“There’s still a lot of things we need to do to support LGBTQ+ people,” says Ashley Joiner, founder and director of Queercircle, an LGBTQ+ led charity working in the arts and culture sector, writes Holly O’Mahony…
“There’s been cuts to arts education, cuts to mental health services, trans people are under attack from the media and government, and there’s lots of external things we need to tackle.” Formed six years ago as a grassroots response to the mass closures of dedicated LGBTQ+ spaces in London – a depressing 60% of which are now shuttered – the charity has until now held events at rented spaces across the city, but this month, Queercircle opened the doors to its first permanent home in the Design District on Greenwich Peninsula.
Designed by David Kohn Architects, the Queercircle hub is divided into a main gallery, reading room and project space. It’ll programme three seasons a year, each comprising an exhibition by an LGBTQ+ contemporary artist (held in the main gallery), an archive exhibition (in the reading room) and a participatory residency (in the project space).
“Queercircle will be a hub that facilitates other people’s initiatives while always having a central programme to drive it forward,” explains Ashley. “It’s all free to access. People can rent out the project space for meetings or workshops, or you can come and chill here.”
Every year, a different overarching theme will steer the exhibitions on show, which this year is ecology. If this sounds like a left-field choice for the LGBTQ+ space, then think about the concept’s roots in the Greek word ‘oikos’, meaning ‘household’ or ‘dwelling place’. Ashley was keen for his first resident artists to create works that were inviting and welcoming of the community, while also delving into concerns for the natural world.
Michaela Yearwood-Dan’s inaugural exhibition in the main gallery, Let Me Hold You, ticks both boxes. The London-based painter has created a freestanding curved mural installation, with colourful, botanical-inspired motifs and a message of love and acceptance scrawled across the base. The installation, which Ashley describes as giving visitors “a giant hug”, represents Michaela’s defiance of binary notions of racial or gendered identity.
In the neighbouring reading room, the first archive exhibition The Queens’ Jubilee commemorates the 50th anniversary of the radical drag queens of the Gay Liberation Front, who marched through central London in 1972 for the first ever Pride in the UK. The exhibition features photos from the march, diary entries and news cuttings, and has been curated with the help of Gay Liberation Front activist Stuart Feather.
“Stuart was one of the original founders of the Gay Liberation Front in 1971, so it’s a mixture from his own personal archive, texts from the period and some photos taken by the people as well,” explains Frances Williams, a self-described “historical exhibit” who founded the UK’s first national lesbian publication DIVA Magazine in 1994, and joins Queercircle as Learning and Participation Manager. “It gives a really evocative feel of that time. It’s been nice to share inspiration from what people did in the past to use in the future. We might need it!”
Visitors to the reading room can also educate themselves on LGBTQ+ history, poring through a wall of books on the topic.
Upstairs, a room dressed with sociably-arranged tables and chairs, and big white boards, looks poised to welcome its future collaborations – up to 30 at any one time. This is where Queercircle’s participatory residencies will happen. At the time of writing, the first season is still being finalised, but Frances promises an exciting line-up including poetry workshops, talks and family events. All will be ticketed but free to access. The programme will work to promote LGBTQ+ visibility and expand access to the arts.
In between the three annual seasons, Ashley is keen to open up the Queercircle space to external LGBTQ+ organisations as a way of tackling the dwindling number of dedicated spaces available to the community. Month-long ‘catalyst’ periods will offer these groups a platform to develop their own initiatives plus the support they need to get their work off the ground.
“We don’t want to be dictating what queerness is from the top down, so for a month in between each season we hand over the main gallery to another organisation,” Ashley explains. First up is the Queer Youth Art Network, made up of LGBTQ+ people aged 18-26 with an interest in the arts. “We provide whatever help they need, be it marketing, or accounts, so it’ll change from organisation to organisation,” says Ashley. “We recognise the value in having secured this space, and we want to share it and pay it forward wherever we can.”
A family day is earmarked for the near future too, and Ashley has big ambitions to run a service similar to Radical Monarchs in the US, which is similar to the Girl Scouts, “but instead of teaching them how to bake cakes, it teaches them about racism [and] being in a community”.
A further health and wellbeing programme will work to tackle social isolation through offering community sessions rooted in confidence building.
Ashley’s main goal with Queercircle is to build long-term programmes for long-term change and to offer LGBTQ+ artists a home they can keep coming back to. “Now that we have a space that is dedicated to LGBTQ+ people, there is no need to have a pop-up mentality,” says Ashley, with a look of hard-earned assurance. “The idea is that these are ongoing initiatives; people can keep coming back and we’ll always be here. This is our space now and we’ll continue to build and build and build.”
Queercircle, 0.1, Building 4, 3 Barton Yard,
Soames Walk, Design District, Greenwich SE10 0BN. Let Me Hold You and The Queens’ Jubilee running from June 9 – September 8 2022. Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 6pm. Admission: FREE.
www.queercircle.org/