About this event
Join us at the LGBTQ+ Community Centre for two discussions to observe LGBTQ+ History Month on:
- The history and legacy of Section 28
- The history and the future of trans rights in the UK
Content warnings: homophobia, transphobia, government oppression, police violence.
The history of Section 28 panelists (5:30-6:30pm)
Shivani Dave (they/them)
Shivani uses storytelling and journalism to fight for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people around the world.
Their work includes:
- The creation of The Log Books podcast, highlighting British queer history that was censored by successive U.K. governments and the Home Office from 1970 to the early 2000s.
- Partnering with the Black and Gay Back in the Day photo archive to create a podcast of the same name.
- Highlighting the inequalities faced by the LGBTQIA+ communities in the U.K. and overseas on a range of platforms, from Daytime TV to TikTok.
Patrick Braithwaite (he/him)
Patrick Braithwaite, based in Brixton, is a community empowerment event organiser with the ‘F*ck Off - This is My Culture - Sexual Freedom Party' and ‘Bender Defender’.
He is an LGBTQIA+ solidarity activist and ACT UP campaigner with a special interest in mental health and addiction within marginalised communities.
Patrick has:
- Helped to organise the first Queer Spirit festival in 2017 and has participated in RadicalFaerie gatherings at home and abroad ever since.
- Organising the first 12-step based program within the faeries, ‘FaeNA’ and continues this support work around addiction in the wider queer community.
Patrick is currently working for a large media company in their contact centre where he has taken a lead role in promoting LGBTQ+ visibility at work on the D&I team as well as co-creating on the fresh perspectives program which aims to champion people of colour within the organisation.
Ian Johns (he/him)
Ian Johns is a 66 year old out and proud gay man. He started volunteering with Switchboard during the HIV/Aids crisis and eventually become a director.
His political awarenss increased in the years running up to Section 28, taking part in demos with ACTUP London and other groups.
He is still involved with ACTUP and volunteers at The Food Chain. He runs a vintage clothing shop on London’s Brick Lane with his husband, who have been together for nearly 40 years.
Atalanta Kernick(she/her)
Atalanta had a conservative army background and left to live at Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp as soon as possible, where she met many queer activists and came out after a lesbian summer of love!
After receiving a sound education in direct action and how to be a dyke, she moved to the squatting community of Brixton in 1986. She has worked as an artist, lecturer, curator, cafe/gallery owner and is now a librarian in Tower Hamlets.
Many years, many demos and squats later, she is still an activist and appears in the Rebel Dykes film.
She also co-curated the large visual art exhibition The Rebel Dykes Show in 2021 and is contributing a slideshow of photos from the Never Going Underground: Stop Clause 28 demo in February 1988.
The history of trans rights in the UK panelists (6:30-7:30pm)
Dani Singer (every pronoun)
Dani has been squeezing through the gaps in their imaginative borders since realising their queer/trans identity over six years ago.
This adventure has led them to work with many queer activist groups and changemakers, including the Gay Liberation Front, ACT UP London, and The Love Tank.
They are a founding member of the Queer Tours of London collective. More recently,
Dani has been working in nightlife in welfare support, trying to realise the capacity for night-time spaces to model new, abolitionist ways of being with their queer nightlife agency, Safe Only Ltd.
Dani is also an artist and theatre maker, and likes to tattoo their friends in quiet moments.
June Lam (he/him)
June Lam is a community organiser and multidisciplinary artist of Chinese and Vietnamese ancestry, working across performance, dance, sculpture and collage.
Trained in MA Sculpture at The Slade, his work centres queer desirability politics, fag effeminacy, and embodied experiences of intergenerational trauma. His performances involve leading meditations, connecting with ancestral parts, and movement inspired by deity practice.
Creating intentional community spaces is intrinsic to June's artistic practice. He co-founded grassroots trans healthcare fund We Exist and founded queer East and South East Asian arts platform GGI. These both provide necessary direct action to centre marginalised communities, and address the classism and inaccessibility of traditional arts spaces by working outside of them.
Opashona Ghosh (they/them)
Opashona Ghosh is an Indian-born artist, illustrator and facilitator, currently based in London.
Their work takes a decolonial feminist approach to (un)worlding through critical dialogue, interventions and play; locating the intersections of queer clu