This blog has lain dormant for
nearly nine months, but this should not suggest a lack of activity but more of
an excess. In that time I have been working on my MA in theatre directing,
which has brought about some incredible experiences, and endlessly figuring out
how to get Hearts Unspoken back on and into the public sphere. Happily all this
work has paid off as Arts Council England granted me funding to launch and
incredibly exciting project in the lead up to World Pride, being held in London
in July.
The project is to result in two separate
but related arts events at the Double Jeopardy Conference. This conference is
being organised by a coalition of UK and international human rights groups, and
focuses on the launch of the Greenwich Declaration. This document outlines
seven principles of treatment which LGBTI asylum seekers should expect upon
arrival in the United Kingdom. There could not be a better context for the play
to be performed in, but the second strand of the project is even more exciting.
Through the UK Lesbian and Gay
Immigration Group, I am meeting a new group of LGBTI asylum seekers who have
all recently enjoyed participating in a large scale community based theatre
work. According to the ladies at UKLGIG they are hugely excited by the prospect
of a new project, and so we will create a series of short scenes, poems,
stories and other works that will really bring the human stories behind the
document to the conference delegates attention.
One of the fundamental principles
that I learnt during the process of writing Hearts Unspoken, was that the best
way to support LGBTI people from countries in which they experience oppression,
was to give them platform for their own voices to be heard. The workshops will
allow this and also be fun, empowering and hopefully very surprising.
This project is on an initially a relatively
small scale, but as I believe there stories of sexuality and globalisation are
some of the most important of our time, it presents a fantastic opportunity for
more feedback, more knowledge and provides a model for the future of this
project.
