City of Sanctuary groups all over the UK have begun a tradition of organising launch events to announce their movement to the wider community and get the broadest possible range of people on board at an early stage.

Some of the experience of how to make these events successful, creative and fun have been collected in the City of Sanctuary handbook. There are also some fantastic ideas to be borrowed from the Transition movement – a network of community-based initiatives for local resilience and sustainability.

Local Transition initiatives often hold events they call an ‘unleashing’, and there is a stirring description of the recent unleashing of Transition Malvern Hills on Rob Hopkins’ blog here, which included three choirs, a film, two cellos, several children and a magician!