Workshop Outlines
After contacting QUEERCIRCLE to borrow a badgemaker, Frances invited me to QUEERCIRCLE. When she showed me around the exhibition space, library and workshop, I was excited for the LGBTQ+ youth group to see that there are beautiful spaces like this for them. Frances and I agreed to do an initial workshop collaboration for Step Forward’s upcoming summer holiday programme based on the Zine that Meg-John Barker created with Queercircle on Queer Creative Health.
In the first workshop, the facilitator Tomara facilitated intros including the question ‘what would your superpower be and why?’. We played a fun word association game to warm up before the main part of the workshop. The words ‘Queer’, ‘Creative’ and ‘Health’ had been around the room and using post-it notes Tomara challenged us to come up with more words relating to each word than the author MJ Barker had themselves. The competitive element sparked the group on and we were very proud to beat MJ! We finished with a passionate discussion about the words that had come up, discussing ideas we found particularly interesting like the advantages and dangers of visibility.
In the second workshop, hosted at Step Forward during our weekly LGBTQ+ Youth Group, Tomara showed us DIY Zines for inspiration and then taught us how to make our very own Zines. Tomara led us through an automatic writing activity with reflective questions related to Queer, Creative and Health, after which we had each made our own zine.
Reflections on Outcomes
I will firstly reflect on what I think came out of the collaboration with QUEERCIRCLE, before exploring how Tomara’s queer and creative facilitation perhaps facilitated the outcomes.
I was struck by how open and vulnerable the group were to be themselves during the workshops. Whilst this is the main purpose of our LGBTQ+ youth group, young people understandably do not always respond this way with external facilitators. In the first workshop, it was touching to see one young person link detailed theories from a sociologist from their studies to our discussions. We also saw a more sensitive side to another member of the group when they shared a powerful image representing their mental health that they had created during the automatic writing in their zine.
I was also interested that young people felt comfortable to decide how much they wanted – or importantly did not want – to share. Frances and Tomara were impressed by the openness and generosity of the group as most young people chose to donate their personal zines to Queercircle to be potentially exhibited in their upcoming exhibition. In the checkouts, one young person said she was sorry that she hadn’t shared much from her zine, but said she had really appreciated having some time to process things for herself. The zines hold deeply personal reflections and I think the trust and vulnerability the group felt in creating and sharing these came out of both the facilitation and space of the workshop as I will now explore.
Reflections on Process
As an LGBTQ+ Youth Worker, I am interested in how queer people go through processes to understand and become more ourselves and how youth work can support this. In a viral social media post, Alexander Leon wrote: ‘Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves. […] The massive task of our adult lives is to unpack which parts of ourselves are truly us and which parts we’ve created to protect us’. I believe that being an LGBTQ+ Youth Worker requires a careful negotiation about sharing relevant parts of ourselves to support young people to feel more comfortable accepting more parts of themselves from younger ages.
QUEER Facilitation
For me, Tomara’s facilitation was queer in that they were very confidently themselves, which actively invited young people to bring more parts of themselves to the workshops. For example, Tomara spoke passionately about their love of bikes, and referred to their own experiences of transphobia which built bridges with young people with shared experiences. Tomara actively encouraged young people by responding with care and enthusiasm to each individual contribution. They even wrote down several references from young people to look into, which showed genuine care about the group’s inputs.
I was impressed by Tomara’s authentic response to being challenged by someone in the group. They paused then said: 'That’s a really good question. Why did I say that? I suppose it’s because…’ and went on to share their thought process as to why they had asked this specific question. By being their queer self and showing vulnerability, Tomara created trust and invited the group to be more open.
CREATIVE Facilitation
Tomara and Frances also brought creativity to their workshop which again encouraged the group to feel comfortable being themselves. When the group had an excited conversation about vampires, Tomara was flexible about timings, joined the excitement and let the conversation run its course. I think there is acreativity in moving away from rigid timings when facilitating which allows for a more queer approach of letting human interactions play out more naturally. The group saw from the start that there was space for their ideas and they would not be rushed or moved on.
During a discussion about our post-it notes on creativity, we talked about how creativity is for everyone. We discussed how capitalism and competition can kill creativity, whereas play and queerness encourage it. In the second workshop Frances invited different forms of creativity by hunting around Step Forward for materials which could be used to collage. Tomara made it clear that the group could respond to the prompts with writing, drawing or even completely ignore the prompts and do their own thing. All this creativity from the facilitators encouraged the group to engage with their own creativity in their own ways.
Conclusion
I enjoyed this collaboration with QUEERCIRCLE firstly because it created a real atmosphere of excitement amongst the LGBTQ+ youth group, but most importantly because it was beautiful to see the group feeling comfortable to be themselves in a new setting. We need more collaborations to create safer spaces for LGBTQ+ young people.Through collaboration and queer and creative facilitation, LGBTQ+ young people are exposed to new places, people and ideas through which they can bring new parts of themselves, whether that is pain, laughter, self-expression or just a long conversation about vampires.
