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Community Works’ rep will ensure HIV community involved in local plans to reduce HIV to zero

A Community Works’ representative will help ensure that the HIV community is involved in plans for the city to work towards becoming the first UK city to reduce HIV to zero.

Gary Pargeter
Gary Pargeter

The Council’s Health & Wellbeing Board have agreed to work towards the goal of zero new HIV infections, zero HIV related deaths, and zero HIV stigma in Brighton and Hove.

This will make Brighton & Hove an HIV fast-track city and the only city in the UK so far, to make this commitment.

The Council is putting together a steering group which will oversee the fast-track city initiative.

Gary Pargeter, the project manager at Lunch Positive, who is Community Works’ new HIV representative will represent Community Works’ members who work with and support people with HIV locally, and will engage with the HIV community to ensure their views and experiences are also taken into account.

A key aspect of the towards zero strategy is also to engage more widely within the voluntary and community sector, and Gary will undertake an important role in this.

Gary said of his new role: “I’m delighted to be representing local voluntary groups and organisations as part of this important initiative. I look forward to ensuring that the local HIV community’s experiences inform the plans and decisions taken by the steering group.”

Sally Polanski
Sally Polanski

Sally Polanski, CEO of Community Works added: “It is excellent news that the Council has agreed to work towards reducing HIV to zero. We are looking forward to Gary representing our members and supporting the HIV community to be involved in this very important initiative.”

Community Works is the local support organisation for community groups, voluntary organisations, charities and social enterprises in Brighton, Hove, Adur and Worthing. Its 35 volunteer representatives share Community Works’ members’ views and knowledge with those responsible for planning and providing local services and projects.

Taking over the role of LGBT community rep from Gary Pargeter, is Reuben Davidson, from Allsorts Youth Project, who will represent Community Works’ members who work with and support LGBT people in the city.

Lunch Positive is a weekly Lunch club who provide a healthy meal each Friday to people who are HIV+.

Allsorts Youth Project supports and empowers young people under 26 who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or unsure (LGBTU) of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.

 

Lunch Positive to screen HIV documentary tonight as part of World Aids Day events

Lunch Positive will host a community screening of the moving HIV documentary We were here, on Wednesday, November 30.

web-600The film is a true story from those in San Francisco who lived through the early days of the AIDS epidemic and for some this will be a reminder and for others an insight.

This community event is part of the 2016 World AIDS Day commemorations and is being planned and put together by the Lunch Positive volunteer team as part of their contributions to World AIDS Day.

Everyone is welcome and the event is free of charge.  Doors will open at 6.45pm with a buffet served before the film starts.  Donations to cover food and venue hire are welcome.

The screening will be at Dorset Gardens Methodist Church, Dorset Gardens, Brighton. Seating is limited and everyone is encouraged to arrive in good time to secure a place.

Permission for this screening has been kindly granted to Lunch Positive by Director David Weissmam and Peccadillo Pictures.

“An edifying must-see that has received accolades at film festivals the world over, We were here is the first film to take a deep and reflective look back at the arrival and impact of a definitive chapter in San Francisco’s queer history. It explores how the City’s inhabitants were affected by, and how they responded to, a calamitous epidemic, opening a window of understanding to those who have only the vaguest notion of what transpired in those years. In the face of adversity they stood strong and united. This is their story.”


What: Community Film Screening for World AIDS Day We Were Here

Where: Lunch Positive at Dorset Gardens Methodist Church, Dorset Gardens, Brighton

When: Wednesday, November 30

Time: Buffet from 6.45pm: Screening at 7.30pm

For more information, click here:

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‘Eyes Wide Open Cinema’ raise money for THT on World AIDS Day

To commemorate World AIDS Day 2016 Eyes Wide Open Cinema is hosting a screening of two films at Duke’s at Komedia.

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Proceeds from the screening will be donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT) a charity working to create a world where people with HIV live healthy lives, free from prejudice and discrimination, and good sexual health is a right and reality for everyone.


BLUE
Director Derek Jarman. UK and Japan 1993. 89 minutes

The final film from legendary British director Derek Jarman is a profoundly moving reflection on the mental and physical and emotional strain caused by Jarman’s terminal illness. Completed just a year before his death from AIDS-related illness, the film takes the monochrome glow of a blue-filled frame to represent Jarman’s fading eyesight.

The script, recited by actors and by Jarman himself, alternates poetry and narrative prose around different meanings and interpretations of the colour blue, autobiographical episodes and invocations to a character called Blue. An intimate and intensely affecting piece of cinematic experimentation with spellbinding consequences.


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Director Isaac Julien. UK 1988. 14 mins

An unashamedly erotic and stylish video which reclaims some of the territory seized by the new puritans of the 1980s. The first part contains lyrical images of death and loss, while the second half is assertive and celebratory, accompanied by a funk-heavy soundtrack.


Event: Screening of Blue + This is Not An AIDS Advertisement

Where: Duke’s at Komedia, 44-47 Gardner St, Brighton BN1 1UN

When: Thursday, December 1

Time: 9pm

Cost: Tickets £8-£11

To book tickets online, click here:

Brighton Kemptown MP says “HIV stigma: Not Retro, Just Wrong”

On World AIDS Day Simon Kirby MP will join forces with NAT (National Aids Trust) to say “HIV stigma: Not Retro, Just Wrong.”

Simon Kirby MP
Simon Kirby MP takes HIV test at Terrence Higgins Trust in Brighton

World AIDS Day is tomorrow, December 1, and this year Simon Kirby MP for Brighton Kemptown & Peacehaven is asking people to join the fight against HIV stigma.

Although HIV treatment and prevention are so much better than they were 30 years ago, public attitudes have not progressed as far or as fast.

Stigma remains an unacceptable blight on the lives of people living with HIV. It negatively affects their lives, and can prevent them from accessing treatment and can stop people at risk from getting an HIV test.

Unlike many of the products and styles we love to bring back from the 80s and 90s, stigma is something that should be left in the past. HIV stigma is not retro, it’s just wrong.

Simon says: “I am proud to wear a red ribbon to mark this year’s World AIDS Day. I want to send the message that there is no place for HIV stigma in Brighton Kemptown & Peacehaven. I am joining forces with the National AIDS Trust to encourage people in Brighton Kemptown & Peacehaven to visit www.worldaidsday.org and find out the facts about HIV. There are more than 100,000 people living with HIV in the UK. We must do more to prevent stigma from disrupting their lives. Together we can put an end to this senseless prejudice.”

Deborah Gold
Deborah Gold

Deborah Gold, Chief Executive of the National AIDS Trust, added: “World AIDS Day is an opportunity for people everywhere to unite in the fight against HIV and to show their support for people living with HIV. I am pleased to see Simon recently took an HIV test at THT in Brighton to support National HIV testing week and THT in their efforts to increase HIV testing in Brighton.”

 

LETTER TO EDITOR: Proud2Be responds to BBC new article

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Devon-based Proud2Be the social enterprise that supports lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, questioning, intersex &/or asexual+ (LGBTQIA+) people, in Devon & beyond responds to “Christian school worker Victoria Allen in gay marriage row” published on November 28, 2016.

“We at Proud2Be, a Devon based lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or trans+ (LGBT+) organisation would like to respond to the BBC News Article “Christian school worker Victoria Allen in gay marriage row” published on November 28, 2016.

“Although we do believe all people have the right to their opinions, Vicky Allen is employed to support the school in providing a fair and equal education to all students, including those who may identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual &/or trans+.

“Unfortunately, the message that is being sent out to every young person in Brannel School is that it is OK to believe that some people should be denied equal rights and protection under the law because of other people’s opinions of them. This is a message that we will continue to challenge and counterbalance at Proud2Be. 

“Too often we hear religious freedom used as a way of justifying beliefs, that in many other contexts would be regarded as bigoted and in congruent with the values of a school in 2016.

“The Ofsted framework now explicitly directs inspectors to look at a school’s efforts to tackle bullying and prejudicial language based on sexual orientation and/or gender identity. This includes but is not limited to Equal Marriage.

“Laws are changing but often society can be slow to catch up and that is one of the reasons why we are very proud to be one of 12 organisations in the National Anti-Homophobic/Biphobic/Transphobic Bullying Alliance. The alliance will deliver an innovative school’s project over the next 2 and a half years and will be led by LGBT Consortium and funded by the Government Equalities Office.”

To read original BBC story, click here:

To find out more about this Bulling Alliance initiative click here:

For more information about Proud2Be, click here:

BOOK REVIEW: Madonna 66

Starlight, Star bright.

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In June 1983 a well-known New York casting director and producer, asked her photographer son Richard
 to drop everything and head over to Manhattan’s Lower East Side to take polaroids of a young and upcoming performer.

The production team was preparing a modern-day treatment of the classic fairy tale Cinderella and in this New York City fable that would satirise the rock music world, the central character was to be re-named ‘Cinde Rella’, perhaps one of the reasons the film was never made. But the buzz around the project was that the lead was to be played by an emerging dance music artist with a couple of moderate hits to her name: Madonna Ciccone.

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Six weeks before the release of her eponymous debut album in late July 1983, Richard Corman photographed the 24-year old singer in a range of different set-ups 
at her brother Christopher’s apartment. And although the young woman in the centre of each shot is instantly familiar, taken some fifteen months before her infamous garter revealing floor roll at the inaugural MTV music awards which would propel her to the top of the US music charts for more than twenty years, there’s a excitable naivety that has in more recent years been replaced by an all-knowing dominance. An expectation of everything yet to come.

For over thirty years Cormon believed he had lost the polaroids until whilst on a recent apartment move in New York and a review of many unlabeled boxes, he rediscovered the collection. Produced here, quite simply are the contents of that almost lost forever bundle of 66 photographs.

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Richard Corman’s photography has been described by Ken Burns, documentarian and director as an “artistic vision dedicated to the highest aspirations of human endeavor…the photographs record in big moments and small, among the famous and ordinary, the gifted and challenged, larger truths relevant to all of us.”

As a portrait photographer, Corman has worked with a thrilling breadth of subjects from Nobel Peace Prize recipient Nelson Mandela to esteemed actors at the top of their profession including Robert De Niro, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Tilda Swinton.

Corman, a native New Yorker had unique working relationships with various artists before they reached international recognition, including Madonna, Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in the early 80s, all of whom would later shape their own genres within their artistic fields beyond recognition.

Published by independents NJG, ‘Madonna 66’, a must for any Madonna fan is a ‘limited edition’ publication of 500 ‘strictly limited’ signed and numbered by Richard Corman with a signed print (£100) and a further 1000 books signed and numbered (£60).

Featuring all 66 previously unpublished Polaroid images of Madonna (a selection shown here), shot on Friday June 17, 1983, the 66 accompany a 14-page film treatment ‘Cinde Rella’ all 164 pages housed in a flesh pink hardback cover, bound by a
 2 inch thick black rubber band symbolic of Madonna’s rubber bracelets, worn in the published collection.

For more info and how to get your hands on a copy, click here:

 

Gay Pride returns to Brazil’s Olympic city

Celebrate all things LGBT+ this December at Rio de Janeiro’s notorious Gay Pride Parade.

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The Olympics may be over but the celebrations continue as Rio de Janeiro prepares to host its 21st LGBT+ Pride Parade.

Rio de Janeiro is considered a top destination for LGBT travellers, voted in recent years as the most attractive gay destination in the world by tripoutgaytravel.com

Winding along the vibrant Copacabana beach front, Pride will take place this year on Sunday, December 11, and activities celebrating LGBT+ culture will take place in Rio for seven days.

The theme for 2016’s Pride is ‘I am my gender identity’, encouraging people to recognise that identity is a choice that must be respected.

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Rio de Janeiro’s Parade is the country’s second largest LGBT+ parade, after Sao Paulo’s, which boasts the largest gay pride parade in the world.

The Rio parade will involve a 2km long procession along Copacabana beach, which hundreds of thousands of people are expected to join.

Voted in 2016 as the most attractive gay destination in the world, Rio de Janeiro is the entry gate for most LGBT tourists that visit Brazil.

Home to stunning natural beauty and iconic attractions including Christ the Redeemer and Carnival, Rio is packed with travellers from all around the world, all year round.

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Ipanema beach is the primary meeting point for the LGBT community, located opposite the Rua Farme de Amoedo, Rio’s gay strip in the sophisticated neighbourhood of Ipanema.

During Carnival there are many raves and exclusive parties for the gay community, predominantly located in Lapa, the trendy neighbourhood and heart of nightlife in downtown Rio.

For more information about Rio Pride, click here:

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REVIEW: Blood Brothers: Theatre Royal

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Having seen it a number of times, I’m always impressed how Willy Russell’s musical is always a brilliantly captivating experience despite its potential drawbacks. Its songs aren’t exactly great – though Marilyn Monroe and Tell Me It’s Not True always hit the mark; its plot is slightly contrived and very manipulative; it seems to have remained unchanged in its staging for decades (an evil part of me wants them to bring in a radical director who will give it an all female cast and set it during the last years of the Weimar Republic). But despite all this its finale brings a tear to the eye every damn time.

Set in Liverpool in the ’70s, the it tells the story of Mrs Johnstone (Lyn Paul) a poor Catholic woman who has seven kids and another on the way. Except this new one, according to her gynaecologist, is actually twins.

She had budgeted to just about scrape by when the new baby arrives, but her scrimping won’t extend to feeding two mouths. She has a job cleaning house of local posho Mrs Lyons (Sarah Jane Buckley) who can’t have kids herself and can’t adopt as her husband is dead set against raising a child who doesn’t share his DNA. So Mrs Johnstone has one too many kids, Mrs Lyons one too few and, fortuitously, her husband is out of the country for nine months…

Lyons persuades Mrs Johnstone to hand over one of her children. The action then moves on seven years and Mickey (Josh Capper), the son who stayed with his natural mother, becomes best friends with neighbourhood toff Eddie (Mark Hutchinson).

They innocently play together, pronouncing themselves blood brothers, little realising how apt that term is. But as they grown older their lives diverge on different tracks determined by class until they both fall in love with the same childhood sweetheart Linda (Alison Crawford).

Paul gives a truly committed performance carefully balancing her character’s toughness and vulnerability. When she tells Mrs Lyons to choose one of her children but ‘just don’t tell me which one’, the despair in her voice is heartbreaking. Capper fully realises the descent of a likeable young man brought down due to prison, pills, unemployment and the seemingly malign hand of fate. Dean Chisnall’s narrator – perhaps the visible manifestation of this fate – has the requisite amount of steely non-attachment; when he occasionally hints at some sympathy it therefore becomes more affecting.

Blood Brothers is more than a conventional weepie though. Underlying it all is an anger at the the iniquities of the class system. Its political analysis is not exactly subtle – nothing about the show is subtle – but if you understand that subtlety is not necessarily a virtue you’ll be won over by this big-hearted, tough-minded, hugely entertaining evening.

Continues at the Theatre Royal, Brighton until December 3.

For more information and tickets click here.

RadioReverb to broadcast HIV Happy Hour special for World AIDS Day on December 1

RadioReverb, Brighton’s community radio station, to broadcast special edition of their HIV Happy Hour radio show to support World Aids Day on Thursday December 1.

Martin Chattfield the host of HIV Happy Hour
Martin Chattfield the host of HIV Happy Hour

HIV Happy Hour is a magazine style show which launched as a world first on RadioReverb just over one year ago.

Since launching it has become one of RadioReverb’s most listened to shows with the podcast being downloaded from here in the UK to as far as the United States, The Philippines, Australia and Zimbabwe.

Guests have included a cross-section of people who have been affected by HIV, including heterosexual males, females and gay men. The show also interviews professionals who give advice, such as Duncan Churchill, a Brighton HIV consultant from The Lawson Unit at the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

The main aim of the show has always been to challenge the negative thinking and image that many people living with HIV hold about themselves, and to inform and educate listeners in a light hearted and fun way about HIV.

The show openly discusses how guests have coped living with the virus, and promotes positive steps to finding help, advice and comfort. 

Over the last fourteen months, HIV Happy Hour has developed it’s “soundtrack of my life” format which asks weekly guests to talk about the songs which mean so much to them since learning they were HIV positive.

In line with activities around the globe, World Aids Day will be celebrated on HIV Happy Hour with a recorded interview with the team at Lunch Positive, the HIV lunch club, there will be a specially recorded  vignette about World Aids day and why it’s important to raise awareness each year, and this week’s feature “sound track of my life” will come from local resident John Russell, who is a long time survivor of HIV (over 30 years) who was also an old friend of Freddie Mercury.

Martin Chatfield who hosts the live show every week, said: “I feel really proud of the show as it’s the only one of its kind in the world. I’ve learnt so much about living with HIV and as everyone’s journey is different it means we can give out a lot of advice to people listening whether they are HIV or not.

To listen to the HIV Happy Hour World Aids Day special, tune into RadioReverb 97.2 FM on Thursday December 1, between 7-8pm and for regular shows every Thursday at the same time, with repeats on Tuesday’s at 12 Noon and each Wednesday at 9am.

HIV Happy Hour is made possible with a grant from the Rainbow Fund, who give grants to LGBT/HIV organisations providing effective services to LGBT people in Brighton and Hove.

To catch up on some of the back catalogue of shows on the new listen again button, click here:  

To hear RadioReverb on DAB or by logging on click here: 

 

Celebrating the city’s dancers – Dance Active returns for a fifth year

Dance Active, Brighton & Hove’s annual community dance platform, returns for a 5th year bringing 300 dancers to the stage for an evening of hip hop, flamenco, Charleston and much more.

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Delivered by Brighton & Hove City Council’s Active for Life team, the show will take place on Sunday, December 4 at The Brighton Centre at 5.30pm.

The event will once again be compered by multi award-winning hip hop dance teacher, JP Omari who will introduce 25 groups to the stage to perform an impressive array of dance styles.

As well as welcoming back Spiral Sussex’s Flashback Dance Crew, Active for Life are working with Rounded Rhythm to make a piece for Dance Inc., a group of young people with disabilities.

This year will also feature the launch of the Public Health team’s Strong Steady campaign, which encourages adults aged 50+ across the city to improve their strength and balance in order to stay fit and healthy as they get older.

The Active for Life’s Dancing for Health group will demonstrate a dance routine which will then be taught to groups across the city in spring, resulting in a mass performance at the TAKEPART launch in June 2017.

Alongside the performances there will be an information point where details about a whole range of dance and health and well-being opportunities across the city will be provided.

Cllr Julie Cattell
Cllr Julie Cattell

Cllr Julie Cattell, deputy chair of Economic Development & Culture committee, said: “Dance Active is a wonderful evening which brings together the dance community so they can showcase their talents and encourage people to take up dance.

“It’s important to stay active and joining a dance fitness session is a perfect way for all ages and abilities to achieve this.

“Our Active for Life team, and the groups and partners they work with, put in so much enthusiasm and energy to create a fantastic event and every year we look forward to seeing what they’ve achieved.”

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Event: Dance Active

Where: Brighton Centre (Syndicate Wing)

When: Sunday, December 4

Time: 5.30pm

Cost: Tickets for the event will cost £5

To book tickets online, click here:

For more information about Active for Life, click here:

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