LGBTQ+ History Month UK: Make a Difference

LGBTQ+ History Month is an important annual event that takes place every February to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community and how far we have come in the fight for equality. This year’s theme aims to shed light on the history of the LGBTQIA+ community’s experiences with the healthcare system and ways in which we can come together to improve the quality of care and fight for LGBTQIA+ equality. People from the LGBTQIA+ community still face discrimination and health inequalities. Wales Centre for Public Policy partnered with loneliness researchers and has put together an international loneliness inequalities evidence review. They found international evidence highlighting that LGBTQIA+ people disproportionately experience loneliness due to wider societal and structural barriers. People from LGBTQIA+ communities face stigma and discrimination, difficulties coming out, and barriers to receiving the healthcare needed, all of which increase loneliness and exclusion.

A few things you can do to support the LGBTQIA+ community and make a difference:

• Abusive practices and conversion therapy are still not banned in the UK. Send a personalised email to your MP to attend the Second Reading of the Private Members’ Bill to ban conversion therapy on Friday 1 March. For more information, click here. 
• Donate to support the LGBTQIA+ community, click here.
• Use social media to spread the word for this month’s theme of healthcare equality for the LGBTQIA+ community. Hashtags you can use on social media to show support for the community and express love and acceptance.
  • #LGBTHistoryMonth
  • #LoveIsLove
  • #Pride
  • #EqualityForAll
  • #LGBTQHistory
  • #UnderTheScope

Take this opportunity to also learn more about the history of the LGBTQIA+ community:

• Click here for a collated list of resources to learn about LGBTQIA+ History
• Pay a visit to the UK’s first and only LGBTQIA+ museum that celebrates the history of activism, art, and culture of the LGBTQIA+ community and queer people’s stories, click here for more information 
• Visit the only LGBTQIA+ bookshop ‘Gay’s The Word’, it is an influential space for members of the community to meet, support each other, and campaign. They offer a safe space to meet and converse on various topics

Here are some LGBTQIA+ resources: ·

• Switchboard: LGBTQIA+ National Support Line
• UK Black Pride: Advocacy and community outreach 
• Imaan: Muslim support group 
• Gay Men’s Group: HIV-positive support group and advise 
• Mermaids UK: Trans youth support 
• Islington Mind: LGBTQIA+ legal advice, support, and therapies

Lonely Room: UK

Sean Redmond, Professor of Film and Television at Deaken University has created a website to shine a critical and creative light on where, when, how, and why loneliness is encountered. It intends to provide an artistic and creative space for people to represent their loneliness.

The project explores not just the isolation of loneliness but the social, creative and experiential possibilities of loneliness in all walks of life: this is loneliness as a natural part of the human condition. The Loneliness Room explores both the chronic and the existential conditions of being lonely today. You can take part in the loneliness room by sharing creative responses and/or completing short questionnaires about your experiences. These creative responses came in the forms of: photographs (with/without captions); short videos; drawings; paintings; poems; social media posts; and songs, composition, audio. To view the creative submissions: What’s your loneliness room?