This humble story embodies the origin of the Bristol City of Sanctuary. A Bristol City Council official heard about the City of Sanctuary movement at a conference in London where Craig Barnett was talking about how Sheffield became recognised as City of Sanctuary.
She came back and it was discussed at the Refugee Week Steering Committee meeting (Refugee week 2008) and everybody agreed it was an excellent idea that needs to be replicated in Bristol.
To kick start the movement it was suggested to involve Refugee Action, the Multi-Faith Forum and Interfaith groups simply because they have such immediate access to so many communities through faith organisations.
Rev Cassandra Howes, former University of West of England Multifaith Chaplaincy was approached and coincidentally it happens she knew about the impressive work Sheffield had already done which resulted in it being recognised as a City of Sanctuary. Just like many other cities Bristol was also inspired by Sheffield.
The whole movement in the City was ignited after Cass attended a City of Sanctuary meeting in Sheffield- where lots of ideas came from Craig and other Cities working towards having their cities being recognised as City of Sanctuary.
While emails about the idea were doing rounds, June Burrough, Founder and Director of the Pierian Centre agreed for people to meet at the Centre for the first public meeting and subsequent meetings (free of charge) but of course subject to availability of rooms. Besides providing venue for meetings, June also put a lot of energy into it by mobilising support for the idea and did the initial administrative work of Group.
The Group’s first public meeting was held on Thursday 23rd October 2008 at the Pierian Centre. Over 50 people attended. Craig Barnett, National Network Coordinator was the main speaker and he talked about the journey Sheffield had gone through until the time it attained the City of Sanctuary status.
From that meeting a group of about 20 committed people including people from refugee background began to meet and talk about how to take things forward. The Group thanks to a small grant from the Bristol Legacy Commission has managed to recruit Forward Maisokwadzo, as the new part-time Development Worker whose main job purpose is responsible for developing and extending the work of the Bristol City of Sanctuary Steering Committee to prepare for the launch of Bristol as a City of Sanctuary on Thursday 20th May 2010 at Council House- as it is the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion. The group has since had lots of meetings, gathered pledges and continues to mobilise support for the Group.
