Refugee and asylum seeker photography project fundraiser

So, after a strange and difficult 2014, professionally encouraging and personally taxing, I'm making a new start by using a personal challenge to seek support for a project I've been working on, and in doing so, trying to do something public, accountable and positive.

I'm asking to be sponsored to run an off-road full marathon on the 1st March, The Steyning Stinger, up and down (x4) the South Downs. The money raised will fund participant transport and materials to continue a photography training project for refugees and asylum seekers Some Cities runs at Darkroom Birmingham. There will be an exhibition of participants work at the No One Is Illegal Muzikstan ASIRT fundraiser event on the 28th February, the night before the race.

I'm not much of an activist, but I do have opinions. I'm not so sure that opinions help much though. So, inspired by a number of people, amongst whom are Elena Roffi, Dave Stamp, Julie Barton, Cristina Vedrells, Sam Grundy, Clarissa Mildew, Felipe Molina, each an activist in their own way, I hope that fundraising in this way will motivate me to train harder in a kind of pseudo- solidarity with those I'll hope to support. I'm a moderately experienced runner: I've run 26.2 miles or more 3 times, but not competitively (yeah, for 'fun'), though I've done a few half marathons and trail races over the last few years mostly as a BRAT member. Although running to Stratford along the canal, the 3 Peaks in Yorkshire, and the first 32 miles of the Cotswold Way entailed discomfort, commitment to training and risk of injury, they were, as leisure activities, voluntary, of physical and mental benefit, and dependent on a secure lifestyle of showers, enough food, a warm bed, supportive friends and the comfort of a pint of ale on completion, in one of the most enviable nations of earth.

So when I'm training hard I'll be logging and publishing what I do, and thinking on the voluntary, finite and safe nature of these challenges, about how they contrast with the desperate, terrifying and life-threatening journeys undertaken by some of the migrants supported by ASIRT and those who attend photography project I run through Some Cities CIC in partnership with St. Chad's Sanctuary. This project is also to speak against the situations they flee, and the privations and degradations experienced on arrival to the UK.

It is a time of political crisis and opportunity, but given the Hobson's choice available to many progressive voters ? in my case the only ?strategic? choice available in Hall Green may well be a man who published this: http://www.danburwood.co.uk/godsiff-yaqoob/ - it's important to step up a little, exercise the democratic rights we have beyond the voter's straight jacket, and move towards a just and tolerant global society. But it's encouraging to see so much solidarity and optimism, given the bleak political, economic and environmental outlook reported at home and abroad. It's also easy to be complacent about what's in the media, and to pass off the sharing of a Monbiot article as action for the common or particular good - which perhaps it may be, in some ways - while in others it is a replacement for action. I'll probably not stop the sharing, but I'm committing to accompany lefty reading with a bit of directed leg work.