Using our own staff as a resource to improve LGBT+ awareness

Members of Leeds City Council's LGBT+ Staff Network delivering our first Rainbow Connections awareness sessions

If you want your organisation's staff to have a better understanding of LGBT+ issues and identities, doesn't it make sense to work with your own LGBT+ staff to achieve this?

That's certainly what we think in Leeds.

Last week, we held the first training session for our Council of Europe-funded Rainbow Connections project.

Through the project, Leeds, in partnership with Oeiras in Portugal aims make our cities better places for LGBT+ people to live and work.

In Leeds, we are fortunate to have a fantastic LGBT+ staff network, and we are working with them to run two awareness-raising sessions bringing together LGBT+ people and the wider community.

The first session, for Leeds City Council employees, brought together 18 people from across the organisation

The session looked at a range of LGBT+ issues, including:

• Interculturalism – how to have better conversations with people who are different to you.

Objective: To understand how interaction, dialogue, and exchange between people with different cultural starting places can promote mutual understanding and respect in work contexts.

• Understanding what LGBT+ means, the challenges people experience and how to be more inclusive.

Objective: Learn more about what being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and related terms mean. What do people mean when they say sex is different to gender? Discuss how discrimination and barriers can affect LGBT+ colleagues and service users. How you can help make your city a more inclusive place to live and work.

• Good Practice.

Objective: How to contribute to a workplace which is respectful and aware of LGBT+ realities

• LGBT+ and your local and national context.

Objective: To think about how the wider social and political context where you operate may impact LGBT+ people and the issues discussed in this training session.

Feedback on the session has been positive, and the fact that it was delivered by people with real lived experience was one of the highlights. One attendee remarked "I think the trainers being able to share their own experience and knowledge, and relate that to the training, adds a lot of weight and makes the training feel more impactful". Another said "It was presented in a really open and engaging way with real life experiences."

A further awareness session aimed at people working in other organisations across Leeds is planned for November.

The Council of Europe's Intercultural Cities Programme supports cities and regions in reviewing and adapting their policies through an intercultural lens and developing comprehensive intercultural strategies to manage diversity as an advantage for the whole society. Leeds has been a member of Intercultural Cities since 2019.

The Council of Europe is a pan-European international organization focused on promoting human rights, democracy, and the rule of law across the continent. It's not part of the European Union, although it shares some member states. Established in 1949, it has 46 member states. The UK is a founding member.