The Football Association of Wales is proud to continue its support of the Stonewall Rainbow Laces campaign, which this year takes place between the 19th of October and the 31st of October, with Rainbow Laces Day on the 26th of the month.
The Rainbow Laces’ campaign is heading into its 9th year and aims to make sport everyone’s game, through inspiring, education, visibility and encouraging allyship.
In previous year’s the campaign has aimed for people to “lace up & speak up”, with this year’s messages being to “lace up & keep it up”. The key messages from this year’s campaign are to try and unite and mobilize our communities to lace up together.
In recent years, the collective support of the Rainbow Laces Campaign across the UK has helped generate a huge amount of awareness around LGBTQ+ people in sport. This has seen recent research conducted show that Sport fans who think homophobic remarks in sport are acceptable has almost halved – dropping from 25 per cent in 2017 to 14 per cent in 2022.
As part of the FAW’s continued commitment to show its support for this year’s campaign, the association will be holding an Equali-tea morning with staff on Rainbow Laces day to open up a discussion around what more the FAW and football can do to raise awareness, become better allies and continue to support the LGBTQ+ football family in Wales.
Sport can be the driver for physical and mental wellbeing across communities. People from all walks of life can gain a sense of belonging and community through shared passion and the LGBTQ+ community should also feel as they belong and be a part of this.
You can play your part in continuing these conversations and highlighting visibility on Wednesday the 26th of October, where Stonewall are asking you to join the FAW on ‘Rainbow Laces Day’ in support of the LGBTQ+ community across sport.
On this day, please share a photo or video of you wearing the Rainbow Laces on your social media, using #RainbowLaces and tagging @StonewallUK and @StonewallCymru. You can visit stonewall.org.uk/rainbowlaces to purchase your Rainbow Laces and find out more about how you can play your part.
