This year, the Gloucestershire Cricket Foundation (GCF) participated in Bristol Refugee Festival Week, an annual event highlighting Bristol’s incredible refugee and asylum seeking community. The aim is to create welcoming environments to support their integration into Bristol’s communities, events and activities.
Each year, Bristol Refugee Festival Week is delivered under a certain theme, with this year’s theme being Courage.
In partnership with Bristol City Robins Foundation, Bridges for Communities and incredible volunteers across Bristol, the GCF delivered the event ‘The Courage to Play: A Multi-Sport Event’. The event consisted of 3-way walking football, delivered by Chiz and Bristol City Robins Foundation, as well as Tapeball Cricket, delivered by the GCF.
Through sport, this spectacular event brought together 33 strangers from a wide variety of communities, using informal cricket and football matches to reduce language barriers for engagement and improving the health and wellbeing of refugees, asylum seekers and community workers in East Bristol.
100% of participants arrived feeling ‘happy’ and ‘excited’ to be at the event, in addition to feeling supported and included throughout the day. The event allowed those seeking sanctuary to “feel part of a community”, “more connected to others” and “safe”. One participant stated that the event had “made my day” and was excited to find cricket that they could “access after a long time” of not being able to participate in the sport.
Following the event, Bristol City Robins Foundation provided football clothing and boots to refugees and asylum seekers who attended. In addition, three refugees and asylum seekers were signposted to local cricket clubs in East Bristol, with a further participant scouted for the ACE Academy.
This multi-sport event brought together incredible members of Bristol’s community engaging in informal, accessible and inclusive cricket and football matches. The event was an incredible representation of Bristol’s diverse communities and our ability to come together to improve people’s lives through the power of cricket, irrespective of their background, and get bats and balls into more people’s hands.
If you would like to know more about the event or the work we do at the Gloucestershire Cricket Foundation, please get in touch with our Diverse Communities Manager, Jen Muckle.
To know more about opportunities in your local area, see the links below, highlighting our amazing partners:
- 3 Way Walking Football
- Bristol City Robins Foundation
- Bridges for Communities
- Bristol Refugee Festival Week
