Sanctuary Runners, a multi-award winning solidarity-through-sport movement, founded in Ireland in 2018, has officially expanded to Britain with a new organisation – Sanctuary Runners GB launched in Brighton on Wednesday, June 18th.
Sanctuary Runners GB will work to build groups across England and Wales in the same way the Irish organisation has established 42 groups across Ireland over the last seven years.
Using running, jogging and walking to bring everyone in the community together, including migrants and especially asylum seekers and refugees, the British organisation will work very closely with the founding Irish organisation.
Graham Clifford, founder of Sanctuary Runners Ireland and its Head of International Development will lead Sanctuary Runners GB until a wider team, based in Britain, is in place.
In Brighton a short-film commissioned by London Marathon Events, which is a partner organisation of Sanctuary Runners GB, was premiered at the Duke of York theatre. ‘Solidarity in Motion’ telling the story of the Brighton Sanctuary Runners Academy – a group of 50 people, made up of 15 different nationalities which included locals, refugees and asylum seekers, who all ran in the Brighton marathon April 6th.
Nick Bitel, Chief Executive of the London Marathon Group, helped launch Sanctuary Runners GB in Brighton and it’s hoped the solidarity-through-sport initiative can add groups in East London, Merseyside, the North East of England, Coventry and Cardiff in the months ahead.
Graham Clifford said : “Since our very earliest days in Cork we were determined to develop the Sanctuary Runners model internationally. Today is a very special day for us as we know how impactful Sanctuary Runners can be to bring communities together, to build bridges in society and to cut through all the misinformation and hate we see in the modern world. At the core of Sanctuary Runners GB will be a proud central belief that everyone, no matter their nationality, ethnicity, legal status, skin colour, age, gender or sexual orientation deserves to be treated with respect. In recent times when we have seen race rioting in different parts of the UK its clear initiatives such as this are needed here. We can’t wait to roll up our sleeves to start building that wave of solidarity, friendship and respect across Britain as we have done in Ireland.”
Over 200 people attended the premiere in Brighton including many members of the Brighton Sanctuary Runners group in the city. ‘Solidarity in Motion’ was made and produced by Caleb Yule of the Stories of Note company.The Sanctuary Runners concept was brought to the Southern English City by Tim Holtam of the local Brighton Table Tennis Club.
Also in attendance was David Walsh – first secretary at the Embassy of Ireland in Britain.
Since Sanctuary Runners Ireland, of which President Higgins is patron, began in 2018 some 40,000 people have taken part in a Sanctuary Runner activity with approximately a third of those being people who are, or were, seeking international protection at the time. On June 1st it had a team of 1,200 Sanctuary Runners in the Cork City Marathon. And Sanctuary Runners Ireland is hoping to launch its first group in Belfast in the late summer.
It will also hold its second Global Solidarity Run on October 11th in partnership with Irish Aid at the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Ireland Funds and the European Commission aiming to get people in at least 100-countries worldwide running, jogging, walking or rolling on one day in solidarity with all those who are forcibly displaced or living in extreme poverty. The Global Solidarity Run will be launched at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan on July 9th.
And Sanctuary Runners will partner with World Athletics to develop a ‘Sanctuary Runners in a box’ tool kit to enable further growth of the model to cities across the world over the next three years.
“Sanctuary Runners is an Irish success story.” says Graham Clifford, adding “Here we have shown how successful the model will be and now we can bring it to every corner of the world. The question is not if we can do it but when – and now that we have Sanctuary Runners GB launched there is great momentum. We’re so grateful to organisations such as the One Foundation which has helped us get to this point in Britain. The success of Sanctuary Runners confirms what we have always known about our societies – that inherently people are sound, they just need to be given the opportunity to show it.”