Carlisle United FC

Show Racism the Red Card headed back to Brunton Park to again link up with the club’s Football in the Community department in an event for local school pupils.

This season the event had been extended to two hours to allow for extra educational input from the SRtRC Education Team. The event was opened by long time Show Racism the Red Card Supporter and UNISON National Executive member, Mark Clifford, with a few kind words of support.

The young people who attended were able to take part in activities run by SRtRC Education Workers Lizz Bennett and Laura Fleck exploring racism and terminology, before the screening of the DVD and Q&A session followed. The 50 young people in attendance participated readily and got very involved in the session. The team’s ‘Racist – Not Racist’ activity really stimulated debate and the thoughts of the students about the language people use. This prepared the young people for the Q&A session later, when they came up with some excellent questions for the panel.

The panel included two members of the Carlisle United FC first team squad - Daniel Livesey, the Club Captain, and goalkeeper Chris Howarth - as well as Mark Clifford from UNISON and local anti-racism campaigner Brent Kennedy from Carlisle Against Racism. SRtRC provided T-Shirts for the best questions of the day and Carlisle United FC provided every member of the audience with a pair of tickets for an upcoming home game.

The best questions of the day were:

• What would happen if a team-mate suffered from racism? (Luke)
• Your ideas on how to stop racism? (Leanne)
• How would suffering from racism make you feel? (Dale)

The Question and Answer session was a highlight of the event with some great questions enabling the panel to talk about their own experiences of racism and the effect racism can have. This powerful message and the positive way in which it was presented will have had an impact on the young people and should be something they remember for a long time to come. The event received some good local press coverage from both local radio and the local newspaper, which photographed the event throughout.

SRtRC would like to thank all who attended and participated and offer big thanks to the Football Club and FITC Department in particular for their support, with a special mention for John Halpin who was a tremendous help in organising the event. SRtRC look forward to continuing our partnership with CUFC in the new season.