Urban Community Project

This community story is written by Safa Shoket, Project Development Lead at Urban Community Project. It is part of a series of stories from organisations funded through the Sky Anti-Racism Grants.

Urban Community Project is a safe space for Black and Minority Ethnic young people in Glasgow to come together.

We at Urban Community Project wanted to create a more inclusive environment for our young people. Through our weekly youth sessions, we’ve observed that the topic of racism is a recurring and impactful issue in the lives of the youths in our community.

During these sessions, our young participants have opened up about their personal experiences. They’ve shared stories of discrimination, stereotypes, and prejudice they’ve encountered in their everyday lives. Inspired by these discussions we decided to raise awareness.

The SKY Anti-racism Grant gave us the ability to create our anti-racism video – a project designed to raise awareness, and build understanding within communities. In our video we were able to bring together thirteen people across the ages of 16 years of age to 70 years of age from diverse backgrounds including Pakistani, Somali, Nigerian, Malaysian, Chinese, and Scottish. The young people and their older family members together to highlight their different perspective and experiences of racism and discrimination.

We believe that by sharing personal experiences, and creating a video that resonates with people, we can have more open and accepting discussions about the reality of racism in Scotland. We can then work together to come up with solutions that support Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people, and foster a greater understanding within wider society.