Re-imagining LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Communities, 2023-2024

From 2023-2024 the UKRI funded 'Re-imagining LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Communities’ (Between LGBTQ+ Generations) project. Between LGBTQ+ Generations ran from September 2023 to June 2024 in Brighton, UK. It brought together people aged 18-35 and 55+ in a series of 8 workshops. Each workshop had a different theme and drew on a different creative method. The intervention was designed, developed and delivered using creative methods and community-centred frameworks that acknowledges community development as self-cultivating, with external resources acting as a catalyst for this work. Funded by the UKRI Healthy Ageing Challenge and University of Sussex, this project responds to a call to address public health inequalities, tackle market failures, and support healthy ageing. This project interprets healthy ageing as bidirectional, in which both older and younger LGBTQ+ groups hold expertise around healthy ageing. The files from each workshop are indicated by the workshop number in each filename.

This project brings together LGBTQ+ University students and older LGBTQ+ Brighton & Hove community members with aim to tackle loneliness and social isolation through intergenerational community building. The principal aim of this project is to encourage LGBTQ+ intergenerational community ties that promote communication, solidarity, and in-person knowledge exchange following the isolating effects of Covid-19 pandemic. Statistically, LGBTQ+ people are less likely to grow old than their non- LGBTQ+ counterparts, and they are a group more likely to die by suicide. At the same time, the covid pandemic has disproportionately affected the mental health of LGBTQ+ students at Universities in the UK. A recent study by student minds shows that these students are more likely to struggle with mental health due to a sense of loneliness and isolation at University. The project will take place through in-person befriending meetings (weekly or bi-weekly), visual arts design workshops (once monthly), and 'knowledge cascading' research workshops (once termly). The project will run over university term-time (1 September 2023 - 30 June 2024), in two 16-week cycles, with opportunity to adjust workshop models and content. The aim of the workshops is to use visual arts to create empowering narratives that picture local LGBTQ+ history, identity, and community. In the workshops, we will use comics, zines, photography, and other visual storytelling mapping exercises to think about LGBTQ+ identity and what resilience looks like. This project develops a knowledge cascading community model where knowledge flows down from older LGBTQ+ participants to LGBTQ+ university students, and back up again. While there will be room to talk about personal experience, the aim of the workshop is to materially visualise LGBTQ+ identity, and to create a picture of what community looks like. Alongside the workshops, the students and community members aged 55+ will also meet in pairs to encourage community building and knowledge exchange. This will be managed by the lead researcher, who has a conversation with each participant, and matches participants by age (there should be two older community members and two university students in each 'befriending pod'). These pods will then be instructed to meet in-person at least twice a month, for 30 mins to an hour during each meeting. They will be provided with conversation starter packs (which include questions to ask, short 'icebreaker' art activities) to help them along. The purpose of these meetings will be stated: to improve the community knowledge exchange, and to address a key challenge outlined in this project: loneliness and isolation. There will four other initiatives running alongside the workshops and befriending scheme: a bespoke workshop for participants interested in learning more about 'knowledge cascading' and community research; ongoing wellbeing recommendations through partnerships, as well as a 'mental health and community building' wellbeing pack which signposts mental health support routes; placement recruitment and design (various courses at the University of Sussex are interested in using this project as a placement option for their students); development of a civic engagement toolkit that can be used by Universities across the UK (including placement models, content design, partnership suggestions); and the creation of a Community Interest Company to ensure the project is sustained through a civic engagement model used by Universities.