Training

The Romani Cultural & Arts Company is proud to deliver an extensive, complex, and coherent training programme catering to a wide range of organisational and institutional needs. Many voluntary, Third Sector, and statutory bodies now recognise the essential requirements of meeting the Welsh government’s agenda of achieving an anti-racist Wales by 2030, both as a statutory requirement and as a critical element of meeting their organisation’s diversity and inclusion responsibilities. 

As part of these initiatives and programmes, developing a keen awareness of the needs, aspirations, and obstacles facing the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller communities in modern Welsh and English societies, is essential. A key component of this training that Romani Cultural & Arts Company offers is recognising the pervasiveness of anti-Gypsyism, which the Council of Europe defines as:

Anti-Gypsyism, sometimes referred to as “anti-Roma discrimination”, is a manifestation of individual expressions and acts as well as institutional policies and practices of marginalisation, exclusion, physical violence, devaluation of Roma cultures and lifestyles, and hate speech directed at Roma as well as other individuals and groups perceived, stigmatised, or persecuted during the Nazi era, and still today, as “Gypsies”. This leads to the treatment of Roma as an alleged alien group and associates them with a series of pejorative stereotypes and distorted images that represent a specific form of racism… (Rostas, I. 2021, Antigypsyism: Causes, prevalence, consequences, possible responses, Strasbourg, Council of Europe)

The training can be defined and designed for any client’s requirements, with tailor-made parameters for addressing particular issues and challenges, becoming part-and-parcel of the institution’s internal structure that, a dynamic framework for addressing changing contexts in the effective implementation of equalities and diversity management. Some of our previous partners and clients have been especially mindful of the need to address issues and challenges around the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller communities and the justice services, or the police for example; others have sought to develop and implement a programme that will improve take-up of primary health an wellness services for Romani and Traveller women and children. We have delivered many sessions to education providers, supported by the design and delivery of our curricula for Romani Studies for primary and secondary learners, our materials that support language learning in the early years (including aspects of Romani culture and language through story-telling, arts and crafts, and drama games).

We have worked with social service professionals, local and regional authority officers, housing and accommodation managers, GRT liaison staff in charities and NGO’s (non-governmental organisations) and the Third Sector, fire and safety officers, vets and animal care workers, literary festival organisers, arts and theatre managers, musical venue directors, members of the Senedd Cymru, local and regional councillors and elected representatives. The training programme has been in place since September 2014 and every one of our workshops has been well-attended, and well-received by the participants, with extremely positive satisfaction surveys returned directly after the session.

If you have a particular series of questions and queries regarding your training needs, please contact us info@romaniarts.co.uk