Reflections from Tom Avery, Chair of Swansea City of Sanctuary

This year, Swansea saw its first full week of co-ordinated Refugee Week events for as long as I can remember. It was a mammoth effort from a big team of volunteers—and I think we pulled off something really special.

Each day brought something different: cooking demos, salsa sessions, a speakers’ corner, and even a snakes and ladders (SASS edition!) competition. I was humbled to co-host our final celebration event with Diana, and so grateful to the performers, the volunteers who worked six hours (!) to feed us, and Rocio Cifuentes for presenting the Dylan Thomas Centre with their hard-earned Sanctuary Award.

It was a brilliant week – thank you to everyone who joined us. It’s moments like this, when we come together with one voice and one heart, that I can feel how Swansea is a City of Sanctuary.

There was a lot to celebrate. But also a lot to reflect on.

As my first Refugee Week as Chair of Swansea City of Sanctuary, I’ve been thinking about how we can do even better next year.

One of my priorities over this last year has been bringing closer together the many brilliant groups working with sanctuary seekers in Swansea. Everyone is already doing great work—but not always together. Through our bi-monthly AS&R co-ordination group, we’ve started to strengthen those bridges. This year’s Refugee Week working group grew out of that space.

We didn’t manage to include everyone, and we didn’t get everything right—but it’s a step in the right direction. If your group wasn’t involved, or something didn’t work for you, please know: we’re listening, and we want to do better.

Looking ahead, I’d love to see more of our work led by people with lived experience of seeking sanctuary. We don’t yet have a co-ordinated way of hearing from or being accountable to sanctuary seekers across Swansea. That needs to change.

We had a good core of familiar friends involved this year—but the question of “why didn’t we see more asylum seekers?” is, I think, answered by the fact that we don’t listen well enough or provide enough ways for them to get involved. I don’t have a solution to this, but I think it’s a serious issue and want to push us to work through it together.

If you’re proud to call Swansea a City of Sanctuary and you’re not yet involved, we’d love to invite you to join us as a supporter.

And if you’re already a member—as many of the groups and individuals involved in Refugee Week are—thank you. Let’s keep building. Let’s do more, better, together.

Tom Avery
27th June 2025