27/5/22
Just over a year has passed now since the shocking murder of George Floyd. It’s been an important time of reflection for MSP and the other Active Partnerships across England. Collectively we’ve been examining the role we, and the sector as a whole, can play in bringing about positive change when it comes to racial equality.
We know that sport and physical activity have the power to change hearts and minds across many of the issues that we face in society. Here in the Liverpool City Region, in common with many other Active Partnership areas, we’ve been working to direct Sport England’s Tackling Inequalities Funding over this last year. With several of the successful bids coming from projects and organisations set up to support ethnically diverse communities we’ve been once again reminded of how sport and physical activity can be powerful vehicles for change when it comes to tackling racism and inequality in our communities.
To keep us accountable for doing everything we can to not only support other organisations in tackling racism and inequality, but to also ensure that we ourselves play a proactive role, we’ve signed up to the newly drafted ‘Active Partnerships Commitment to Tackling Racism and Inequality’, which officially launched this month.
Whilst we recognise that we are nearer the start of our journey than the end on this issue, The Active Partnerships pledge offers a clear framework to support action. Through its development MSP have already been able to take part in a fantastic workshop day led by the Active Partnerships national team, which has really challenged us to consider not only how we can tackle racial inequality, but also how we can stand as a truly anti-racist organisation. We’ve joined in solidarity with the FA in their weekend-long boycott of social media to protest against inaction by social media organisations in stamping out racially motivated online abuse. We’ve also held a session with our whole team and board to explore further how, together with our partners in the Liverpool City Region, we can work to combat racism.
Our next big step, as we start to develop our new strategy to be launched in April 2022, will be to ensure that we work to put equality and diversity at the heart of our approach. In tandem with that key piece of work, MSP’s Director, Tom Douglas, will be continuing to sit on the Active Partnerships National Racial Equality Working Group, which exists to ensure momentum continues around this subject.
If you and your organisation would like to talk to us about collaborating on ideas for tackling racism and inequality through sport and physical activity in the Liverpool City Region then please get in touch via our contact page here.
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