Celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month at BWC
The month of February marks LGBTQ+ History Month across our Trust. Our colleagues have been celebrating across our sites with various online and in person events. This year’s theme is ‘activism and social change’.
Colleagues have been exploring the theme through our LGBTQ+ network inviting a variety of guest speakers to come and speak at our online mini conference to talk about their own personal experiences of activism that may resonate with some of our staff.
Guest speakers include: Gen Z Journalist and Physicist Shivani Dave who is also a political commentator on Radio and TV, Michael Johnson-Ellis, co-founder of My Surrogacy Journey, is also a speaker at the two part conference available for all staff to attend to educate themselves through the eyes of courageous individuals with lived experience. Michael is very open about how he is a Surrogacy & Fertility Treatment Advocate and the journey to being the Founder of TwoDads.U.K.
Another speaker the LGBTQ+ Network have invited to their LGBTQ+ History Conference is award winning Jason Jones. Jason is an LGBTQ+ human rights defender originally from Trinidad & Tobago who has lived and worked in Britain for over 30 years advocating for the rights of the LGBTQ+ community with regards to things like adult consensual same sex intimacy and the right for same sex couples to be together. He has made history with his work.
These events hosted by the Network, allow colleagues to learn more about the LGBTQ+ background and therefore bring that forward into their care of LGBTQ+ young people across our Trust.
Colleagues have also been using time throughout the history month to express themselves through a fantastic lunch time drop-in poetry workshop hosted at our Children’s Hospital. Birmingham’s Poet Laureate Jasmine Gardosi visited us to share the secrets of their craft and also involved our staff in creating some of their very own poems.
Jasmine is a multiple slam champion, beatboxer, and Honorary Doctor of Letters (Birmingham Newman University). They are a winner of the Out-Spoken Prize for poetry and winner of the Saboteur Award for Best Spoken Word Performer.
They also shared some of their own poems and raps around this year’s History Month theme that they have been working on to inspire everyone.
Be sure to check out our social media to see how our colleagues got on throughout the month.