Welcome Stream

Winchester City of Sanctuary are collaborating with local partners to ensure that Winchester is a welcoming and safe space for those seeking sanctuary.

We are working to awareness raise about the importance of sanctuary and supporting partners across the district to collaborate with us to support our sanctuary community locally. We cannot do this work alone. We rely on partnerships and our local community to support people seeking sanctuary. All libraries in Hampshire are Libraries of Sanctuary and we hope to see more and more places and spaces of sanctuary. We are currently developing Welcome Walks and our Sanctuary Ambassador project. We will share more details soon.

If you would like to support us in our welcome efforts please get in touch. There are lots of opportunities to volunteer.

Arts and cultural stream

We are working closely with local artistic and cultural organisations to develop our cultural stream. This includes welcome events at the local library, collaborating with the University of Sanctuary on events, working with our local Theatre of Sanctuary to embed sanctuary in the arts though cultural events, concerts, workshops and more.

If you would like to volunteer to support this or any other stream then please get in touch.

Education stream

Winchester University is already an established University of Sanctuary and a key partner for Winchester City of Sanctuary. They have a proud tradition of supporting academics and sanctuary seekers to access higher education and are committed to researching and teaching on topics relating to refugees, migration and on social justice issues. Other initiative includes a forced migration network, ESOL provision and outreach work in the community.

We are working closely with the University of Sanctuary to develop our education stream. For example, schools of Sanctuary is a growing network of more than 300 primary and secondary schools across the UK all committed to supporting the thousands of young people seeking sanctuary in the UK, creating a culture of welcome and inclusion whilst raising awareness of the issues faced by refugees and asylum seekers. We were proud to see our first school of sanctuary in Winchester recognised in 2024. We look forward to seeing more.

If you are interested in becoming a school of sanctuary then please get in touch.

To find out about the National City of Sanctuary school stream, click here.

Streams in Development

We are currently revising our streams of sanctuary since becoming a CIO recently. We will provide an update shortly.

If you would like to collaborate with us or volunteer to support the above streams or other new streams in development then please get in touch.