PIE IN THE SKY, a charity comedy night at Skyfall Restaurant in Hove, will be raising money for Rockinghorse Children’s Charity.
This months host,Drag with No Name, will be joined by Keris Lea, hot footing her way back from a sell out run at the Edinburgh Festival.
The pair will combine live vocals with cheeky patter, impressions and visual comedy providing a belly full of laughs, all in aid of a great local children’s charity.
Booking for the show is advisable. If you would like to dine at the restaurant before the show, telephone 01273 041007 or book online.
Event: Pie in the Sky: A belly full of laughs
Where: Skyfall Restaurant, 42 Church Rd, Hove BN3 2FN
A rainbow flag proudly flies above the Civic Hall in the historic market town of Totnes, Devon celebrating their fourth Pride on September 3.
Civic Hall Totnes
The flag raising ceremony, described by one onlooker as “moving and heartwarming” was followed by Totnes’ first LGBT+ History Walk led by local Writer, Historian and Publisher Bob Mann.
Totnes’ first LGBT+ History Walk
The flag raising ceremony comes just two months after Abingdon Council voted against a motion to fly the rainbow flag from the town’s county hall next June in support of Oxford Pride.
Proud2Be co-founder Mat Price said:“We are thrilled that the rainbow flag is flying in Totnes and are grateful to the Town Council for its support. We urge all councils in the UK who have voted against similar proposals, to reconsider their position and show that they are truly committed to nurturing and celebrating diversity in their area.”
Totnes Mayor Eleanor Cohen supports the raising of the Rainbow Flag.
The ceremony marks the start of the Towns’ fourth ever Pride celebration, which will take place this Saturday, September 3
Totnes-based social enterprise, Proud2Be have organised a whole host of events, to bring the LGBT+ community together with their friends, families and supporters, to celebrate diversity in the town.
This year’s special guests include Helen Belcher, who is one of the founders of Trans Media Watch who campaign on equal marriage, trans healthcare and gender recognition reform.
Helen said:“I’m really proud to have been invited to speak at Totnes Pride, and am looking forward to a fine day with fine people in one of Devon’s finest towns.”
Helen will be joined by Holly Greenberry and Dawn Vago, co-founders and co directors of IntersexUK and #5 on Independent on Sunday’s Rainbow List 2015.
Last year’s guest activist Jacq Applebee said about the event: “I encourage anyone who can to go! It’s one of the most inclusive LGBT+ events I’ve ever known”.
The day will start at 11am outside The Dartmouth Inn, where there will be opening speeches from Helen, Proud2Be founders Jon & Mat Price and Totnes Mayor Eleanor Cohen who together with award-winning Samba ROC Band, will then lead a procession up Fore Street and High Street to Totnes Civic Hall at 11.30am.
Road closures will be in place between 10.30am – 1pm at Ticklemore Street and from the bottom of Fore Street up to where the High Street meets Castle Street.
This year, Proud2Be have teamed up with local charity ROC Creative to create a ten-foot tall puppet to lead this year’s Pride Procession.
Community bus service Bob the Bus, will run a park and ride service from 10am at King Edward VI Community College (KEVICC) and will also be transporting those with mobility issues up the procession at 11.15.
From midday, at the Civic Hall, visitors can enjoy, workshops and talks, community stands, Dot’s Cafe, a youth space and a variety of family friendly activities including art and craft, scrap modelling, face painting and much more.
There will be a panel discussion from 1.45pm at Totnes Cinema, where local and national activists will discuss how divisions can be broken down within the LGBT+ community.
The fun continues into the evening at Totnes Pride After Party from 7.00pm at Totnes Civic Hall, which will feature live music from popular Disco Funk band Golddust, P?nk (UK’s No.1 tribute to P!nk) and DJ sets from Madame Souza and Rhi Rhythm.
Following a successful Big Lottery bid, for the first time, entry to the daytime events will be free.
Tickets to the After Party are £10.00 (18 and over only) and are available to purchase online and at the Totnes Pride day event.
Mayor, Eleanor Cohen
Totnes Mayor, Eleanor Cohen, said:“As Mayor, I welcome this event and look forward to seeing an exciting and vibrant celebration of difference and unity, all equal in our social mix.”
Proud2Be are also encouraging local businesses and residents to show their support by displaying rainbow flags during the week of Pride. These are available to buy from Proud2Be.
To find out more about Totnes Pride or to buy an After Party ticket, click here:
Holiday on Ice returns to the Brighton in January 2017 with their new show BELIEVE directed by Olympic and four-times world champion, Christopher Dean.
BELIEVE will run from January 4-8 and is your only chance to see the show in the UK.
The show tells the modern-day story of the traditional Shakespeare classic, Romeo and Juliet about desire, jealously and true love, and features Olympic level choreography combined with the best live music, beautiful décor, glamorous costumes and hi-tech special effects.
BELIEVE will be the first time that Christopher Dean and Holiday On Ice’s producers Stage Entertainment have worked on together; a new milestone in the great tradition of collaborations between Holiday on Ice and Olympic champions.
As director and choreographer Dean will orchestrate a creative team of highly acclaimed professionals including Stephen Emmer (Music Director), Nicolas Vaudelet (Costume Designer) and Bart Doerfler (Artistic Director Holiday on Ice).
Christopher Dean
Commenting on the partnership Christopher Dean, said:“I’ve been on the ice for forty-seven years, performing in shows, training and choreographing others but now I look forward to creating a new Holiday on Ice show with the best skaters in the world.”
Holiday on Ice has been producing shows for over seven decades attracting over 328 hundred million visitors to venues world-side.
Tickets for BELIEVE at The Brighton Centre will go on sale on Friday, September 2 at 10am
Event: Holiday on Ice: BELIEVE
Where: Brighton Centre, Kings Road, Brighton
When: January 4 – January 8.
Cost: Tickets start from £15 for children under 16
Japanese erotic manga is in a world of its own and this first-of-its kind anthology shares and explains a wide cross-section of some of the best artists and story tellers working in the field today. Big, burly, lascivious, and soft around the edges: welcome to this hyper-masculine world. Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It is an in-depth introduction to nine of the most exciting comic artists making work for a gay male audience in Japan.
Jiraiya, Seizoh Ebisubashi and Kazuhide Ichikawa are three of the irresistibly seductive, internationally renowned artists featured in Massive, as well as recognisable to a British audience – Gengoroh Tagame. The book uses frank interviews, photography, and some considered analysis to give us intimate insights into the artists along with many examples of their illustrations and seriously hot, sensual, and sexy manga.
Massive also includes the groundbreaking, titillating, heaving sweaty and in your face erotic work of gay manga luminaries Takeshi Matsu, Fumi Miyabi, Inu Yoshi, Gai Mizuki and comic essayist Kumada Poohsuke. Certainly worth a repeated rummage.
You can buy these super cool Massive manga inspired clothes here, worth a gander just for the photo’s.
This is the first hand account and an instructive, compelling personal experience of American lesbian feminist Chivvis Moore and her travels around the Arabic world. It’s actually two books in one, the first half of the book taking us on her reason for leaving American for a year in the late 1970’s, the sudden arrival in an Arabic culture and the slow and sure adaption to a way of life not as alien, oppressive and savage as we are all taught, but one where liberty, life and community have different meanings with different expectations and demands from the people who live with each other. Moore’s insights can be academic but there are moments in the book which are transcendental; her understanding of the way that creative people, craft and create a healthy culture and how being able to make, meld and elaborate our physical word gives us meaning as people, parents and citizens is a challenge to the manufactured mutterings of consumption that the western world offers us as meaning.
Her arguments are compelling, her being a carpenter is a running theme in the book and she works words as she does wood, anticipating knots and grain and knowing how the beauty of something will be revealed when hands have worn a groove. I liked her prose; it’s very comfortable to read even when the subject matter is anything but. It handles stress well, her voice is quiet but persistent. There are plenty of personal moment that convince about the dignity and acceptance of a western feminist lesbian living in an apparently repressive society, but Moore is no idealist, she keeps her keen eye on real politic.
Read more about Moore and the development of this book on her website here:
The second half of the book takes us into a decade of Moore working in Palestine and confronts us with searing observational honestly. Here Moore bears witness to living in Palestine under an increasingly repressive Israeli occupation and what ever your political views you can’t help but be shocked and moved by these eyewitness accounts of the day-to-day horrors of Palestinian life and simple joys grabbed from adversity.
Not an easy read, but not an easy subject, Moore gives us her own unfazed clarity of view and guides us into the heart of the community and the way it embraces and occasionally judges her. Perhaps this would have been better as two separate books but it’s been a long time since I’ve read a narrative with such force that has made me think so hard about received wisdoms.
Avast, me hearties! Board the pirate ship Theatre Royal for a day of swashbuckling.
Photo: by Sam Stephenson
Go along and join the pirate captain and her crew at the Theatre Royal as they get ready to set sail for an adventure on the high seas.
A host of piratical fun and games await you on stage, back stage and understage – learn how to splice the main brace, dig for treasure, sing sea shanties and most importantly how to say ‘aaarrrr’!
Go dressed up or create your costume when you arrive for this exciting day of tall stories and short planks with a buccaneers lunch included; all children get to take a pirate swag bag home too.
Leadain has interviewed ten divorced (from their wives) out gay men with kids who are living in the UK today. Their various stories and reflections, excuses, reasons, decisions and insights allow us to grasp some idea of the immense difficulties of these men’s lives and the huge impact their extraditing themselves from an unsuitable marriage caused them, their wives and their kids.
There are one or two filler chapters thrown in about education around the law and the way other parts of the world treat gay men but mostly this is a collection of direct personal interviews with a feeling of confession about them, slightly voyeuristic, not wholly sympathetic but always honest and frank. Although I found myself putting the book down in annoyance with some of the answers, the books certainly allows us into the minds of gay men who hide their sexuality, marry women and chose to have families and the myriad ways they then deal, sometimes successfully, with the huge changes that coming out causes. It seems , at the end of the day – ironically enough – that honesty and respect seems to make things work better, although none of the men are challenged on why they may not have chosen this route earlier, but this is not the point of this book and the interview style allowed these diverse men to speak their own stories in their own words.
See more about the book and an interesting interview with the author David Leadain here:
With a candid foreword about his own experiences from Coronation Street actor (and gay dad) Charlie Condou this is a timely book reflecting the experiences of a sizable part of our complex LGBT world.
We all known a gay dad…it’s time to understand them a little more.
Thousands of sun seekers are expected to flock to the city this weekend, to enjoy a sunny August Bank Holiday on the beach.
While the city welcomes visitors, Brighton & Hove City Council staff are keen to make sure they return home safely, and leave the beach litter free.
Lifeguards are urging swimmers to take care, while Cityclean staff are reminding beachgoers not to take glass onto the beach, to follow the rules for barbecues and make full use of the litter and recycling bins.
Follow these few rules to enjoy a happy and safe Bank Holiday weekend:
Sea safety:
♦ Only swim within the areas patrolled by lifeguards. These are clearly marked with red and yellow flags.
♦ Even on a calm day sea currents, undertow or a sudden change in weather can create life threatening hazards without warning.
♦ The sea temperature can also be deceptive. Never go into the sea after drinking alcohol.
♦ Never jump off any structure directly into the sea – you can never be sure how deep the water is below.
♦ Swim close to the shore, do not swim to far out
♦ Ask for advice from the beach lifeguards
♦ Swim with a friend and stay together
Barbecues on the beach:
You are welcome to light a barbecue after 6pm on quieter areas of the beach,
However, barbecues must not be used:
♦ Between the two piers in Brighton
♦ Between Hove Street and Fourth Avenue (this is the area between the end of Hove Lawns and King Alfred Leisure Centre car park)
♦ On Hove Lawns or its surrounding areas such as behind the beach huts, on the promenade or its surrounding walls
♦ Leaving hot stones or charcoal on the beach is dangerous. Remember to clear up after you leave and use the special barbecue bins provided by the council
Never put barbecues in waste or recycling bins, even if you think they have stopped smouldering.
Litter:
The council will be putting out extra recycling and litter bins along the seafront and even on the beach itself to make it easy to dispose of litter. Look out for special bins for disposing of barbecues.
♦ Recycling bins take cans, tins, plastic bottles, card and paper. There are separate recycling bins for glass.
♦ Do not take glass on to the beach. Smashed glass is dangerous and difficult to clean up from among the pebbles.
Cllr Gill Mitchell
Councillor Gill Mitchell, chair of the city’s environment committee, said:“People love coming here to relax and soak up the atmosphere and the beach is one of our greatest attractions.
“We want to encourage people to enjoy our beaches but also take pride in them and help us keep them safe, clean and tidy for everyone to enjoy.
“We would urge swimmers to stay within the areas patrolled by our lifeguards and never swim after drinking alcohol.
“Cityclean do a great job keeping spaces clean and collecting rubbish, but if everyone picked up just one piece of litter it would greatly help keep down the volumes we see left behind following a hot weekend.”
It’s easy to forget how unusual Dusty was for her time; being white, lesbian and having a dark and borderline sadistic sense of humour that gradually evolved into the rollercoaster emotional turbulence that we associate with her later life and relationships but she was also wholly her own women.
The first female pop performer to come out as bisexual and only a year into her career she was deported from South Africa for refusing to play to a segregated audience. Strong, determined, principled and talented Dusty never knew how to do dull.
Bartlett has done some seriously good research and brings us lots of new material from friends, lovers colleagues and people who knew the performer and the woman well, there’s also a lot of well placed re-contextualised material which gives us familiar stories from a fresh perspective, particularly around her addictions and struggles with her sexuality, something which she grappled with all her life, and her peculiar attraction for throwing food.
However, this book also takes us back, far back into her own childhood and early days, when she stunned America and the UK with her soulful clipped sophisticated music, shows us a delicate talented girl grasping her potential and steering herself a clear path into the world class performer still impressive now almost 50 years later.
With a strong local connection recognized by having a city bus names after her, with her family ( and her for a while) living in Wilbury Road Hove and often being seen around town in her pink Thunderbird with her black girlfriend, you can read more of her Hove & Brighton history here.
Never simple, always passionate this is a seriously good biography for all lovers of Ms Springfield.
Artwork by University of Leicester researchers features in new exhibition as part of Liverpool Biennial art festival.
Artwork by University of Leicester researchers is to be featured in a new exhibition exploring gender relations in night life drinking spaces.
The piece of art, in the form of a beer label, will be on display as part of the Liverpool Biennial art festival in an exhibition called ‘Gender Dilemmas: Negotiating Femininity and Masculinity in Contemporary Night Life’ which runs from August 26-28 in Road Studios in Liverpool.
The exhibition, curated by artist and senior researcher Amanda Marie Atkinson, aims to draw attention to public drinking environments and commercialised neo-liberal contexts in which contemporary femininity and masculinity are performed, positioned and reconfigured.
It will explore a number of important issues present in such heteronormative spaces; the pornification of night life and the mainstreaming of pole/lap dancing clubs; young women’s negotiation of intoxication in the performance of the ‘hyper-sexual’ self; the sexist nature of alcohol advertising; sexual content; alcohol hegemonic masculinity and ‘stag nights’; and the public bathroom as a public/private sphere in which the gender binary is reinforced.
Image: University of Leicester
The beer label, designed by Dr Clare Gunby from the University of Leicester’s Department of Criminology in collaboration with Dr Anna Carline in the Leicester Law School and Stuart Taylor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Liverpool John Moores University, will feature in the donation bar at the opening of the exhibition.
The bar compliments one piece in the exhibition which comments on the sexist nature of alcohol advertising e.g. sexist beer labels such as the House of Commons bar favourite ‘Top Totty’.
It will consist of alcohol with alternative marketing, produced by women and the feminist community (including men) and all money raised from the bar will be donated to The Homeless Period, a voluntary organisation providing vulnerable women in Liverpool with sanitary items.
Dr Clare Gunby
Dr Clare Gunby, Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Leicester, said:“We hope that our contribution to the exhibition will highlight the tensions between sexually aggressive alcohol advertising, victim-focused crime prevention messages and the emotional labour women invest in trying to reduce their perceived vulnerability, when out in the evening.”
Dr Anna Carline
Dr Anna Carline, Senior Lecturer in the Leicester Law School at the University of Leicester, added:“The exhibition is a great opportunity to engage with the public about the gendered dynamics operating within bar and club spaces and to do that in a non-traditional academic way.”
Event: Exhibition: Gender Dilemmas: Negotiating Femininity and Masculinity in Contemporary Night Life’
Where: Road Studios, 69 Victoria St, Liverpool L1 6DE
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