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Stars of stage and screen to celebrate 50 years of Rockinghorse

For one night only, on September 24, Brighton’s Theatre Royal plays host to stars of stage and TV for a very special, gala variety performance, in the presence of The Mayor of Brighton and Hove and the High Sheriff of East Sussex.

Sunday Night at the Theatre Royal will be celebrating fifty years of Rockinghorse Children’s Charity and raising money for Sussex Giving for Sussex Charities.

Starring the UK’s leading female impersonator, the fabulous and multi talented Ceri Dupree, X factor heart-throb, singer and model, Sam Callahan, and Britain’s Got Talent semi-finalist Eva Iglesias, this traditional variety show has something for everyone including a live band.

Sam Callahan
Sam Callahan

Sam Callahan who had the girls swooning on the 2013 series of X Factor has been carefully carving a career in music and business for himself since leaving the show. Still just 22 years old, Sam has been writing his own music since he was 14. He worked with Gerry Halliwell at 19 Management before his big break on X Factor, he now has his own record label and is presently working on his new music video.

He says X Factor was “an essential part of my growth as an artist” and he would recommend the experience to everyone. His musical influences are Ed Sheeran and Shawn Mendes and in his set he sings everything from Ben E. King to Stevie Wonder.

Outside of music Sam has his own health and fitness business and takes his own personal fitness very seriously. He has a body to die for, is always happy to get his kit off to show it off and has appeared naked on the front cover of GT. He loves dogs, supports Celtic and West Ham and while his romances with the ladies have kept him in the tabloids, this ex barman from Essex is essentially an old head on sensible young shoulders.

Sunday Night at the Theatre Royal will be directed by West End and touring theatre Director and Choreographer Carole Todd and produced by Rob Reaks and David Bell.

The show on Sunday, September 24 is sponsored by locally-based businesses including Brighton and Hove Buses, Reveries Events, Lloyds Banking Group, SkyFall Hove, Marketing Actually and The Best of Brighton and Hove.


Event: Sunday Night at the Theatre Royal

Where: Theatre Royal, New Road, Brighton

When: Sunday, September 24, 2017

 Time: 7.30pm

Cost: Tickets from £15 – £55

To book tickets online, click here:

Or telephone: 0844 871 7615

Ceri Dupree
Ceri Dupree

Small LGBT+ groups hold first AGM

Working to Connect – The LGBT Small Groups Network held its first public Annual General Meeting on Saturday June 10 at Dorset Gardens Methodist Church.

Cllr. Pete West, Mayor of Brighton & Hove 2016-17 opened the widely advertised meeting.

Working to Connect brings together smaller local LGBT and HIV community groups and charities in order to network, work in collaboration, support each other, and to develop organisational capacity.

Over the last year Working to Connect has also delivered infrastructure support to member groups in partnership with Community Works.

Seventeen groups are currently members, with an open invitation for others to apply for membership. Along with the business of the meeting, an account was given of the last year’s work which has been diverse, needs-led, and highly beneficial for participants of the network and the wider community.

Smaller LGBT+ and HIV community groups and charities deliver a range of much needed, effective, well used services and activities; not provided anywhere else for the LGBT+ community.

They are fundamentally based on the fullest participation of volunteers from the community they serve, collectively giving thousands of hours each year of hard work, professionalism, good-will, commitment, and enthusiasm.

Cllr Pete West
Cllr Pete West

Reflecting on the achievements of the network, and the essential need for smaller community groups and charities, Cllr. Pete West, said: The Network is delivering great work across the City, bringing together the smaller LGBT and HIV groups – learning, gaining support from each other and delivering important services. 

This gives the small groups a bigger  collective voice, which is especially important.  

It is National Volunteers Week, and we should cherish volunteers. People get so much positive personal experience from volunteering. Working To Connect actively supports the Council’s Volunteering Strategy so I would like to thank you for that.  I wish you all continued success for the future.”

For more details about Working to Connect and member groups, how to join, and news from the AGM, click here:

PREVIEW: New Steine Heroes Exhibition to stage charity preview for Rainbow Fund

New Steine Hotel in Kemptown will hold a charity preview evening of their latest exhibition Heroes on Monday, July 31 to celebrate the start of Brighton Pride week.

During the evening, 10% of any art sold will be donated to the Rainbow Fund. There will also be a raffle with prizes including a three-course meal at the New Steine Bistro and an overnight stay at the New Steine Hotel. Drinks and canapes will be served.

The artist, Charly N’doumbe, a student at the Beaux-Arts Biarritz and the Fine Arts of Monaco, uses nudes both feminine and masculine in his work while employing techniques such as photography, drawing and sculpture. Charly produces pieces of work combining all three mediums to magnify the body’s natural beauty in both figurative and abstract forms.

The exhibition runs till September 17.


Event: Charity preview: Charly N’Doumbe HEROES Exhibition

Where: New Steine Hotel, 10-11 New Steine, Brighton BN2 1PB

When: Monday, July 31

Time: 6pm – 9pm

 

‘Cowboys and Queens’ raffle raises £300 for Rainbow Fund

Cowboys and Queens cabaret dinner and dance at the Old Ship Hotel on June 23, raises £300 for Rainbow Fund from raffle.

Following a first class three course steak dinner, Kara Van Park whipped the audience into life with some cowboy numbers including Oklahoma before line dancing instructors took to the floor, to put the line dancing virgins present, through their paces.

Most people attending had entered into the spirit of the evening, dressing mainly as cowboys with a few Queens for good measure. There were plenty of bare chests and legs on show, all adding to the glamour and excitment of the occasion.

Chris Gull
Chris Gull

Chris Gull, Chair of the Rainbow Fund, said: The Rainbow fund is delighted to receive the donation of £300 raised from the raffle held during the Cowboys and Queens event recently. This demonstrates, yet again, the vital role that we play in ensuring that funds raised by community events are distributed fairly, to support the local groups and organisations that support people from our LGBT+ and HIV communities. Our thanks to everyone involved.”

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Photos courtesy of: Tyrone Darling and Graham Hobson @captaincockroachphotographer

Brighton & Hove Council issue statement on fire safety in council owned high rise buildings

Following the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower on June 14, Brighton and Hove City Council have issues the following statement on fire safety in council owned high-rise buildings.

“Following the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower last Wednesday our thoughts continue to be with all those affected.

“As of Monday 19 June, the council has taken a number of actions to reassure concerned local residents that our highest priority always has been and always will be their safety.

The Housing Fire Health & Safety Board, which is made up senior housing officers and fire officers, met the morning after the fire. The group met again on Friday and will continue to meet moving forward.  

“On Friday a text message was sent to tenants of high-rise council housing with cladding, and council housing staff personally hand delivered an information letter to tenants and leaseholders living in those buildings. Over the coming weeks we’ll be working with Tenants’ and Residents’ Associations to keep everyone regularly informed and updated.

“We work closely with East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service and all council-owned high-rise blocks of flats are inspected every year to ensure they meet current safety standards. All our high-rise properties were inspected in 2016 and we have already completed 7 this year.

“There are 43 council high-rise blocks of flats in the city, 20 of these have full cladding. We have already started the process of conducting additional precautionary fire safety assessments on our high-rise buildings and shortly we’ll be conducting detailed and independent surveys of all high-rise properties prioritising those with cladding first. We will then decide if specific actions need to be taken.  

“Together with East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service, we’ll be monitoring closely all information on the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Over the coming days, weeks and months, we will continuously review our own properties and practices in light of the outcomes of the investigation, official government advice and the public inquiry called by the Prime Minister. The council is co-operating fully with the UK government as part of this nationwide inquiry.”

The cladding used on Grenfell Tower has not been used on any high-rise blocks of flats owned by Brighton and Hove City Council.

The council has produced an FAQ fact sheet based on common questions asked by their tenants and we continue to regularly update it as new information becomes available and new questions are asked.

To read online, click here:

OPINION: Transitioning with Sugar – ‘You need to be more ladylike’

Those 6 words. Those 6 words that I have heard over and over again in many different guises since I began transition feed into a cis narrative in which I neither belong, nor wish to.

Ms Sugar Swan
Ms Sugar Swan

The OED defines ‘lady’ as ‘a polite or formal way of referring to a woman’. Well, I am a woman, so therefore, I am a lady, and I am ladylike.

Of course, this is not what people mean when they tell me I should be more ‘ladylike’. What they mean is that I should modify my behaviour to fit their blinkered ideas of what it means to be a woman, and I am done modifying my behaviour to suit society. Herein lies the problem. The whole ridiculous idea that I should act more ladylike is fed to me by the same people who told me that I was too camp when I was read by society as a man. I used to be told that when I walked, I ‘minced’, now that exact same walk is read as feminine, which of course, it always was as I am female. It’s just people’s perspective that has changed, nothing else.

“For the cisnarrative to police what the trans experience should be and look like is absolutely absurd”

At the other end of the spectrum flatulence was acceptable when read as male but now frowned upon when read as female. The whole premise is a completely toxic one and I, along with everyone else in society both cis and trans, are free to express themselves as they feel fit. I will not police my characteristics to fit into peoples neat boxes and neither should anyone else. It is an outdated cisnormative narrative that tells us that men should act one way and women act another – and that is the very heart of the problem. It is acting. As children, girls and boys have historically been encouraged to ‘act’ differently to each other. Girls are told to modify their behaviour, to be quieter, to not stand out so much, whereas boys are given a free pass to act boisterously. This is unhealthy right from the start and only feeds into the gap between gender behaviour expectations.

I was raised to be a boy, but I wasn’t one. I was certainly never boisterous, noisy, loud nor bouncy and highly excited as a child. I was the opposite. I behaved naturally how the girls were told to behave. I was quiet, shy, and preferred to play quietly with the girls. This, in turn, lead to bullying which then taught me to try to ‘act’ – there’s that word again – like a boy to minimise the bullying. This acting that I had to do all my life is deeply ingrained in me and naturally became part of the complex fabric of who I am. It leads me to my current conundrum where I am by nature very feminine but I carry over some of those masculine traits I picked up to try to protect myself when young, like being loud and standing out. This confuses people as they see a very feminine woman with some very masculine traits and they somehow think that it is their place to correct my behaviour and ‘help’ me ‘act’ (I’m getting angrier every time I type it) more like a woman. I am all the woman I always have been and always will be, I have absolutely no interest in modifying my behaviour to suit other people’s ideals of what a woman is. I am a woman, a proud woman, and I am enough.

As we enter Trans Pride month I want to remind all of my trans family, men, women, non binary, genderqueer siblings that we are ALL enough. None of us have to modify our behaviour to fit what we think is expected of us. We don’t have to change the way we ‘act’, the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we dress, or have to try to fit in. All our individual gender identities and presentations within the trans umbrella are valid and none of us have to explain ourselves, not to anyone. There is a huge amount of pressure on trans people to conform to what society thinks trans is. Cis people understand us better when we transition from one gender binary to another and we, as the trans community, need to be giving a huge ‘screw you’ to that mentality. 

There is no right or wrong way to be trans, trans is who we are, not how we present. Medical transition is not for every trans person, and nor should it be. Hormonal and surgical binary transition is the goal for many and that’s great. But for those of us who, like myself, may have a different starting point or may have a different end goal are not to be shamed. Trans women do not have to wear make up or dresses and trans men do not have to take on those qualities that boys were encouraged to at school. For the cis narrative to police what the trans experience should be and look like is absolutely absurd. As we approach both Trans and Brighton Pride I ask you, The LGB cis community, not to judge us by your standards. As you start to see more of us out and about celebrating with you over the summer, remember, we are not cis like you. We are not here to be held to your beauty standards, your social norms, your upbringing. We are trans. We are beautiful. We are powerful. We are unique.

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