Wanderers of Colour Climbing Festival round up

On the first weekend of July 2024, the Peak District was filled with over 80 climbers from the global majority coming together in a joyful and affirming celebration of their presence in climbing.

Wanderers of Colour, a grassroots community dedicated to improving access to the outdoors, made history by organising Europe’s first climbing festival for Black people and people of colour in 2024. Throughout the weekend, festival-goers participated in a range of professionally taught courses and social sessions covering bouldering, sport climbing and trad climbing. The festival also featured hiking, a film screening, panel discussion, workshops, communal meals, and much more.

There were 83 ticket holders, aged 18 to 64. 78% of attendees were women or non-binary people, 16% were disabled, 15% were trans, 48% reported their sexuality as homosexual, bisexual or other.  A lot of energy was put into addressing intersectional barriers to access; it is something the Wanderers if Colour are deeply invested in and hope to improve upon at each subsequent festival.

The event was very international, with well over 30% of attendees having non-British nationalities. Just over half live in London, which is where we host our regular bouldering and rope climbing meet-ups. A quarter of the attendees were people of faith and we provided space for prayers and reflection in the wellbeing area of the festival accommodation. Recognising that people of colour often face significant structural barriers to participating in outdoor activities, particularly due to financial constraints, Wanderers of Colour ensured that ticket prices were kept as low as possible as well as employing a sliding scale pricing.

The festival offered instructed climbing sessions in all disciplines – trad, sport, and bouldering – from entry level through to advanced skills-based learning. We directly hired five BPOC instructors who all participated as attendees too, joining for meals and evening activities and being an essential part of the fabric of the festival.

The barriers to entry that face people of colour in climbing extend all the way up to the top and, according to Mountain Training, only 2.8% of people gaining a qualification in the last decade were BPOC. Mountain Training is working hard on opening up pathways to instruction and empowering BPOC instructors to take on the top level qualifications needed to teach advanced skills, but it simply wasn’t possible to fully staff instruction with BPOC instructors. We received generous instruction support from Adventure Expertise, Mountain Training, Association of Mountaineering Instructors and The Pure Outdoor Foundation and received excellent feedback from students from all sessions. Course prices were subsidised so the cost of tuition was affordable to everyone.

The Association of Mountaineering Instructors is glad and proud that as a charity, it is in a position to support such events. Events like this help to breakdown barriers faced by a wide range of individuals and help to increase the diversity of people enjoying the outdoors.