On Tuesday 17^th June 2025, New Neighbours Together hosted Burnley City of Sanctuary Network’s Refugee Week Lunch, bringing together people from Burnley and many other countries and cultures to celebrate with music, dancing, games and food from round the world.

The theme of Refugee Week this year is ‘Community as a Superpower’ We decided to concentrate on the superpower of friendship in building communities. So, running throughout the event was the Burnley Friendship game. A fun-spirited game where our guests and clients were invited to meet and talk to three people from different countries (to win a Burnley Friendship Champion badge).

Our event also showcased the following work that had been undertaken

Our Burnley City of Sanctuary Network ran an art and writing competition about ‘The superpower of friendship’ for the children of our partner primary schools, St John’s and Wellfield. The response was amazing – with 400+ entries from the children and resulted in many Highly Commended entries and 8 overall winners from the 2 schools. These are being exhibited at Downtown Community Grocery until next Thursday 26^th.

Alongside this was a collection of photographs from a Burnley Council Project entitled ‘Faces of Burnley’, aimed at “collecting, preserving and archiving the volunteer and refugee community of Burnley. One further piece of artwork was also on display, entitled ‘Incoming Water’” and was lent to us by one of our team – pictorially representing his asylum journey to safety and this is also now available to view at Downtown.

We have so many people to thank for making our Lunch such a success, including all our local City of Sanctuary Network partners. Their art and written work and photographic contributions truly illustrated the power of community in providing welcome and support to people arriving here. Another huge thank you must go to our amazing client and local volunteers all for hard work setting up and clearing away and all the amazing food provided.

This was our Burnley City of Sanctuary Network’s first event since we were established in March of this year.

We have learned so much in this short time.

We know now that we are stronger together.

Over the next year we will be rolling out our exciting plans and our programme, with our partners, to help build a united community of welcome and inclusion here in Burnley. We invite you to be part of it – for more information email [email protected] – we look forward to hearing from you