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PREVIEW: X Factor’s Sam Callahan set to release new single

The Singer songwriter is set to release his latest single Say something and music video on the May 11.

THE song follows Callahan’s debut single Burns like fire in 2017, and will be his second since his run on X factor in 2013, where he came 6th.

“The essence behind the track stems from a relationship that never fully developed, because neither party had the guts to truly express how they felt. Subsequently, if two people were brave enough to speak out and ‘say something’, there could have been a different outcome,” Callahan says about the upcoming track’s inspiration.

Callahan is set to perform alongside fellow X factor alumni Leon Mallet on May 12 in Nuneaton, UK, after touring in Canada this April, to support the release of the song.

He will also make an appearance at the Kiltwalk charity event in Glasgow, on April 28 and 29.

Receiving airplay from BBC in March earlier this year, the song has been described as an “emotionally charged pop banger”, and will be released via label Mean recordings.

The track is available to pre-order now on iTunes – then set for release on May 11, along with an attractive new music video, shot in the iconic Koreatown in Toronto, Canada.

Annual Easter Bonnet Parade raises £1,883.66 for Rainbow Fund

The annual Easter Bonnet Parade and Charity Drag Races organised between the Bedford Tavern and Grosvenor Bar in Hove, drew a huge crowd to Little Western Street on Easter Sunday.

AN amazing £1,883.66 was raised for the Rainbow Fund to distribute through their independent grants program to LGBT/HIV groups and organisations providing effective front line services to LGBT+ people in Brighton & Hove.

Adam Brooks owner of the Bedford Tavern, said: “Thank you to everyone who turned up, especially those who placed bets, bought raffle tickets and put money in the collection buckets. The aim of the day is to raise money to help as many local good causes via the Rainbow Fund. Huge thanks to everyone who helped and donated prizes for the raffle. Congratulations to Chelsea Flower-Show for winning the prize for best bonnet. It was an incredible bonnet made of fresh flowers that was illuminated at night – stunning! Congratulations also to Scottish Dick for winning the Drag King race and Dragasaurus for winning the Drag Queen races. 

Finally thanks to Brighton Sea Serpents, Danny Dwyer and his bucket shakers, Sally and my mate Sue Coleman who was like a machine! Selling bets, raffle tickets, bingo tickets, shaking buckets…… Sue you are a star! Thank you!”

 

Brighton Bear Weekend add new colours to range of t-shirts

To celebrate the arrival of Spring, Brighton Bear Weekend (BBW) add two new colours to their range of T-shirts – Forest Green and Navy.

This year’s T-shirt logo is designed by the popular Italian artist Bobo-Bear with sizes available from small to 4XL.

The T-shirts cost £14 and are available at Prowler in St James Street, Brighton or to buy online, click here:

The popular BBW event takes place this year from June 14-17 and will be raising money for the Rainbow Fund, who give grants to LGBT/HIV organisations delivering effective front line services to LGBT+ people in Brighton and Hove.

For a full line-up of events over the BBW weekend, click here:


Wristbands costing just £6 will give you a range of discounts over the weekend including:

  • 10% off all drinks at Amsterdam Bar all weekend (Thursday 14 to Sunday, June 17)
  • £2 off entry at Uproar at Envy (Friday, June 15)
  • £2 off entry at Woofer at Latest Music Bar (Saturday, June 16)
  • £2 off entry and priority entry at SubWoofer at Subline (Saturday, June 16).
  • £2 off entry and priority entry at Underbears at Subline (Sunday, June 17).
  • 20% off everything at Prowler Brighton all weekend (June, 14-17)
  • 15% off everything at Nice ‘n’ Naughty all weekend and the following Monday (June, 14-18)
  • 20% off the total food bill at the Blue Man restaurant all week (Monday 11-Sunday, June 17)
  • 20% off everything at Creased Cards all weekend (June 14-17).

To book a wristband online, click here:

 

IGLTA Foundation announces 2018 Conference Scholarship recipients

Global LGBT+ travel organisation welcomes the next generation of LGBT+ welcoming tourism professionals to Toronto.

THE International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association Foundation (IGLTAF) today announced the recipients of this year’s conference scholarships for the International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association’s (IGLTA) Annual Global Convention taking place in Toronto from May 9-12.

Gary Murakami
Gary Murakami

IGLTAF’s scholarship program was created to support the next generation of LGBT+ travel professionals (and allies). Convention scholarships are awarded to small travel business owners in emerging markets and university students pursuing careers in the tourism industry.

Gary Murakami, CMP, CMM, Chair, IGLTAF Board of Directors, said: “The scholarship program is a cornerstone focus for the IGLTA Foundation.

“Through our global network, we can accelerate the professional development of deserving and passionate individuals, both LGBT+ small business owners and students from the local community, who are focused on promoting LGBT+ tourism and making the travel landscape a more welcoming place.”

David Martin Small Business Scholarship
This scholarship category was renamed for 2018 to honour IGLTA’s late volunteer ambassador in Spain, David Martin, a dedicated supporter of LGBT+ business. These scholarships are awarded to LGBT+ business owners in either emerging markets or destinations facing challenges to developing LGBT+ tourism.

This year’s recipients are:

♦ Michael Kajubi, McBern Travel & Tours, Uganda. Kajubi founded his company in Mukono in 2013 and became an advocate for LGBT+ travel safety in a country known for homophobia.

♦ Jarett Sprock, PinkCuraçao.com, Curaçao.  Launched in 2015, PinkCuraçao.com, co-owned by Sprock, provides a web resource for visitors and monthly events for locals and tourists alike.

Building Bridges Scholarship Program
The IGLTA Foundation also supports convention registration for hospitality students in or near each year’s convention host city.

This year’s Toronto-area recipients are: Marco Briganti and Nicholas Tremblay of Ryerson University and John Chervy Rosal of Centennial College.

All scholarship recipients participate in the entire IGLTA convention program, ensuring they will have the opportunity to connect with travel industry leaders from around the world, receive mentorship from professionals in their areas of interest and attend educational sessions.

IGLTA is the leading member-based global organisation dedicated to LGBT+ tourism and an Affiliate Member of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation. IGLTA’s mission is to provide information and resources for LGBT+ travellers and expand LGBT+ tourism globally by demonstrating its significant social and economic impact.

The association’s membership includes LGBT+ welcoming accommodations, destinations, service providers, travel agents, tour operators, events and travel media in more than 80 countries.

In 2012, the philanthropic IGLTA Foundation was launched to support the mission of the association and its membership through education, research and leadership development.

Annual Global Convention takes place in Toronto from May 9-12
Annual Global Convention takes place in Toronto from May 9-12

Hove Church’s spring clean for Christian Aid week

On Saturday, May 12, All Saints Church, Hove will be full of people on their knees, not praying but cleaning the brass and paying for the privilege.

KNOWN locally as the Cathedral of Hove, All Saints Church in Eaton Road is an imposing grade 1 listed building.

On Saturday, May 12 the congregation are inviting volunteers to help clean the brass memorials, dust the magnificently carved choir stalls or sweep the imposing aisles offering a real chance to get to know a treasure chest of art and history.

Those who have already done enough housework during the week can relax with the self-guided tour leaflet and a cup of coffee. This is an event to whom everyone is invited. All Saints is a part of the community, a church that is for the whole community, not just for committed Christians.  All that is asked is that participants drop a contribution into the Christian Aid bucket on their way out.

The Vicar of all Saints Fr. Ryan Green said: “All Saint’s is a bit of a hidden treasure and its real splendour can only be experienced from the inside. Well, now’s your chance! Did you ever think you would be polishing a statue of Dante or dusting the cobwebs off Queen Victoria? For a unique way of interacting with an iconic building at the heart of Hove, to make it really sparkle, and to raise some money for Christian Aid Week, come and join us. What better way to spend a Saturday could there be?”

There will be a board inside the church with a list of jobs. Volunteers just a pick a job. Cleaning materials will be provided and members of the congregation will be on hand to answer questions.


Event: All Saints Church, Hove – Spring clean for Christian Aid week

Where: All Saints Church, The Drive, Hove, BN3 3QE

When: Saturday May 12

Time: 10am – 4pm

THEATRE REVIEW: The Importance of Being Earnest @Eastbourne

HyperFocal: 0

IT’S always difficult to walk the walk of Lady Bracknell, and an audience will always tremble as the actress clears her throat to utter her immortal lines, but much in the way of the cucumbers for her sandwiches there was something missing here tonight in this Original Theatre Production of the Importance of Being Earnest.

WE had the haughty matriarch from Gwen Taylor, in a most delightful costume, doing the lines and acting away but the musty, fusty, meanness of Lady B was absent.  She wasn’t so staunch and there was a hint of playful warmth which gave her some added dimensions later on in the play, but no ruthless slapdown, the gorgon was gone.

Thomas Howes as Algernon set the louche tone although he seemed slightly distracted, but his rich voice bounced around with a playfulness much-needed in this play. Everything is to be toyed with and then cast aside and he lounged, draped his large form over uncomfortable fiddly furniture and fed himself accordingly. Kerry Ellis’s Gwendoline has the necessary incendiary flare and fire but little to aim it towards and very little in the way of ricochet to worry about but owned the stage when striding across it.

A lot of the characters felt like missed opportunities and one can only suppose this was a deliberate choice of the director, looking for something new and modern, something clever to be teased out from the text, but this remodelling of the characters meant we lost something quite distinct. That quick sharp poke of absurdity which utterly deflates portentous poise.

Cecily was played like a stalker, not a drop of innocence in her, ignorance most certainly but with a knowing manipulation quite beyond her years or script, it made some of the scenes more brutal and harsh than they should have been.  Prism was a half full glass refracting just one note, Dr. Chasuble a charming bumbler, and on it went.

Drawing room plays are always hard work; there was a lot of parking and barking but the acting felt half-hearted, with characters squaring off against each other in panto mode, either under a rain of tea cakes thrown without care or accuracy to insults wrung though with the pace of a nasty type writer.

Timing is all in Wilde, all. Everything else is just words and clever people and we all know what he thought about them.

The set, from Gabriella Slade looked good with glazed panels of burnished faded Charles Rennie Mackintosh glamour, switched and changed with ease. The costumes and lighting worked well to give the right feeling of change and atmosphere but the sharp edge of Wilden wit had been smoothed down to a soft wet slap, more slapstick than poke with sword stick.

If you’ve not seen Earnest before than this is a perfectly adequate production of it, with all the words in the proper order, and all the funniest lines given their due, but some of the joy of Wilde is the strange way his words shift and move with the times, giving prominence and laughter where it might not have been a season or month before. The whole thing needs bounce to throw it about and this production in the wonderfully evocative and seriously comfortable Devonshire Park Theatre felt ever so slightly pedestrian, each scene fizzling flatly away rather than landing with a massive explosive ‘whomp’ to curtain.

It was harmless and funny but without the real force and shock of the bite that Wilde’s words hold, it felt as if we were sitting on Oscars lap and being stroked very gently, rather than grabbed by our tails and hurled around the drawing-room before being jettisoned off into the orangey under some verbal inertial force.  The play might be more than 100 years old but it can still sting while it induces giggles.

Oscar Wilde should never be tame, even in the wilds of East Sussex and Eastbourne, that hotbed of Bunbryness and perfectly judged archness, the well-dressed matrons and non-matrons of Eastbourne deserve a sharper jab with the Wilden stick, although – and this is no reflection on them – they did seem happy laughing along with this comfortable production in the well upholstered seats of the Devonshire Park.

Runs until Saturday, April 28 at Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne

 

 

 

New HIV Charter Mark launched

Changing the world of work for employees living with HIV.

A POWERFUL new Charter Mark to increase UK employers’ commitments to becoming HIV friendly has been launched by the University of Sunderland.

The Positive Allies Charter Mark which organisations and employers can volunteer to sign up to and show they are ‘HIV friendly’ towards their staff and volunteers, is the first of its kind in the UK.

Its key aim is to demonstrate organisations’ commitment to ensuring people living with HIV, as either staff or volunteers, are safe and that key staff undertake training, review policies and consider practices and resources, which demonstrate equality and openness about HIV.

The concept behind Positive Allies was the result of a research project undertaken by Drew Dalton in 2015 called Silent Scream?, which highlighted what life is like in the UK for people living with HIV and the barriers they faced. It found that those with HIV were still facing stigma within their working environments despite the introduction of the workplace Equality Act (2010).

Drew Dalton
Drew Dalton

Drew, a lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of Sunderland, says: “Whilst the Equalities Act added further protections to those living with HIV, many employers are unaware that HIV is included within this legislation. Our Charter Mark is an opportunity for employers, big or small, or whether they have paid staff or volunteers, to sign up to Positive Allies.

“By everyone signing up to it, we can ensure that workplaces become better places for people living with HIV and to tackle some of the stigma that people continue to face today. Positive Allies a very straight forward undertaking for any company to do, but it’s another step towards making life better for those with HIV.”

The Charter Mark provides a free online training course for key staff and volunteers and an HIV Staff/volunteer policy for organisations to tailor around their current policies.

Drew explained: “There are two levels to the adopting the charter, and attaining either of these levels allows employers to advertise to others that they are making a conscious effort to improve the ethos of their organisation, and more importantly to reduce stigma.”

Positive Allies, maintained by the University of Sunderland and an adjudicating panel, to award the Charter Mark, is made up of a range of industry experts and of people living with HIV. Once gained, organisations can use the Positive Allies logo on their websites, letterheads and social media channels.

Vice Chancellor Shirley Atkinson welcomed the innovative project, saying: “We fully support Drew’s excellent work on Positive Allies, which reflects the importance our University places on creating a diverse and inclusive culture, where all members of our University community are valued for their contribution and individuality.

“We believe this Charter Mark will help meet the needs and expectations of the modern working environment and importantly remove barriers of discrimination, bullying, harassment or victimisation for people living with HIV within organisations.”

Justine Gillespie, Human Resources manager at the University of Sunderland, added: “We were delighted to support Drew with his project and used it as an opportunity to become an HIV friendly employer. With his advice we developed our HIV/AIDS staff policy, which we launched last year, and also invited Drew to carry out a number of training sessions for staff and students. The feedback we have received has been overwhelmingly positive and so would encourage any employer to sign up to the principles of the Charter Mark.”  

Positive Allies Charter Mark official launch at Canary Wharf, at the University of Sunderland in London’s campus
Positive Allies Charter Mark official launch at Canary Wharf, at the University of Sunderland in London’s campus

The Positive Allies Charter Mark was officially launched at Canary Wharf, at the University of Sunderland in London’s campus. The keynote speech was given by Roland Chesters – a recognised disability and inclusion expert; coach, consultant, workshop leader and motivational speaker.

Roland is about publish a book Ripples from the Edge of Life in April which documents the stories of 14 people with HIV and AIDS and the impact on their lives.

To sign up to the Positive Allies Charter Mark, click here:

 

Brighton Fringe PREVIEW: Marlene Dietrich @New Steine Hotel

The late and legendary Marlene Dietrich last appeared in Brighton at the Theatre Royal in 1973 – and 45 years later, she’s on her way back!

AWARD-winning performer and writer Patricia Hartshorne is returning to play Brighton Fringe, and bringing Miss Dietrich with her.

“Last year I was in Brighton with my show about Adolf Hitler” says Patricia, “but this time I’ll be playing the woman who dared to defy him.  She’ll be at the New Steine Hotel throughout May and early June in my solo cabaret DOPPEL DIETRICH.  Come and meet her – she might even give you a carnation!”

This much-travelled show is a humorous and haunting look at the colourful life, loves and songs of Marlene Dietrich.  With her “eerily accurate representation”, Patricia doubles as the Hollywood legend, engaging with her audience via anecdotes, a few surprises and all those Dietrich classics.  Hear Lili Marleen, Boys in the Backroom, La Vie en Rose, Falling in Love Again … and  many more.

“It was a life of glamour and talent  – with a penchant for men’s clothing,” says Patricia, who invites you to laugh and cry with her.

Discover an eventful life that spanned the twentieth century – from bi-sexual cross-dresser to Hollywood icon, from wartime entertainer to international cabaret star, from outrageous self-publicist to uncompromising recluse …

Are you up for some ‘doppel strength’ Dietrich?  The woman who was way ahead of her time and answered to nobody – not even Adolf Hitler!

“Gets under the skin of Marlene Dietrich”…..Thom Dibdin, THE STAGE


Event: Marlene Dietrich at New Steine Hotel

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

When: May 4 – June 3 – Every weekend throughout Brighton Fringe

Time: Fridays/Saturdays at 8.30pm, Sundays at 5.30pm

Cost: Tickets: £10

To book online, click here:

Tickets available from venue: 9am – 10pm: Tel: 01273 681546

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