Flame and Flower’s Emma Calcutt AKA Cammy Leon speaks to SAR about her foray into the world of scents in creating her latest candle, Smells Like Justice, from which she is donating %100 of the profits to the antiracist organisation.

We are living in chaotic, unsettling times. The pandemic and the muddled, contradictory imperfect response to it leaves people frightened, confused, and often impoverished.

The Gloucestershire police stop and search scrutiny panel is independent of the force. Its members, volunteers from the community, have the ability to review any of the stop searches carried out by the constabulary.

SAR has a new affiliation, as we have agreed an official partnership with The Local Equality Commission. Alongside the mentoring and advice we receive from Lives of Colour partnership, we feel well supported, and ready to really knuckle down to getting along with the projects in motion.

A paradigm shift is defined as an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about, or doing something, is replaced by a new and different way.

Anti-racism work is a long game, if it is to work, it must be a life long commitment. You can’t suddenly expect centuries of systemic beliefs, entrenched in the history, the education system, and the laws of a society to change overnight.

The President of the United States of America is no longer an openly racist man, and that’s important, even here in sleepy Stroud.

On the night of June 14th 2017 Manfred Ruiz lost his 12 year old niece in the fire at Grenfell. Manny talks to Polly about the friend he made in Dave, one of the firefighters on duty that day, and how they have used their friendship and their positivity to work through their grief, raising money for those affected by the tragic fire.

This is where we are, just four months (and many thousands of volunteer hours) in to the setting up of SAR. As always, in no particular order, as it’s all really amazing and important!

I grew up in Minchinhampton. It’s a small town and was even smaller 25 years ago when I started at its primary school. I don’t remember being made aware of mine and my family’s ‘otherness’ until that point.

Our current projects are moving along and we are infinitely grateful to the expert consultants who are guiding us, the new partnership with Lives of Colour, the first “Walk and Talk”, and the artists who have submitted work for the Sub Rooms banners.

We agreed that we needed to do more than bang a drum, paint a sign and make our presence known.

We have been so busy behind the scenes, it’s incredible how many hundreds of hours our volunteers have put in, and so in no particular order here are some of the many projects that SAR are involved in…

Florence Nyasamo, the CEO of Lives of Colour, chats to SAR CEO Polly Stratton about her book club initiative and how parents can get their children involved.

“All lives matter!” has been the rallying cry of those opposed to the BLM protests. And yet, now, it seems all lives do not matter. Certainly not the life of young Abdulfatah Hamdallah who drowned last week.

The first in our series of SAR 'Face to Face' interviews is with Sabrina Pace-Humphreys whose impassioned speech on the second day of Stroud’s BLM protests at the Subscription Rooms went viral.

After the Black Lives Matter movement shone a light on the division and systemic racism that still exists, it is time to look at the legacy slavery left behind in Stroud.

A poem from local resident, Tish Camp

Stroud has risen, from a demonstration of hundreds outside the Subscription Rooms, into Stroud Against Racism (SAR) group; a thriving local community organisation seeking to understand and tackle racism in all its multi-faceted forms.