The Museum of Transology residency at QUEERCIRCLE has been an opportunity for volunteers to grow a community around archiving trancestry. We have been working on a collection of placards from London Trans Pride 2023 and learning the level of detail we would like to put into telling stories of transness. We paid attention to the vocabulary that separates Museum of Transology from cisheteronormative institutions. Most of all, we have found a home at the Museum of Transology and had the privilege to be hosted by the welcoming space of QUEERCIRCLE alongside their wonderful team.

This weekend, we will be celebrating our trans visibility, but we will remain visible all year long. Our voices cannot be silenced when we write, talk, and sing. Our history cannot be erased when we create, make art, and build a strong community that feels like home. The performative acts of the government show its apparent support of queerness, for the purpose of good publicity, but they do not bring real change, and the UK is being set back in its progress towards being a trans-friendly place to live. The symbol of the rainbow was adapted to cherish a healthcare service that is not supportive and not trained on trans bodies and trans experiences.

However, we will continue our efforts to tell our stories, so they won’t be forgotten or changed. We will be loud so that there are more and more people feeling safe to come out as trans. And we will have trans kids, growing up to be trans adults, and then becoming trans elders.

At its heart, this weekend is a celebration of trans making, doing, and being.  Visibility can be a trap: to be visible as a trans person in the United Kingdom is a dangerous act. Our intention in curating this weekend is to explore what it might mean to recentre our efforts on becoming visible to each other. To celebrate trans creativity, in all its playful experimentation; to build community solidarities, with care and intention; to explore the lives and ephemera of those who came before us, that we can imagine where we might go. 

We hope that this gathering for Trans Day of Visibility nourishes you, as the community we have found in curating this programme has nourished us.

- Stella Kothe-Evans & Kosma Mrzygłód