College of Sanctuary
City Lit’s Journey Towards Becoming a College of Sanctuary
We are proud to be working towards recognition as a College of Sanctuary. Founded in 1919, City Lit has always been a place of welcome – beginning with lipreading classes for veterans deafened in the First World War. For over a century, we have opened the doors of education to people from every walk of life. Today, we extend that same open-hearted commitment to all people seeking sanctuary. Through our courses, we offer not just skills and knowledge but a community where diversity is embraced and ambitions are realised.
Our commitment
City Lit is committed to fostering safety, belonging, and compassion by equipping staff to support students from forced migration backgrounds, removing barriers to education, and centring the voices of those with lived experience. We raise awareness to challenge misconceptions, celebrate contributions, and collaborate with partners, recognising that everyone has a role in building understanding and inclusion within our community and beyond.
We are proud to be working towards recognition as a College of Sanctuary. Since our founding in 1919, we have been a place of welcome and opportunity, opening the doors of education to people from all walks of life. This journey builds on our long tradition of inclusivity and our belief that learning has the power to transform lives. By joining the College of Sanctuary movement, we reaffirm our commitment to creating a safe and supportive environment for those seeking sanctuary. We look forward to continuing to celebrate diversity, value the skills and experiences for those who have been forced to migrate from their homes to seek sanctuary in the UK and work together to build a more compassionate and connected society.
We are proud to be working towards recognition as a College of Sanctuary. Since our founding in 1919, we have been a place of welcome and opportunity, opening the doors of education to people from all walks of life. This journey builds on our long tradition of inclusivity and our belief that learning has the power to transform lives. By joining the College of Sanctuary movement, we reaffirm our commitment to creating a safe and supportive environment for those seeking sanctuary. We look forward to continuing to celebrate diversity, value the skills and experiences for those who have been forced to migrate from their homes to seek sanctuary in the UK and work together to build a more compassionate and connected society.
Awards
Mayor of London Inclusive Provider Award.
City Lit is the only college to have won the Mayor of London Inclusive Provider of Adult Education Award twice — first in 2022 for our Centre for Learning Disabilities Education, and again in 2024 for our Centre for Deaf Education. At the Adult Learning Awards ceremony on 6 November 2024 at City Hall, our Centre for Deaf Education was chosen from over 329 nominations across ten categories. This recognition highlights our ongoing commitment to inclusive learning and the vital role both centres play in making adult education accessible to all.
What is a College of Sanctuary
A College of Sanctuary is part of a national movement that recognises and celebrates institutions that actively welcome and support asylum seekers and refugees. It is a network working to make the UK more inclusive, helping people understand and appreciate the positive impact of those seeking sanctuary, and creating safe, friendly communities where everyone can thrive.
At City Lit, this recognition builds on our long history of inclusivity. We support the College of Sanctuary vision that the UK will be a welcoming place of safety for all, offering sanctuary to people fleeing violence or persecution. Being part of the movement means offering displaced learners the chance to gain qualifications, valuing the skills and knowledge they bring to our community, and working together to build a more compassionate society.
Breaking Barriers – Deaf Refugees at the Royal Ballet
In April 2025, The Breaking Barriers project brought together 11 deaf refugee and migrant students from City Lit to create and perform a powerful dance at the Royal Ballet’s Paul Hamlyn Hall.
Over six weeks, the students collaborated with Royal Ballet and Opera artists to craft a routine inspired by Light of Passage, weaving ballet with traditional dances and sign language that reflected their diverse backgrounds and lived experiences.
The performance not only showcased their resilience and creativity but also offered audiences a moving insight into both Deaf culture and the journeys of refugees, making it a profound exchange of knowledge, expression, and solidarity.
Threads of Solidarity Exhibition
Threads of Solidarity: Human Rights and Justice, hosted at City Lit in February 2025, brought together powerful embroidered works by Bordando por la Memoria, a Chilean transnational textile collective. Created in response to the atrocities of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship and wider Cold War repression across Latin America, the project highlighted how craft became a form of protest, remembrance, and resilience for political prisoners, while drawing attention to ongoing struggles faced by Indigenous Mapuche people and democratic activists today. It stands as a reminder of the enduring importance of human rights, justice, and solidarity.
A Mile in My Shoes
A Mile in My Shoes (2021) was an ESOL storytelling project by City Lit in collaboration with the Empathy Museum, funded by the GLA ESOL Plus Arts programme. Over the course of a year, two groups of ESOL learners developed their English and storytelling skills to create digital narratives about their own lives. Inspired by the Empathy Museum’s unique “shoe shop” installation, each student donated a pair of shoes, allowing visitors to literally step into their footwear while listening to their recorded stories of displacement, resilience, and discovery. This immersive experience invited audiences not only to walk a mile in the storytellers’ shoes but also to reflect on empathy, language, and human connection, culminating in a powerful exhibition at the Southbank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival.
Refugee Week 2025
City Lit marked Refugee Week 2025 (16–22 June) with a programme of online and in-person courses inspired by the theme “Community as a Superpower.” Participants explored topics including climate change and displacement, refugees in modern Chinese history, entrepreneurship, and the refugee figure in 20th‑century culture. The events created space for learning, reflection, and connection, while City Lit also highlighted its ongoing year‑round support for refugees and asylum seekers through free courses in ESOL, English, maths, and digital skills, helping individuals build confidence and community.
Student Stories
Hossein Khamseh
Ilyaas Cader
Get in touch
Join us in supporting sanctuary seekers and celebrating their journeys of resilience and hope.
Buoyant in the 1960s and 1970s
This was a period of expansion: of courses, new initiatives, and collaboration with a wide variety of education and arts organisations. The initiative ‘Preparation for retirement’ launched in 1960 which was later implemented throughout the country.
Much effort was put into organising student assemblies, the City Lit Association and student places on the governors. This was building on the previously strong but more informal contact with students looking for full student participation and involvement both domestically in planning new course directions and democratically in the need to fight for the future of adult education. A full-time student advisor had been in post since 1963, easily available each day/evening to student enquirers. Good initial personal advice for individuals on their study plans and choices underpinned the much-observed strength of student commitment to courses and contributed to the development of new ones.
This period saw major developments in three areas.
Fresh Horizons
Fresh Horizons, a totally new concept, offered a fresh start in education for adult learners. A mixture of full and part time intensive courses of general education offered a springboard into further education and new career directions.
Starting in 1966, by the early 1970s a number of universities were accepting the course in lieu of A levels. A huge compliment to the quality of our teaching. Its success relied on a combination of teaching and personal counselling, essential for the success of so many individuals in redirecting their lives.
Over 1000 people went through these courses between 1966 and 1980, with the majority moving onto further education afterwards.
Centre for the Deaf
Work with deaf students began in the earliest City Lit days but this developed to become the thriving Centre for the Deaf with its first full time member of staff in 1973. It finally reached its home in Keeley Street in 1977, and was recognised as the Regional Centre in 1974.
In the early 1970s the wide gap in provision for young adults on leaving the support of their special secondary schools had been identified, leading to multiple courses for lip reading at all levels, for those with a stammer, training teachers in lip reading, plus a range of general education full/part time courses delivered to these young adults with career advice. An increasing amount of one-to-one support to deaf students in other colleges was also introduced.
The Centre for the Deaf was recognised as the Regional Centre for the South East in 1974.
Adult Education Training Unit
The third area of development was the Adult Education Training Unit. This launched in 1967/8 with unique courses for Principals and Vice Principals. In parallel, in-house tutor training was introduced with observation and sharing of best practice. This was an entirely new venture in the UK and seen as a constructive process.
Ron South, Principal (1958-1984), felt that the most successful tutors take time out of their busy lives to share their knowledge and expertise for a few hours. Training should feel integrated and not be seen as an external process. This approach became popular and other colleges displayed interested in implementing this training strategy.
Classes were increasingly turning from the traditional lecture format to a flexible, modern seminar style which was much helped by the training group discussions and sharing of practice among the extensive group of part time tutors. The training unit grew very quickly within City Lit and in collaboration with education and arts organisations in Greater London and beyond.
The 80s and 90s: innovation
We continued to thrive during the 1980s, and in 1987-88 enrolments topped 15,000 for the first time. In 1987, we grew to take on a community education role, but With the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority in 1990, the community work went to the local adult education institutes in the newly established London boroughs. Enrolments first exceeded 45,000 in 1992/93, with more than 20,000 individual students.
Always innovative, we introduduced the first training for adult education teachers, and were the first to offer Access courses to higher education, as well as launching post-school education for deaf students.
In the 1990s, we were established as a free-standing charitable company (limited by guarantee) and, following the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992, became a ‘specialist designated’ college, funded by the Further Education Funding Council - one of the predecessors of today's Education & Skills Funding Agency.
21st century: Europe’s largest centre for adult education
Our current home - designed by award-winning architects Allies and Morrison - opened in May 2005.
Throughout the pandemic, City Lit continued to be open for learning. At the start of the lockdown we took the strategic decision to put as much of our course provision as possible online. We are now offering thousands of online and classroom-based courses.