We are really lucky to have so many great local businesses in Sheffield who have supported our event. And also thanks to Migration Matters Festival who have included us in their event!
Our 24 hour festival only works if we have enough help to run it. We have six 24 hour runners and other besides running throughout the day and night.
Marshals play a key role in ensuring they run safely. Can you help? The picture below is th latest psotion at the tim of publishing and we will up[date periodically. You can see the times when need more marshals.
Register to marshal here. If you have already, why not log back in and add an additional time when we are short – indicated in red in the left hand column.
Georgina is going to attempt to walk continuously for 24 hours around the small park BIG RUN course – 21-22 June. We asked her why and it became quickly clear her feelings and commitment run deep.
Georgina in the Palestinian Central Highlands – in the region described as the “Wilderness of Bethlehem”
Why you are doing this run?
In the summer of 2023 I lived in Hebron in the West Bank of Palestine volunteering teaching English, I witnessed the occupation first hand and the experience changed my life. I wanted to do everything I could to bring change and attention to this oppression. On my recent visit this year, I saw how much worse life had become for people in the West Bank. I am walking for the whole 24 hours as a form of protest to highlight the extreme conditions Palestinians in Gaza have to endure under the current Israeli bombardment of their home and also the countless miles Palestinians have walked due to displacement since 1947.
What do you hope to achieve?
I hope to raise as much money as I can so that the Sheffield Palestine Cultural Exchange charity can continue to do their incredible work. I also hope that pushing my body to the extremes will draw attention and make people see how urgent it is that our government needs to act now to stop the suffering and murder of Palestinians.
Your feelings on Palestine and any other message?
Many Palestinians have told me that seeing the protests and solidarity around the world has given them hope and they feel seen. Showing up and speaking out is incredibly important and that effort is appreciated.
Palestine has a deep soul within the land which you can feel with every step, supporting a beautiful and rich heritage, loved and protected by the most generous and kind people. It must not be erased.
I look forward to meeting you and the team and everyone taking part! It really is wonderful to see my city showing support and solidarity. Best Wishes from Georgina.
Play is one of the themes of this year’s ‘small Park BIG RUN’. Play is an important part of discovery, socialisation and wellbeing in our formative years. Many of us continue to engage in play in various forms as adults because it continues to provide for us in the same way when as children playing was so important. Play is about fun, informality, something which isn’t about duty or necessity, an activity which nourishes us and our relationships.
3-3 Palestine is a simple football activity open to anyone registered for SPBR – all ages and no previous football experience needed! Come and find the “3-3 Palestine” volunteers on the day, take the challenge as you complete the SPBR course and get a certificate and badge.
Palestinian women’s football team Diyar posing for photos with the Sheffield Lord Mayor Anne Murphy at the inaugural ‘small park BIG RUN’ in 2017.
Play can take many forms such as cultural and creative activity, imagination games and sport. Sport is a significant part of how we enjoy “play” throughout our lives and football continues to dominate as the sport which most people – children and adults – play.
It is a simple game, requiring just something to kick and a space to kick it in. It is also a uniting force; as a global game, anyone having a kickabout will know that elsewhere around the world millions of others are doing the same.
Whichever ways we might choose to engage in football – as participants, as spectators, as campaigners – we have so much potential to raise our awareness of and connect with our sisters and brothers in Palestine.
As participants, we feel how the exercise of playing football can not only lift the mood and improve our sense of wellbeing, but significantly also how the engagement in a sport can be a vital distraction, allowing us to focus on something apart from our troubles. We all deserve moments of joy and peace, however fleeting. Chasing a ball or playing with others can offer us that.
As spectators, we can enjoy sport as part of a community. We can identify with a badge, share the same chants and songs together and our mutual understanding helps us to bear the games lost and enjoy sweeter victories. We can watch as the people who represent us bring us recognition and pride, even when we are far from experiencing that ourselves.
The Palestinian diaspora plays a large role in the representative Palestinian teams, given the huge obstacles that Palestinians based in the illegally occupied West Bank and the Gaza strip have faced in keeping involved in competitive football over the recent decades. The continued functioning of representative teams is a remarkable achievement in itself. And when teams make their mark on the world’s stages, this can provide a defiant message of survival of a people whose identity is a continuing battle.
This year the Palestine men’s football team has gone the furthest ever in its history in the football World Cup qualification process. This brings a profile to the Palestinian state as a recognised entity – it is worth noting that the world governing body of football FIFA in spite of its flaws, has recognised the state of Palestine – and as a culture in a way that can resonate with people not otherwise engaged in Palestine solidarity. You can keep in touch with the progress of the team here: https://footballpalestine.com
While the Under 20’s Women’s football team recently declared ‘We played for Gaza’ as they won the West Asian Football Federation title. Read about it here: https://www.arabnews.com/node/2597092/sport
And sport is an incredible tool for campaigning. At elite levels fans can work as one community to coordinate huge displays of solidarity with oppressed communities. You can read on this thread how crowds at football clubs all over the world use their combined presence to show the people of Palestine that they are not forgotten:
Football activism has taken over the stadiums.
🧵🇵🇸 Here is a thread of all fan bases calling for solidarity with Palestine and the suspension of Israel from the beautiful game:
At grassroots level, community sporting events – football tournaments are a common example – are such an effective way of getting people together who may initially just want to come and play but then engage in so much more – learning, meeting activists, raising money, becoming involved themselves. Just think of all the things that ‘small park BIG RUN’ has achieved based on the nominally simple concept of an organised run around a neighbourhood park.
Even in the most difficult times, sometimes especially in those times the deep rooted and significant power of football – as a participatory activity, a spectator sport and a campaigning tool – belies its simplicity as a form of play.
Last year at small park BIG RUN a team from Footballers for Falasteen carried this football lantern for 24 hours! Photo: Kev Dunnington
Come and enjoy the music, the lantern making and displaying, parachute games , henna decorations, Tatreez; learn from Palestinians speaking about their experience of education during the genocide, and hold hands with Palestinians as we sing to them over zoom at the end.
Our event is always an occasion of celebration and joy. This year with the background of current events and the awful trauma and sadness, it feels difficult. But, we discovered, living with contrasts of joy and sadness, or life and death, are the standard experiences for Palestinians. They have no choice. And so it will will have to be similarly for us.
Read on to discover what we are doing to mark and mourn the terrible events in Palestine.
Tent camp You will find near the start/ finish line a replica tent camp which will be inhabited by Palestinians over the whole 24 hours. Intended to reproduce symbolically the conditions Palestinians are experiencing in Gaza today. They will share their stories, experiences and news from home with visitors. Next to the camp will be a tent with a photographic exhibition depicting the 1948 Nakba – horrible echoes of which have reverberated brutally into our present.
Torch of remembrance At 8.15 pm on Saturday 22 June we will hold a solemn procession taking a torch around the park course in remembrance of all those killed during the genocide. We will hand out LED candles to light your way, symbolising lost souls and to be placed at the solidarity tree after. The torch will burn all night.
One minutes’ silence During the closing ceremony we will hold a minutes’ silence to remember all those who have been killed in the events of the last eight months. This will follow a hopeful link up with our partner project Never Stop Dreaming in Khan Younis, Gaza, and other project friends in Ramallah, West Bank.
We hope you will join us in these sombre events if you can. And we hope you will come and enjoy the whole event as well. Smiling, more than crying. Palestinians live a rollercoaster life where joy and tragedy sit uncomfortably and unavoidably side by side. For this weekend we will stand in solidarity and experience the same.
One of the small park BIG RUN organisers ran in a fabulous fell race on Tuesday evening. It was exceptionally well organised, technical, friendly and fast! What struck him, once he got his breath back, was that as well as some notable similarities to our own event there were some very marked differences, well worth a little muse on. Read on to discover some of those musings.
The Burbage Skyline fell race is ten rugged kms in a figure of eight of rough tracks, paths, rocks, bogs, hills and even a couple of small river crossings around the top of the hills ringing the beautiful Burbage Valley. The pace is fast and even if it wasn’t in the plan, this runner couldn’t help but try to keep up with the others!
Despite turning myself inside out with effort I didn’t feature in the top half of the results! No shame there, there are some seriously impressive runners and the winning time would have been very impressive had it been around a flat track.
But it was illuminating that the way I measured my success was against others; every time I overtook someone, there was a small twinge of satisfaction and likewise when I was overtaken, something I had to get quite used to on the first hill, I was a tiny bit peed off!
Now, everyone who ran the race will have different motivations and targets – and no criticism is intended when I say that in the main I felt this was a very competitive race. It felt notably different to our own run/walk/hop/skip and juggle of an event!
In contrast to being a race, I think the small park BIG RUN is better viewed as a challenge. And though you can measure yourself and your effort – it is more with yourself and not against others that you take that measurement. The targets are personal. For some one lap is the goal and the achievement is high. In 2022 my dearly departed Dad, contending with dementia managed a lap, only months before he passed away.
The race’s great and much missed friend Graham Birkin (pictured here) did his lap in very poor health but walking with the loving aid of friends and family – no small achievement.
Others like Nick, Maggie, Davor, Cécile and others have done gargantuan efforts of up to 24 hours. One runner completed 155 laps but was still slightly regretful they hadn’t made it to the magic 100 miles!!! And to this end, they are coming back this year to try again.
Some set themselves a marathon, half marathon or laps target. Others challenge themselves not with numerical targets but with group plans like teams of runners filling hourly slots to fill up the whole day, or individuals doing one lap every hour for 24 hours, others just running the hours of darkness. Some arrive at 4am to greet the sun and some to reclaim their park. Some have hidden challenges that make it difficult to even make it to the park. For a refugee the bus fare could be the challenge. And others do it to raise money for the charities we support.
Many simply walk around the circuit with their friends and family, satisfied in the knowledge they are celebrating freedom of movement, waving flags and showing friendship and solidarity with Palestinians.
And some simply eat cake and drink tea – which is in its own right a wonderful thing to do!
All challenges, all different, all personal but all on the same course with lots of different people in a spirit of friendship.
What everyone has in common is that they are there – in the park, in the same place. A joint and joyous effort that affirms community spirit, friendliness, companionship and solidarity. All power to you!
small park BIG RUN is – in case you haven’t heard – on the weekend of 22/23 June.
You can sign up here. https://www.sientries.co.uk/event.php?event_id=12867
The past months in Gaza have been terrible. A child’s experience will be to have seen rampant and incessant killing, constant noise of drones buzzing and bombs exploding, the screams of people in mourning or of the injured and a terrifying sense of jeopardy.
In spite of this, children will come out to play and laugh. We have had incredible short videos from the ruins in Gaza City where some of the team working with Sheffield PSC Emergency Relief Fund have organised some clowning about!
The first session took place in the middle of the devastation in Al Shijaiya east of Gaza city. This work before October 2023 was through “Qayis Centre for Psychological and Community Support” .
With your help at small park BIG RUN, work will be extended further north and in Rafah and Khan Younis .
