Yesterday, at a London awards ceremony, FolesHillfields Vision Project won the first national Award for Bridging Cultures, in recognition of our work promoting intercultural dialogue.

The Award is funded by the Baring Foundation and administered by the Institute for Community Cohesion – we won in the category of Voluntary Organisations with a turnover of under £1 million. I think that counts as punching above our weight!

We were shortlisted along with five other organisations from the 160 or so who applied in this category, including the excellent Aik Saath [now the 2] and Coventry’s very own Minorities of Europe.

Despite not knowing if we’d won, 18 of us came down to the awards ceremony – we cheered a lot when the award was announced! The evening ended with great music from Kinetica Bloco, including a brass and samba percussion version of the Specials’ Ghost Town, which was great to hear.

The award comes with a £10,000 cheque – this will allow us to continue to strengthen our work in bringing communities together locally, while continuing to experiment with new approaches.

Many thanks to the Baring Foundation, to iCoCo, to the panel of judges, to the volunteers who came down to London, and to everyone who contributes to and joins in with our work day-by-day and week-by-week.