Thousands of revellers celebrated at Southampton’s third Pride on Saturday, August 25, with a colourful parade through the city centre and a main stage event in Guildhall Square – followed in the evening by an official after party at the Edge nightclub.
HEADLINE artists on the mainstage included Lucinda Lashes, Lauren Harries, Cherry Liquor, Aura Jay, Miss Disney, Cheeky Girls, Union J and Athena Heart, the fourteen year old boy from Dudley in the Midlands not allowed to perform in drag at his school prom, who went down a storm!
Barry Hughes reflects on the first 12 months’ work delivered by the Brighton & Hove Housing Coalition.
BRIGHTON & Hove Housing Coalition was launched last August at St George’s Church in Kemptown, in the presence of MPs Caroline Lucas and Lloyd Russell-Moyle and 200 delegates from 20 organisations who signed up to the Coalition’s aims and objectives at the end of the day. In the intervening 12 months this group of largely volunteer housing activists, supported with a grant from Pride’s Social Impact Fund, have been extremely busy but there remains a growing need for our breed of activism.
SOME CHOICE
Statistics published in January 2018 estimated that 4,751 people bedded down outside in 2017, up 15% on 2016. The numbers have increase by 169% since 2010, although those of us who walk the city streets may feel that these statistics are on the modest side.
Homeless people are significantly more likely to suffer from mental distress as a result of finding themselves without a home; at least 25-30% of the homeless population suffer from mental health problems including major depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The most prevalent health problems among homeless individuals are substance abuse (62.5%), mental health problems (53.7%) or a combination of the two (42.6%). Given that these problems are causally linked to homelessness it indicates these individuals not only need homes, but they need ongoing health and social care support. Not, as someone once said to me, to be put in a hostel with a bed and a light bulb and left to their own devices.
Owen Jones
A recent piece by Owen Jones (The Guardian) indicated that up to a quarter of the young homeless population are LGBT+ and many have been rejected by their families. The Big Issue flagged this up in July, pointing to the fact that whilst Pride events were celebrating the half-century of the introduction of the Sexual Offences Act 1967, every day thousands of LGBT+ people are still subjected to suspicion, discrimination and violence.
A study by the Albert Kennedy Trust estimated that 150,000 LGBT+ people were homeless or at risk of homelessness. The main reasons given were parental rejection, abuse within the family, or exposure to aggression or violence.
Stonewall Housing say that two-thirds of young people who access their services state that their housing problems are related to their sexual orientation or gender identity. This against a background of cuts in crucial services.
Jones’s piece in The Guardian says that, in surveys, more than four out of ten respondents believe “most homeless people are probably homeless because of circumstances beyond their control.”
He also makes the disturbing observation that a quarter of those expressing an opinion, say; “Homeless people have probably made bad choices in life that got them into their situation.” This is the mindset that Brighton & Hove Housing Coalition utterly refutes and seeks to change as a matter of the greatest urgency.
SEVERE WEATHER EMERGENCY PROTOCOL (SWEP)
Coalition members were integral in getting Brighton & Hove City Council (B&HCC) to open a night shelter at the Brighton Centre and have continued to put pressure on the council to up their performance going forward. The Brighton Centre can only be described as a partial success with 27 people being ‘decanted’ into the pouring rain on the morning that the shelter closed. Luckily Sussex Homeless Support was on hand with their converted bus to look after 19 of these guests whilst the others were found secure accommodation.
The multi-agency Night Shelter Group has developed into Community Action Group on Homelessness (CAGH) chaired by B&HCC Councillors, with members of the Coalition represented.
Fundamental to the work of the Group is SWEP and Chairman of the Coalition’s Legal and Advocacy Group, David Thomas, has taken the lead in ensuring that the council open the shelters for street sleepers taking into account such factors as wind chill. David has also pushed the council to ensure that all forms of extreme weather, which may pose a risk to the lives of rough sleepers, are taken into account – including extreme heat.
HOMELESS BILL OF RIGHTS
The Coalition is at the forefront of taking up an idea, which has been adopted in Barcelona and other European cities – a Homeless Charter or Bill of Rights. It is the Coalition’s ambition that the city of Brighton & Hove will be the first local authority in the UK to adopt such a charter which is a compilation of basic rights from European and International human rights law. By endorsing it, cities reaffirm their commitment to human rights, which should guide all players towards tackling the root causes of poverty and homelessness.
Penalisation strategies can push homeless peoples further into poverty and exclusion. Rather than punishing them, local authorities should extend a hand to encourage homeless people to claim their rights, the fundamentals of which are set out here:
The right to exit homelessness; the right to access decent emergency accommodation; the right to use public space and to move freely within it; the right to equal treatment for all;
the right to effective postal address of last resort; the right to access basic sanitary facilities; the right to emergency services; the right to vote; the right to data protection; the right to privacy; and the right to carry out practices necessary to survival within the law.
Will the city of Brighton & Hove have the courage to adopt such a Bill of Rights? The Coalition has started the campaign to make it happen for a launch in October.
STREET ADVOCATES
The Coalition has teamed up with Law for Life: the foundation for public legal education, funded by Lush Charity Pot, in providing training for volunteers to create what we call ‘Street Advocates’ – people with sufficient knowledge to help the vulnerable when faced with seemingly insurmountable problems of poverty, homelessness and injustice.
Bobby Carver
MORE WORK TO DO
At the end of this first year of campaigning any tendency towards complacency should be cut short by reflecting on the case of Bobby Carver, whose plight remains unacceptable. The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) investigated Bobby’s case at the end of 2017 and stated that the council’s assessment raised Bobby’s expectations, but noted, probably, as a result of the LGO’s intervention, that the council had agreed to an independent assessment of Bobby’s case from outside of the council. In the meantime Bobby doesn’t have accommodation or support services appropriate to his needs.
Written by Barry Hughes
Brighton and Hove city council were asked to respond to explain at what stage the independent assessment of Bobby Carvers case was at.
On August 8, 1928, a decade after the end of WW1, the British Legion (as it was then called) organised for veterans and war widows to visit the battlefields of the Somme and Ypres before marching to the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.
EXACTLY 90 years later, thousands of representatives from the Royal British Legion recreated the 1928 Pilgrimage visiting the same battlefields and then, on August 8, 2018, paraded their branch standard and a wreath along the same route to the magnificent Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, Belgium, for the One Hundred Days Ceremony to commemorate the last 100 days of World War 1 and represent an entire generation that served while defending their country.
Myself and Maria Baker, who sits on the grants panel of the Rainbow Fund here in Brighton, were privileged to be invited along to watch and be part of the moving ceremony along with other LGBT+ representatives from the armed services, media organisations and Stonewall, the national equality charity.
As members of the public and military veterans gathered in Ypres Market Square on August 8, they were able to view the parade on large screens erected in the Market Square the One Hundred Days ceremony taking place under the Menin Gate Memorial
Over 1,100 standard bearers paraded through the streets and Market Square of Ypres, followed by 1,100 wreath layers to the ceremony taking place under the Menin Gate Memorial, which included addresses from the Bishop of Carlisle and the Archbishop of York.
A message from the Queen ended with the words:“As you stand together at the Menin Gate and in Flanders, it is my sincere hope that the ceremony provides a thought-provoking opportunity to assist in your own acts of Remembrance”, and then, as the Last Post sounded, red petals fell from the roof of the memorial during the two-minutes silence, creating a very special and moving moment that words can’t convey..
After the 1,100 wreaths were laid, the parade of Standard Bearers returned to Market Square to huge acclaim from the gathered crowds for an afternoon of exhibitions and musical performances by the Band of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines Scotland, the Central Band of the Royal British Legion and the London Welsh Male Voice Choir, who all performed magnificently.
Maria Baker and Susan Coleman in the Market Square at Ypres
The Royal British Legion are in the process of creating an LGBTQ & Allies Branch here in Brighton. Susan Coleman, well know locally in Brighton is the newly appointed Staff Champion for LGBTQ and Allies liaison for the Royal British Legion, to help the process move forward.
They are holding a meeting to discuss forming the branch on Saturday, September 15 at 2pm at the Royal British Legion Pop In Centre, Hyperion House, 100-101 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3XF.
Following the meeting, an application to form a new branch will be submitted to the Royal British Legion Membership Council for consideration. Everyone is free to attend. If you are already a member of the Royal British Legion you will, if you wish, be able to transfer your branch membership to the new LGBTQ & Allies Branch once the application has been discussed and accepted by the Royal British Legion Membership Council.
Clare Plumley, Switchboards new Rainbow Cafe Development Worker gives an update at what has been happening at the Rainbow Cafe in the last 6 months.
THE Rainbow Café is an exciting initiative from Switchboard for LGBT+ people living with dementia or memory loss and their friends, families and carers.
THE aim of the project is to raise awareness of dementia within the LGBT+ communities and hope that both LGBT and non-LGBT services will have a better understanding of the specific and unique needs of LGBT+ people living with dementia. We are indebted to the Rainbow Fund for supporting the work we are now doing on this.
The Rainbow Café was launched with an opening event in February at Brooke Mead (the new extra care housing accommodation opened by Brighton and Hove City Council) in Albion Street, Brighton. As part of this launch, the awarding winning play The Purple List: A Gay Dementia Venture, was performed by Ian Baxter. This was a 35 minute one man performance exploring the highs and lows of the lives of the same-sex couple, Sam and Derek who live with the reality of dementia. The performance was followed by a Q&A session, a chance to hear about the Rainbow Café and a buffet lunch generously provided by Lunch Positive (www.lunchpositive.org/) a lunch club for those affected by HIV. I thought I’d update you on where we are 6 months down then line.
Since the launch the Rainbow Café has met monthly and has so far included a mixture of practical activities, conversation and information such as drama improvisation, a Q&A session about dementia with an occupational therapist and an illustrated talk about the film Carol.
Participants have been a mixture of people living with dementia and their carers and also those interested to learn more about the condition and about memory loss. As a result of this we’ve decided to offer two strands to the Rainbow Cafe, one with a mixture of activities for people with dementia and their carers and one which is for people concerned about memory loss to come and ask questions to professionals in the health and social care field.
None of us want to think too much about ageing or what happens to us later on as we need extra care but the Rainbow Cafe hopes to address some of these fears. In addition to providing a drop-in space for people with dementia to attend it also is setting up information sessions to answer some of the questions people might have regarding what happens as we get older and encounter memory loss and who might provide support for us.
There will be a session for people with concerns over memory loss and dementia which will cover the following areas: What is the difference between cognitive decline due to ageing and dementia, when should people take their concerns or worries further? If they think that they or a loved one may have dementia what do they do, what is the process for diagnosis?
Clare Plumley
Some LGBT+ people are estranged from their families or might not want them involved in their healthcare, they may well be single and have a ‘family of choice’ instead. So the second information session is to address concerns faced by people who might not have a partner or family member available to them to support them through later care. How in a situation where there is no ‘next of kin’ can a friend be recognised as the person’s carer, point of contact, how might a friend get Power of Attorney, how does a person with dementia ensure their care needs are directed by a trusted friend?
It’s really important that the specific needs of our communities are recognised so I hope that these discussions will inform both us and the communities in current and future conversations with health and social care providers and commissioners.
If you or a loved one have a diagnosis of dementia or are waiting for one and would like to go along to the monthly Rainbow Cafe please call me on 07395 425710 so I can take some details from you, get to know a little more about you and talk with you about what we are doing in the sessions.
Fifteen teams battled it out at the Bear-Patrol Pride Quiz on Thursday, August 2 at Camelford Arms, raising £636.00 for the Rainbow Fund.
BELLA’S Bitches came out top of the class and also won the cash bonus prize of £300.
Chris Gull Chair of Rainbow Fund said:“What a great night and what a fantastic total.! This event, and others organised by businesses and organisations across the city, prompted by the message of “A Pride with Purpose”, demonstrate what a difference community fundraising makes to the projects and organisations who deliver much needed services. This will be distributed to LGBT/HIV organisations in the September grants round.”
The Rainbow Fund give grants to LGBT/HIV groups who deliver effective front line services to LGBT+ people in the city.
The Mayor of Brighton and Hove, Cllr Dee Simson attends Bar Broadway for event in support of Royal British Legion.
THE event on Tuesday, July 31 was organised by Susan Coleman, Staff Champion for LGBT+ and Allies liaison for The Royal British Legion and hosted by Candi Rell.
Elaine Chambers
The evening featured author Elaine Chambers, who was booted out of the armed forces for “unnatural conduct”. Elaine gave a fascinating talk about her coming book Queer Angel followed by CPO Ann Miller-McCaffrey from the Armed Forces Diversity Engagement Team at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst who talked about how the armed forces are supporting LGBT+ personnel serving in the forces today.
The Regency Singers
Entertainment was provided by the Regency Singers and a lovely buffet was served by Bar Broadway.
Susan Coleman is well-known on the LGBT+ scene locally and has been instrumental in pushing for an LGBTQ & Allies Branch of the Royal British Legion. A formation meeting is taking place at 2pm on Saturday, September 15 at the Royal British Legion Pop in Centre, 100-101 Queens Rd, Brighton BN1 3XF.
Artists Open Houses Xmas festival announce festival and registration dates.
THE Artists Open Houses Festival in Brighton, Hove and beyond is the largest event of its kind in the UK, with approximately 200 houses and studio spaces opening their doors to the public during the May festival exhibiting the work of over 1,200 artists. More artists than ever took part in the 2018 May Festival.
Registration for artists and makers wishing to take part in the festival will open on August 22 and close in early October.
The Artists Open Houses Xmas Festival 2018 will run over the weekends:
♦ November 24 and 25
♦ December 1 and 2
♦ December 8 and 9
Houses may open for all or a selection of these dates.
Artist Open Houses (AOH) help artists connect with audiences in self-curated, non-traditional art spaces. This usually means visiting artists’ own homes, offering festival-goers an exclusive snapshot of how creatives live in this vibrant and creative city.
Anyone living in the 01273 telephone area can take part in the Artists Open Houses (AOH) festival as an Open House venue. Registration costs can be shared by all the artists exhibiting in one venue, meaning that taking part in the festival as a venue can be affordable for everyone.
Those wishing to take part in the festival as an artist rather than as a venue (including those living outside of the 01273 telephone area) can take part as a guest artist, exhibiting their work in someone else’s Open House.
Judy Stevens, Artists Open Houses Festival Director says:“Artists Open Houses are a great and affordable way for artists to exhibit their work, whether established artists or those just setting out on their careers. Artists Open Houses connect artists and makers with an audience of art-lovers, buyers and industry professionals – and is also fun to take part in, exhibiting with your friends in your own home.”
New training tools developed for professionals to remedy inequalities, barriers and discrimination faced by LGBT+ people when accessing health services.
AS PART of a consortium led by the Verona University Hospital, the University of Brighton helped develop the tools along with researchers, experts and activists in the lesbian, gay bisexual, trans and intersex communities.
The €500,000 EU-funded pilot project Health4LGBTI ran 12 focus groups in six EU member states to gather data and evidence.
The project has now concluded with the production of new training modules for health professionals. To view them online, click here:
The University of Brighton’s research team, led by Dr Nigel Sherriff with Dr Laetitia Zeeman, Professor Kath Browne (formerly at the University), and Dr Nick McGlynn, was part of a consortium contracted by the European Commission to explore health needs and challenges faced by LGBT+ people and to analyse barriers faced by health professionals when providing care for LGBT+ people.
The study, which was launched in March 2016, aimed to improve understanding of how best to reduce inequalities and focused on discrimination and unfair treatment. Other countries involved in the study were Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, and Poland.
Its report said: “LGBTI people continue to experience stigma and discrimination combined with social isolation and limited understanding, leading to significant barriers in terms of accessing health and social care services. These experiences can translate into a risk of depression, suicide and self‐harm, violence, substance misuse and HIV infection.”
The study produced a number of findings and reports including a focus on inequalities, two focus group studies, a manual for trainers, a training video and an evaluation report.
LGBT+ people and healthcare professionals involved agreed that mandatory training around LGBT+ issues is needed by all staff in healthcare services.
The study, part of a 24-month project launched in 2016, is funded by the European Parliament and is being carried on behalf of the European Commission.
Nigel Sherriff
Nigel Sherriff said:“This project has drawn attention to the unfair and unnecessary health inequalities experienced by many LGBT+ people across Europe. The training we have developed as a Consortium, is a crucial tool in addressing and reducing these inequalities in healthcare settings.
“The next step for the project is to ensure that the evidence-based outputs including the innovative project training is incorporated into the pre-registration training for health professionals as well as into the continuing professional development of these same health professionals
“We are already seeing the project outputs having an impact with changes to the curriculums for health professionals, as well as changing policies and practices in health systems themselves across the six partner countries…the next steps as a Consortium is to look at how this innovative training can be rolled out across all EU Member States and beyond.”
Other members of the Health4LGBTI Team were: Francesco Amaddeo, Sophie Aujean, Ruth Davis, Valeria Donisi, Francesco Farinella, Cathrine Festersen, Lorenzo Gios, Massimo Mirandola, Michał Pawlęga, Anne Pierson, Nuno Pinto, Magdalena Rosinska, Marcin Rodzinka, Juliette Sanchez-Lambert, Marta Niedźwiedzka-Stadnik, and Karolina Zakrzewska.
For more information about Health4LGBTI, click here:
Waiyne Brandon and Robert Smith tied the knot after 12 years together, with a HandFasting ceremony at the The Old Rec Cafe on Hove Recreational Ground.
ON August 11, Waiyne and Robert were joined by family and friends at Hove Recreation Ground for a traditional Handfasting ceremony.
Handfasting is a rural folkloric and neopagan custom, initially practised in western European countries. During the ceremony a couples hands are bound together by a celebrant to symbolise their connection and devotion to one another and a broom is waved over their heads to ward off spirits. Following the ceremony the couple and their guests would Jumpthe Broom to symbolise their commitment and willingness to look after each other in their new life together.
Did you enjoy Trans Pride Brighton (TPB) 2018? If you did then become part of the bigger picture by joining their volunteer committee!
TPB organisers are recruiting for a variety of different volunteer roles, and looking for individuals from within the trans/non-binary communities who would like to get involved for the event in 2019.
To register your interest, email a little bit about yourself to grace.cummings@transpridebrighton.org, explain how you might like to help out, with a brief introduction of any relevant experience you may have.
You do not need to have had any work and/or volunteering experience to fulfil many of the roles, just a passion for the engagement and visibility of the trans and non-binary communities.
Time commitment varies throughout the year for different roles, with flexible role-share opportunities available, and many not even require you to live in the Brighton area. You will be volunteering alongside experienced TPB volunteers and Trustees, and will be given support where necessary.
Using ‘Positive Action’, the areas of the organisation they are looking to recruit roles for are: events, fundraising, community engagement, accessibility, administration, sales, stage management, activities, social media and design.
‘Positive Action’ refers to a range of measures and initiatives that organisations can lawfully take to actively encourage individuals from under-represented groups to apply. The selection procedure itself is no different and is be based solely on merit.
Due to the nature of the work, TPB strongly encourages applications from trans, non-binary, gender-fluid and gender non-conforming people. Applicants from minority ethnic backgrounds, and people with disabilities are especially welcome.
On August 8, 1928, a decade after the end of WW1, the British Legion (as it was then called) organised for veterans and war widows to visit the battlefields of the Somme and Ypres before marching to the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.
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