Diversity Dice: Building a LGBTQ+ training resource
PHOTO: The Diversity Dice, designed & produced by Frontier Youth Trust & Q Space.
AS AN LGBTQ+ youth worker from a Christian background, I know that even starting a conversation about supporting LGBTQ+ people within any faith setting can be tough, writes Will from Frontier Youth Trust.
This is what happened when a Christian youth work charity asked an LGBTQ+ organisation to provide training for a group of Christian youth workers.
Back in 2018, while I was a student on the Pioneer Youth Ministry Training with the Church Mission Society (CMS) in Oxford, I also helped to run Q Space, an LGBTQ+ community group in Northampton.
Frontier Youth Trust (FYT) which works with young people at risk to help them find justice, equality and community, asked me to deliver a talk on what it means to be inclusive, especially for LGBTQ+ young people.
For participants in LGBTQ+ awareness training, it can be too easy to be present but not engaged in the topic. So I wanted to rethink how this training might look. I wanted people to join the conversation on inclusion, be supported on a journey through any prejudice they might have, and enabled to look at things from the viewpoint of the outsider.
I quickly realised that just talking about being LGBTQ+ inclusive wasn’t enough. We needed to look at intersectionality, as people can be from multiple marginalised communities, and these communities don’t always support or recognise each other.
I started by making some wooden dice to represent the protected characteristics of the 2010 Equality Act, which legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society, due to: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Rolling dice would mean we could look at the uniqueness of an individual, with a random selection of protected characteristics. The team at Q Space helped shape what set of characteristics would be on each dice, as having only six sides restricting our options. We ended up with dice for: Gender, Sexuality, Ethnicity, Disability and Faith.
PHOTO: The prototype wooden dice, with chairs representing different perspectives on the individual characteristics selected by the dice.
The Q Space team helped deliver the workshop to FYT youth workers. We asked people to roll the dice, think about the person presented by the dice roll, and talk about that person from different perspectives (as represented by the chairs in the photo).
The dice got people talking. We were not giving them all the answers, but we were asking people to look, feel, and be real about what they have seen in different environments. The youth workers engaged and wrestled with LGBTQ+ identities and terms, and began to see things with a new light. We found that having a LGBTQ+ person with them to answer questions as they arose, without judgement and with integrity, helped people to feel valued in the conversation.
I left the wooden blocks with the FYT youth workers, knowing we had helped people see differently.
The conversation didn’t stop there. As the FYT team have designed and made many resources, they saw in the dice the potential to start people on a more inclusive path. Together we created the Diversity Dice resource, a set of printed plastic dice, together with a guide book (photo 2).
The dice have become a core part of Q Space’s work. We use them in training workshops, delivering to the NHS, police, fire brigade, schools and colleges.
The Salvation Army have used the dice as a jump-start to writing a pastoral support course for youth workers on LGBTQ+ awareness. The dice have become an integral part of how they train their youth workers.
FYT have now employed me part-time as a brand ambassador for the Diversity Dice, to promote the dice, and their use in training youth workers and churches.
I believe the Diversity Dice can be an amazing tool for change. I have seen first-hand how great they are at breaking down barriers and sparking transformative conversations. With this resource in our hands we have a fantastic tool to help create more spaces where everyone is more than welcome.
Don’t just take my word for it, why not buy a set and try them in your community?
Read more & order here.
FFI:
Frontier Youth Trust website
Q Space on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.