England Lacrosse is proud, once again, to support Stonewall’s annual Rainbow Laces Campaign that is this year asking everyone to “lace up and speak up".
The campaign, which was initially launched eight years ago in 2013, aims to raise awareness around LGBTQIA+ inclusion in sport and runs from tomorrow (25 November) to 12 December.
Since the campaign began, Stonewall has sent out over one million pairs of rainbow laces and, in addition to donning the famous colourful laces, supporters of the campaign this year are being asked to go one step further and begin to have conversations with their friends, family, and sports clubs about LGBTQIA+ issues.
Stonewall say its “laces brought the awareness, now we all need to bring the conversation”, something which has clearly already been started over the past eight years or so since the launch of the annual campaign.
Thanks in part to the Rainbow Laces Campaign and its supporters, 78% of sport fans who saw the campaign last year considered that LGBTQIA+ people are part of the sport community, 66% feel they have a responsibility to stick up for LGBTQIA+ fans of the teams and sports they follow, and 45% believe they would be more likely to challenge anti-LGBTQIA+ language at live sport fixtures.
There’s many ways to support the campaign but the most prominent is to wear a pair of Stonewall’s laces which now come in the traditional rainbow colours as well as a variety which support specific branches of the LGBTQIA+ umbrella including the lesbian, trans, bi, non-binary, pan, and asexual flags.
We’d love the lacrosse community to join in with this year’s campaign and assisting Stonewall with the hugely important work they do by grabbing your own pair of Rainbow Laces HERE.