Queer Care Camp  took place at Studio Voltaire in October 2021 and was a space for LGBTQIA+ creatives and their allies to make, think and rest, explored through the lens of LGBTQIA+ healthcare. This was a space to come together, to share resources and to reimagine LGBTQIA+ communities that survive and thrive. Hosting a range of queer care community organisations, including Mosaic LGBT+ Young Person’s Trust, Queer Youth Art Collective, as well as artists Sapna Agarwal, Juliet Jacques, Cannach MacBride and Linda Stupart, the Camp centres the question: ‘What is Queer Care?’. 

Queer Care Camp forms part of Desperate Living – an ongoing programme that brings artists, public organisations and informal groups together to test out new and experimental forms of collaborative programming, knowledge sharing and production, explored through the lens of LGBTQIA+ healthcare.

Supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation and The Mila Charitable Organisation.

Strange Fruit were a Dutch queer collective active between 1989 and 2002. Originating

in Amsterdam, this queer of colour activist collective worked to challenge racism within LGBTQ+ communities and immigrant communities in the Netherlands. This challenged the political and cultural status quo, not least Holland’s myth of liberal pluralism and social inclusion, to forge a new activist community and a community of care. Strange Fruit established a safe-space for Muslim, Afro-Caribbean and other migrant youth from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds, building community through discos, cafes, poetry workshops, and organising mutually and horizontally in acts of ‘co-creation.’ Over time they appealed to global majority queers of colour and their allies in communities throughout the Netherlands and further afield.

More on Strange Fruit can be found here.

The Edward Carpenter Community is a gay men’s community organisation that meet throughout the UK. This grew out of the post-gay liberation Wild Lavender Housing Co-op, Leeds during the early to mid-1980s. At that time, Co-op members were interested in building a rural community with a nurturing, community care ethos that foregrounded co-operative living as distinct from the commercial gay scenes of the major UK cities.

A Gay Men’s Week was established at sister housing co-operative Laurieston Hall, in Dumfries and Galloway, in 1985, with the aim of developing an alternative community. This was named after the Victorian gay rights activist, vegetarian and socialist Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) who advocated for a return to the land; ideas that influenced movements like the Woodcraft Folk and Radical Fairies. Activities at Laurieston consisted of group workshops on personal growth, creativity, and intimacy, as well as cooking, eating, cleaning, singing, dancing, swimming, and sleeping together. All of which acquired an added necessity in the context of the increased homophobia experienced by gay men living in Thatcher’s Britain and during the global AIDS pandemic. The community continue to meet for heart circles and works through consensus decision making and co-operation.

More on the Edward Carpenter Community & Laurieston Hall can be found here:

www.edwardcarpentercommunity.org.uk

www.lauriestonhall.org.uk

Conceived by Conal McStravick

Designed by Zhizhong Keene

Illustrations by David Shenton

With special thanks to Andre Reeder and David Gleeson

Content warning: one of the posters makes reference to suicide

Photo by Benedict Johnson