Launching the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Metaverse Resource: A Milestone in the All-Wales Anti-Racist Action Plan (2022)
By Allison Hulmes
June is Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller (GRT) History Month, a time for celebration, recognition, and truth-telling. This year, in Wales, we marked a historic moment with the official launch of the Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller ‘Stopping Places’ within the ‘Metaverse’ for Anti-Racism in Education, a virtual, immersive platform co-created to amplify the stories, contributions, and cultural legacy of our communities. As a Welsh Romany Gypsy and one of the curators of this resource, I reflect on the profound power of co-creation, digital innovation, and cultural reclamation that shaped this journey.
This launch was more than just the unveiling of a virtual space, it was an act of resistance, memory, and belonging. It served as a declaration that Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller people in Wales are not only part of the past but are actively shaping the future. We did this as part of the Welsh Government’s All Wales Anti-Racist Action Plan and its groundbreaking Anti-Racist Curriculum, a policy and pedagogical shift that finally recognizes racism in Wales must be addressed through education, truth, and action.
Space for Us, By Us
The GRT section of the Metaverse is the first of its kind in the UK. It is not a space built around us; it is a space built with and by us. Community members and educators collaborated in trust to shape the stories and resources that will live here, including poems, animations, digital artifacts, and educational tools. Every click within the ‘Stopping Places’ area brings the user closer to a lived experience. You don’t just learn about history; you feel it through voices, visuals, music, and memory. This was made possible by placing co-production at the center, as an ethical and political commitment to justice.
The Power of the Metaverse in Anti-Racist Education
Technology has often excluded GRT communities, but here, we reclaim it. The Metaverse platform offers an immersive digital experience that caters to diverse learning styles and improves educational accessibility. The launch event included guided walkthroughs, during which we explored the virtual GRT heritage trail. The digital resource features oral histories and examines timelines of oppression and resistance, from the Egyptian Acts of the 1500s to the ongoing surveillance and spatial discrimination embedded in the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Act, 2022.
What makes this resource revolutionary is that it doesn’t just add GRT stories into existing frameworks; it changes the framework itself. It challenges deficit narratives and instead encourages learners to understand systemic racism and the resilience of our communities. It provides teachers with a resource aligned with the Curriculum for Wales, fulfilling requirements to incorporate anti-racist education across all areas of learning. Most importantly, it centers on the principle of “nothing about us without us.”
‘This Ink is Ours’: A Moment of Cultural Assertion
I composed and read a new poem written for the event, ‘This ink is Ours!’. Standing in a circle of peers, educators, and allies, giving voice to the stories of generations silenced:
‘Before I ever held a pen, I held a story in my bones.
Passed down in hushes, formed in the rhythms of the road.
My Granny never learned to write her name.
But she carried the stories just the same…’
The poem will exist within the Metaverse space, accessible to learners and teachers as a resource that reflects the emotion, identity, and political truth of GRT life in Wales. It also encourages new writing, a poetry wall in the space prompts young people from GRT backgrounds to share their own words, to pick up the ink, and keep writing.
Embedding Our Stories in the National Story
The launch also marked a significant shift in how Wales sees itself. For too long, the national story has centered on a single perspective: mainly white, settled, and often Anglocentric or colonial. However, the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan introduces a new vision, one where multiple histories coexist and add to the overall story. The GRT Metaverse space is a digital reflection of that new outlook, showing that GRT people are, and always have been, an essential part of the Welsh story, not just on its margins.
In my role as a curator, I needed to develop a process that facilitated intergenerational learning. We integrated our ways of knowing, including oral traditions, cultural rituals, storytelling, and activism, with new forms of digital literacy and creative expression. The result is not just educational, it is liberatory.
A Legacy That Will Grow
This launch is not an endpoint. It is the beginning of an ongoing dialogue and collaboration. The GRT area of the Metaverse will continue to expand, with new stories and contributions. Training sessions for teachers are already being planned, and we intend to hold workshops for young people to engage more deeply in technology and their cultural production.
We aim to incorporate the resource into initial teacher training and all anti-racist education across Wales. When every teacher understands the structural obstacles GRT learners encounter, from biased curriculum content to exclusionary practices, they can start becoming the change our communities need.
In Gratitude and Solidarity
To the elders who endured and passed down our stories, culture, and traditions, to the artists and poets who honored our wagons and our words, and to the educators who dared to listen, unlearn, and re-learn, thank you. This is your resource. This is your space. This is your future, and ours!
And to those who stand with us, allies, policymakers, educators, and fellow communities of resistance, we warmly invite you not only to observe us but to walk alongside us. Join our reflective circles. Let these ‘Stopping Places’ serve as a gateway to transformation, not just a digital detour.
In the words of my poem, ‘This Ink is Ours!’ and with it, we write our futures, together.
"It was an honour to launch the Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller Immersive Learning Area within the world’s first Anti-Racism Metaverse. For far too long, these communities have endured profound marginalisation and exclusion. Often overlooked in mainstream narratives, the rich histories and cultural identities of Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller peoples are essential to our collective understanding of identity, belonging, and justice.
This dedicated space offers a powerful platform to share their stories of resilience, struggle, and invaluable contributions. It invites educators and professionals to re-engage with these communities through a lens of empathy, respect, and truth.
Co-created with Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller individuals who generously shared their lived experiences of racism, and supported by Medr, this curriculum area stands as a vital tool for fostering anti-racist practice in classrooms and workplaces alike. Our hope is that it inspires deeper understanding, meaningful dialogue, and lasting change."
Yusuf Ibrahim
Vice Principal – Higher Education, Academic Studies, Foundation and Adult Learning
Cardiff and Vale College
"This resource is a bold example of lived experiences that delivers on our promise of putting communities at the heart of anti-racist action in Wales where communities lead the conversation, shape the narrative, and move us closer to a Wales where every experience matters and every story is heard."
Riaz Hassan
Pennaeth| Head of Anti-racist Wales Action Plan Implementation Team
Equality and Human Rights Division
Communities and Social Justice
Llywodraeth Cymru | Welsh Government
By Allison Hulmes
(Composite photograph courtesy of Allison Hulmes)