relax’ yoga session. We are now seeking proposals from a wider range of artform practitioners to deliver sensitive, fun and interactive online workshops between January and March 31^st 2021.

Participants will mainly be people seeking sanctuary, many of whom are vulnerable and isolated. Previous sessions included CoS volunteers and other people from across the UK who were also struggling with the isolation of lockdown and reduced social contact. We would like to continue including the wider community as it helps to build solidarity between people seeking sanctuary and  people living in communities across the UK.

You can find out more about Connect and Create here

And watch some short films about the project here

We are interested in receiving proposals for one-off workshops or special events such as hackathons as well as weekly sessions which could last between 1 – 2 hours. Your proposal could respond to special days such as Chinese New Year or World Wildlife Day, for example, or else build skills and confidence over a period of weeks. You might want to link your proposal to museum collections or heritage. We take a broad view of culture and include cooking, gardening, languages and traditions in our scope. Bearing that in mind it is Veganuary in January and Fair Trade Fortnight in February/March. It is also LGBT History Month in February. We hope these themes might provoke inspiring ideas. Sessions can be targeted at particular groups such as women, families and young people as well as being open to all.

Artists and creatives who wish to be considered should send a concise CV and an outline proposal (maximum 2 pages). Applicants will need to demonstrate they have the necessary technology and IT skills to deliver sessions via Zoom. Artists with lived experience of seeking sanctuary are particularly welcome to apply, and all proposals should consider how to support co-facilitation and developing leadership skills amongst our community as well as demonstrating an understanding of the issues facing people in the City of Sanctuary movement.

We aim to pay artists the going rate for sessions using guidelines created by the Artists Union of England and MU. If your proposal requires financial resources in addition to the above hourly/daily fees please let us know what these are. We acknowledge that some preparation and evaluation time is also required and should be recompensed.

City of Sanctuary UK Experts by Experience Operational Advisory Group will be involved in the selection process. Please send proposals and CVs to [email protected] by 11am on January 5^th 2021. Please email any queries to the same address with your tel no.