About Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC

Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC is an ethnic Gypsy and Traveller-led organisation based in Yorkshire and working nationally.

We were created because the people most affected by decisions should have real power in shaping them. Gypsy and Traveller people should not have to rely on other people to interpret our experiences, explain our culture or decide which parts of our truth are acceptable.

We can speak for ourselves.

Why PGT exists

There is a long and important history of charities, community organisations and allies supporting Gypsy and Traveller people. Much of that work has protected families, challenged discrimination and created spaces that would not otherwise have existed. We value it, and in many areas we continue to work alongside it.

But support, representation and ownership are not the same thing.

Many of us have spent years working inside Gypsy and Traveller charities, projects and public services, including in leadership roles. That experience taught us something important: an organisation can care deeply about our communities and still hold the power outside them. Community members can be consulted, employed, photographed, invited to speak or asked to validate a project without ever controlling the questions, the budget, the interpretation or the final decision.

PGT was created to move further towards genuine ethnic community ownership: not simply a seat at somebody else’s table, but the ability to help decide what the table is for.

Ethnicity matters

The umbrella term “GRT” can be useful for campaigning, policy and coalition work, but it can also hide important differences.

Our core work centres ethnic Gypsy and Traveller communities, including Romani Gypsies, Irish Travellers and Scottish Gypsy Travellers. These are distinct ethnic communities with their own histories, identities, kinship, cultures and experiences of racism.

There are also people and communities whose identities are shaped by nomadism, travelling traditions or a chosen way of life rather than ethnicity. Their rights, experiences and needs matter too. In some areas our interests overlap closely and we are stronger when we campaign together.

But different experiences should not be flattened into one story.

When ethnic Gypsy and Traveller inequality is understood only through caravans, homelessness, roadside living or nomadism, something fundamental is lost. A Romani Gypsy child does not stop being Romani when their family lives in a house. An Irish Traveller family does not stop carrying the effects of racism because they have a permanent address. A Scottish Gypsy Traveller person does not cease to have an ethnic identity because they are not currently travelling.

Accommodation matters. So do site shortages, evictions and the criminalisation of traditional ways of living. But ethnicity does not begin and end at the caravan door.

A different lens on health, education and public services

If we talk about health only through homelessness or mobility, we can miss the effects of racism, mistrust, exclusion, grief, intergenerational trauma and the experience of being treated as an outsider across generations.

If we talk about education only through attendance or travelling, we can miss bullying, low expectations, cultural erasure, misrecognition of need and what it means for a child to learn that their identity is something safer kept quiet.

The same is true across planning, housing, social care, mental health, employment, policing and public life. The conversation has to include the practical issue in front of us, but it also has to include ethnic identity and the history that sits behind it.

We need services to see people, not just pitches; ethnicity, not just mobility; history, not just presenting need.

Community leadership, not community decoration

PGT combines lived experience with professional expertise in advocacy, research, planning, policy, education, community development, heritage and facilitated dialogue.

We want Gypsy and Traveller people involved while priorities are being set—not brought in after the important decisions have already been made. We want community knowledge treated as evidence, not as a personal story added to the end of a report. We want people to have influence over the questions, the interpretation and what happens next.

Working together without losing ourselves

None of this means working alone.

There are times when ethnic Gypsy and Traveller organisations, wider GRT civil society, charities, campaigners and public bodies need to stand together. There are also struggles we share with other ethnic minority communities, disabled people, women, LGBTQ+ communities, people experiencing poverty and many others whose lives are shaped by systems that were not designed equally for everyone.

Coalition does not require sameness. We can recognise where experiences differ and still defend one another’s rights.

PGT wants strong relationships with allies who are prepared to listen, share power and act. Traditional charity work still has an important place. So does specialist ethnic leadership. One does not have to erase the other.

Together we are stronger—but we are strongest when nobody has to disappear inside the partnership.

Founded and led by Dr Violet Cannon

PGT was founded by people from the communities it serves. Its founder and director, Dr Violet Cannon, is a Romani Gypsy woman with close to three decades of experience working alongside Gypsy and Traveller families and within the organisations and systems that affect their lives.

Her experience includes community leadership, planning and welfare advocacy, research, health inequalities, education, policy, dialogue, heritage and organisational development. Years spent working both within Gypsy and Traveller organisations and alongside public institutions helped shape PGT’s approach: lived experience matters, professional knowledge matters, and neither should be used to silence the other.

From a local project to a community-owned organisation

The roots of Proud Gypsy Traveller are in Doncaster, where families opened suitcases, shared photographs, recorded memories and began putting local Gypsy and Traveller history into the public record in their own words.

That early work taught us that storytelling is not separate from advocacy. Who controls the story affects whose knowledge is believed, how children see themselves and what decisions become acceptable.

An independent Community Interest Company

Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC is an asset-locked Community Interest Company. Income from commissioned research, welfare reports, training and other work is used to support our community purpose.

Developing earned income helps protect our independence. We work with funders and partners where our values align, but funding does not decide what our communities are permitted to say.

Our stories are power

Our stories carry culture, history, humour, resistance and survival. They belong first to the people who lived them.

Whether we are producing research, supporting a family, influencing policy, challenging racism or creating an exhibition, the principle remains the same:

Our voices. Our knowledge. Our terms.