Queer Community Library Launch Day

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On Saturday 10 October, we opened our doors to launch the Queer Community Library with a day of gathering, conversation, workshops and shared food. The day was built around the questions at the heart of this season: what counts as knowledge, who gets to decide, and how do we preserve the experiences and knowledge of marginalised people so that future generations can learn from and build on them?
Libraries Today: panel discussion

Isadore (Book28), Bailey (PRIM Black), Aisha Shaibu-Lenoir (Common Press) and public librarian, author and social justice advocate John Vincent discussed what it means to preserve queer knowledge in a moment of censorship, political hostility and institutional neglect. The panel explored libraries and archives as living infrastructures for memory, access, political education, community and resistance, and what becomes possible when communities build and care for their own spaces of knowledge.
Sacred Objects: writing workshop with Harper Walton

Upstairs, Harper Walton led a writing workshop that used objects as a way into queerness: as sites of knowledge and as tools for writing. Participants worked with objects connected to their gender or sexuality, some brought from home and some found in the space, to explore what an object can tell us about memory, identity and the ways we come to know ourselves. There was also space to share writing and receive feedback.
Herbal medicine tea ritual with Bear

Bear led a heart-centred tea ritual using medicinal plants that grow in and around London. Rather than being told what we were drinking, we discovered it together, tasting slowly, noticing sensation in the body and drawing on collective, felt knowledge. It was a gentle reminder that knowledge lives in the body too, and that some forms of medicine have always been passed hand to hand.
International online panel discussion

In the evening, we connected with Ben Camara (Orange Library, The Gambia), Filip Kijowski (Biblioteka Azyl, Poland) and Keval Harie (Gala Queer Archive, South Africa). They shared how their libraries and archives respond to local pressures, censorship, institutional neglect and changing access to information. The conversation focused on participation and co-creation: how communities shape these spaces, the risks and challenges that come with that, and the small but meaningful changes that grow over time.

All panel discussions and the tea ritual were BSL interpreted.

Thank you to everyone wh, spoke, facilitated and came along. The library is now open throughout the season, and we’d love to see you there.