The Ledward Centre close to opening

Long awaited and highly anticipated, Brighton & Hove’s first LGBTQ+ community centre, named after Gscene founder and driving force of the project James Ledward, is on the brink of becoming a reality.

With a mission to “promote and support Brighton’s diverse LGBTQ+ community and vibrant culture by providing a safe and accessible space in the heart of the city”, The Ledward Centre – a light and modern 6,500sq ft space in Jubilee Square – has been welcoming community input to determine what people would most like to see from the project via a wide-reaching survey. Some of the initial responses are shared on page 4 of the magazine.

While the Community Consultation Survey (www.ledcen.biz/survey) is ongoing, Chris Gull, chair of the Brighton Rainbow Fund, which has facilitated and seed-funded the Centre, says much has already been achieved, although slightly frustrating is the fact that the lease has still not been signed.

Chris Gull

“We are now in the middle of November and the landlords told us nearly four months ago we could have the lease, then took another month and a half to tell us who their solicitors are,” says Chris. “But I’m a great believer that things will happen as they are meant to. There’s no stress – there’s a little frustration, but we’re using the time to put other things together.”

Among those other things was the setting up of a Community Interest Company (CIC) and the lodging of an application for charitable status, which Chris says will take several months.

In the meantime, the response to a call-out for volunteers has resulted so far in some 60 people getting on board across a range of skills, but Chris emphasises that anyone interested is welcome and information about how to apply – among many other things – can be found on the new website, www. ledcen.biz/survey.

The next phase of the consultation is focus groups around issues such as ethnicity, gender identification, disability, autism & neuro-divergence, deaf & hard of hearing, blind & visually impaired etc, to determine exactly what the Centre needs to build into its infrastructure to make sure it is safe, comfortable and all-encompassing for every member of our communities.

Outside the new premises

To that end there is also a major push to get the survey out to those in the 35-40,000-strong LGBTQ community in Brighton & Hove who don’t have online access, with those who do being urged to print it out and pass it on, or help others to fill it out. The PDF can be downloaded ready to print at www. ledcen.biz/survey and sent to Freepost GSCENE.

But in general terms, Chris says the “raison d’etre” for the Centre, which was prompted by recommendations from the 2006 Count Me In Too survey, was to provide a space for people to socialise without having to engage with pubs or bars,

“so it was always intended to be a pop-up community cafeteria and meeting spaces”.

While much of the detail around how the Centre will work has still to be determined, there are some givens, of which the ground-floor cafeteria is one. Chris anticipates it will take the form of a servery, much like those found in Ikea, “so we can accommodate supper clubs and lunch clubs”.

The servery will be part of the FareShare scheme and Chris says opinions are being sought through the survey on the prospect of

“The cafeteria at least and possibly the whole thing to be pay what you want, or pay what you can”.

He continues: “This would mean virtually everything will have a suggested price, but you can either decide to pay forward and pay more, pay the suggested prices or, if you can’t afford it, pay what you can or pay nothing.” And he says that approach could work equally well if applied to “an art class or a yoga session or coming to a supper club to hear a talk on gay penguins”.

Ground floor

Also anticipated for the ground floor is an information desk, a visitor centre, exhibition space and a bookshop, along with an LGBTQ+ community radio station.

“We’ve managed to get DAB frequency so it’ll be a talk radio station but probably with a little bit of music – maybe a Desert Island Discs type of thing, and the equivalent of an Elaine Paige programme where someone will play show tunes for a couple of hours – but also lots of call-in programmes using Gscene content as the basis,” says Chris.

“There are a lot of people who are not online, can’t or won’t get broadband and don’t have smart phones, so it’ll be very much about trying to get DAB radio to people who are isolated, and it will live stream on DAB radio as well as online – even things like a piano bar night, so you can hear someone playing the piano while you’re having your supper. People will be able to be involved even if they can’t come to the Centre.”

Downstairs is likely be a central space with pods or units that can be used as meeting rooms or classrooms, with a “super-domestic kitchen” to cater for groups that like to meet up around creating a meal for themselves.

lower ground floor

“These are all ideas we are still consulting about, because we want to hear how that’s going to work in the real world with real people,” Chris concludes.

For more info, to get involved, and to complete the Community Consultation Survey, visit: www.ledcen.biz/survey