Voices from Hear Us Out

Hear Us Out is a new verbatim theatre festival celebrating the lives of older LGBTQ+ people.

Over the past year New Writing South has been collecting the stories of older LGBTQ+ people across south east England and is now working with a community collective of writers and performers to turn these stories into pieces of performance. The project has changed slightly due to the Covid-19 situation.

The performances were originally due to take place in residential homes, day centres, Pride events, libraries and museums, with the main production taking place at Brighton’s Sallis Benney Theatre, but all of this is currently on hold.

Hear Us Out is working out how all their meetings, workshops, rehearsals and performances can take place without anyone having to leave their homes – perhaps online or through local broadcast media. A fundamental aim of the project was to tackle social isolation faced by older LGBTQ+ people by bringing everyone together. While we may not be able to get together in the outside world for a while, Hear Us Out hopes instead to bring a sense of togetherness and community to the comfort of people’s own homes as many self-isolate. If you would like to stay up to date with the project and find out how to get involved, please keep an eye out for the soon-to-launch website www.hearusout.live.

BRIDGING THE GENERATION GAP

Lee Smith

Hear Us Out project manager Lee Smith on a rich diversity of experiences

I joined the project at the age of 26 and have been asked to give my perspective on the project as a younger person. As well as working with our older LGBTQ+ participants, we’ve also been working with Blueprint 22’s Inside Out group for LGBTQ+ young people aged 16-25. Interestingly, a lot of young people’s schemes and groups go up to the age of 25, so I suppose the project overlapped with my own sense of getting ‘older’ and entering a different phase of my life.

Having collected around 30 stories from older LGBTQ+ people that will be used by writers and performers to create pieces of performance, we also wanted to get the perspective of younger people. We held workshops with Blueprint 22’s Inside Out group to share the stories we’ve collected and discuss their own attitudes towards ageing.

In one of our sessions a young person shared something that particularly resonated with me – that they did not expect to have lived as long as they have.

I think this will probably be quite a relatable feeling within the LGBTQ+ community. Whether through suicide, violence or health and wealth inequalities, a lot of us don’t expect to and aren’t statistically likely to live as long as our cisgendered, heterosexual counterparts. So working with a group of alive and kicking older LGBTQ+ people has felt really celebratory, that LGBTQ+ people can and do live long and fulfilled lives and have stories that need to be heard.

“Another thing I’ve really cherished, as a younger trans person, is meeting and working with older trans people who are flourishing in their lives and identities”

There are always interesting discussions to be had, stories to be shared, and I think we should all make more of an effort to get together and hear each other out.

It’s also nice to see what older LGBTQ+ people are doing outside of the Brighton bubble, such as at Eastbourne Rainbow or Hastings & Rother Rainbow Alliance. After this experience, not only would I like to see more opportunities for older LGBTQ+ people but also more opportunities for intergenerational engagement.

I’ve really valued getting to meet, know and work with this group of people I might not have met otherwise. It’s been great to see certain people engage with every aspect of the project and really benefit from it. There is a real sense of joy and community felt.

I think in arts and culture, we really need to make sure we’re not just catering for the usual suspects and are taking the time to listen to the wider community about what they want and need.

This highlights the assumptions we often make about what older people like and, with those currently reaching retirement age being born in the 1950s, wartime Vera Lynn might not be the best go-to. And when you further consider that there’s a standard offering for ‘older people’ and a standard offering for ‘LGBTQ+ people’, it feels like older LGBTQ+ people are often failed by both. So I have really valued that this project is created by older LGBTQ+ people for older LGBTQ+ people.

The project is spearheaded by a steering group comprising older LGBTQ+ people and organisations which work specifically with older LGBTQ+ people, such as Switchboard’s older people’s project Older & Out, and Eastbourne Rainbow. Something that really stuck with me was when someone in a steering group meeting said they were thankful the project was something for older people that wasn’t Vera Lynn!

It also came up in our discussions with Blueprint 22’s Inside Out group that having older LGBTQ+ role models is really important. Hearing the stories of older LGBTQ+ people who have careers, relationships and families proves to younger LGBTQ+ people that these things are obtainable for them (if they so want them).

Another thing I’ve really cherished, as a younger trans person, is meeting and working with older trans people who are flourishing in their lives and identities. It busts the myth perpetuated in the media that being trans is something new and made up by millennials. Trans people have always and will always exist and under the right circumstances can and do flourish.