Community Voices Group (CVG) is for Brighton and Hove residents who identify as Black, brown, Asian or from another language, ethnic or migrant community.
Members of the group talk to people in their community about what’s important to them and bring this information to meetings. The group discuss the issues and then present their findings directly to representatives from Brighton & Hove City Council and NHS Sussex about what can be done to improve the situation.
SIS is one of the partner organisations that convenes the group, along with Bridging Change and The Hangleton and Knoll Project.
A recent topic that the CVG chose to discuss was Racism in Schools. In order to include a wider scope of voices, SIS organised a focus group of 7 linguists from Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Farsi, Italian, Mandarin, and Portuguese speaking communities. SIS linguists came to share their own personal experiences as well as those from other community members, and their insight through interpreting sessions.
These experiences and insight were then taken to a CVG meeting by a SIS Community Researcher. You can read the linguists’ feedback in full here, and their recommendations below:
Recommendations
- Increasing awareness for non-English speakers about their rights. When or how can they speak up? Who can help them?
- Empower non-English-speaking parents to speak up for their children, informing them who in the school they can address the issues to
- Curriculum changes that promote diversity of experience and ethnicity
- Implement and improve anti-racism training and intervention procedures for ALL school staff, including non-teaching staff
- Celebrate diversity, recognising its positive impacts on our community
- Recognise, understand, embrace, and increase awareness of other cultural and religious celebrations for pupils, teachers and parents e.g
- mentions in the school’s newsletters
- inviting parents to share the celebrations with the class such as Chinese New Year,
- allow occasional absences to celebrate cultural or religious traditions such as Eid
- Include discussions in class about different cultures and religions which promote learning and practise acceptance and respect
Representatives from BHCC’s Anti-Racist Education Team came to speak to the CVG about the work they are doing in the city and gave a presentation. A SIS linguist who attended the meeting said
“It was an interesting presentation from the Council – about History on the British curriculum; rewriting and decolonising it. I was really pleased to hear that, it was something that bothered me when my kids were younger”
Members asked the representatives questions and gave them feedback and insight on their experience of how policies work in practice. The Council will return to a future meeting to update the CVG members about any changes and to have further discussions.
If you would like to join the group or be kept updated with upcoming topics and meeting dates, please contact SIS Projects Coordinator laura@sussexinterpreting.org.uk
