This week, the Salford-based Bridgewater LGBTQ youth group have created a campaign called ‘biscuits against hate crime’ in support of National Hate Crime Awareness Week to battle hate crime in Salford.

Bridgewater is one of three LGBTQ youth groups in Salford that are creating different campaigns aiming to raise awareness of hate crime in the city, specifically crimes targeted at the LGBTQ+ community.

Chris Rice, youth worker at Salford City Council stated: “The Bridgewater group have taken a series of photographs of biscuits in different scenarios trying to raise awareness of the six different types of hate crime and have created hashtags including the National Hate Crime Awareness Week hashtag #noplaceforhate and also #Insalford.

“We try to join in with bigger campaigns like LGBT history month and obviously looking at Hate Crime Awareness Week this week, trans day visibility- things like that.”

“It’s about supporting young LGBTQ people and having a safe space for them to come to.”

The Eccles youth group have also created their own campaign by decorating stones with slogans around hate crime in Salford, which will be going out into Eccles parks tonight.

He continued: “The group at the Beacon Centre have been working on some spoken art, creating poems talking about the impact of hate crime and hate in particular of the LGBTQ community.”

The group are hoping to record the poems and share them on social media.

Wuu2 Salford, who are helping to run the campaigns, are encouraging people to share their biscuit photos on social media using the slogans and hashtags.

Salford has the 4th highest number of reported hate crimes in greater Manchester, but only 1 in 3 are actually reported.

Wuu2 Salford and all three LGBTQ groups are hoping that this weeks campaigns will encourage more people to report hate crime in Salford.

Chris said: “The young people are sharing the images each day on social media encouraging people to use the photos as profile pictures to raise awareness for what the week’s about, including information on how you report a hate crime on our website”

National Hate Crime Awareness Week runs this week from October 13th- 20th.

For more information on how to get involved, click here.

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