QUEERCIRCLE

New Report: Fragments of a Queer Radical Mapping Praxis 📄 We understand this praxis as an ongoing cycle of collective action and reflection: a way of mapping that foregrounds relation, partiality, and transparency. Through collective, experimental processes, we seek to strengthen queer wellbeing by tracing and transforming the forces that make us sick, exhausted, and excluded, while cultivating networks of care, joy, and autonomy - River Újhadbor Fragments of a Queer Radical Mapping Praxis (free to download or pick up), gathers global examples of queer counter-mapping, lyrical texts, and a framework of seven fragments to guide us. See the report here: https://lnkd.in/ePxfeFE6

🏳️⚧️ 🏳️🌈 We’re #hiring a Digital and Communications Lead to shape the next chapter of digital storytelling at QUEERCIRCLE. This is a key role for someone to lead and develop QUEERCIRCLE’s digital communications and website strategy — transforming our platforms from informational channels into active spaces for community connection, knowledge-building and solidarity initiatives. Know anyone who might be interested? 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️

We’re delighted to welcome Renée Mussai as a Trustee✨ "In a world increasingly determined by authoritarian regimes & silent institutions, the remedial work of QUEERCIRCLE is not only urgent but deeply necessary. It is a great privilege and pleasure to join such a courageous and committed organisation at this pivotal moment in time… I look forward to working together, actively creating change and embracing the fluidity + potency of being 'in process' as both praxis and method." Portrait by Christa Holka (she/they) - Renée Mussai (she/her) is an independent curator, writer & scholar of visual culture with a special interest in Black feminist & intersectional practices. For more than two decades, she was senior curator and head of collection & curatorial at London-based arts charity Autograph where she organised numerous critically acclaimed public programmes of exhibitions, commissions & publications. Between 2022–23 she acted as artistic director of The Walther Collection, supporting the foundation’s publication, acquisition & exhibition programmes. In 2025 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of the Arts in recognition of her sustained curator – and scholarship in the field of photography & lens-based media. Mussai curates, lectures & publishes internationally on visual & curatorial activism, with a focus on contemporary artists whose work addresses decolonial, archival & remedial politics. She is currently senior research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg, SA; guest curator at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, USA; lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London & serves as chair of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation’s advisory council, amongst other academic & institutional affiliations. Her most recent publications include 'Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain' (2025) & the forthcoming sole-authored 'Eyes That Commit–A Visual Gathering’ (2026), alongside several award-winning artist monographs such as 'Zanele Muholi: Hail, the Dark Lioness' (2018/2024) and 'Lina Iris Viktor: Some Are Born to Endless Night–Dark Matter' (2021).

🏳️🌈 February is LGBT+ History Month, and we ARE highlighting how creative health can help reduce health inequalities and improve access to care. Our latest blog draws on NCCH’s submission to the NHS LGBT+ Health Evidence Review, bringing together research and practice examples that show how creative approaches can help to build trust, reduce isolation and strengthen engagement with services. We’re also sharing further research from the Creative Health Research Round-Up Report 2025, including 🎨 Queer Creative Health 2, Researching Ourselves by Meg-John Barker (QUEERCIRCLE). This illustrated zine explores how community-led, creative approaches support wellbeing through embodied experience, relationships and shared spaces. 🔗 Read the blog: https://lnkd.in/emzShkn8 🔗 Creative Health Research Round-Up 2025: https://lnkd.in/e6Et2QEA 🔗 Queer Creative Health 2, Researching Ourselves by Meg-John Barker: https://lnkd.in/eVTvxNft #CreativeHealth #LGBT+ Cover image from QUEERCIRCLE / Meg-John Barker’s Queer Creative Health 2: Researching Ourselves

🌈 LGBT+ History Month celebrates the many people who’ve contributed to our shared history and paved the way for progress. 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ It’s also about recognising the barriers that still exist and finding ways to come together to overcome oppression and build a brighter future for everyone. This LGBT+ History Month, we want to shine a light on a few of the incredible organisations we’ve recently supported in this space. Each one puts hope into action. 🫶 The Brunswick Centre in Huddersfield works with and for LGBTQ+ young people to lead systems change and to improve LGBTQ+ health and wellbeing services and support. QUEERCIRCLE is an LGBTQIA+ led charity working at the intersection of arts, health and social action. Their community-focused programme provides a creative and multidisciplinary space that strengthens links between culture, health and wellbeing. Rainbow Migration provides practical and emotional support for LGBTQI+ people seeking asylum. They also offer specialist legal information and advice, and campaign to improve the treatment of people seeking asylum. Image: Gathering with Palestine teach-ins, 2024, Courtesy of QUEERCIRCLE, photo by Holly Revell.

We’re thrilled to welcome Mo Hassan (He/They) as our Cultural Democracy Lead. “I believe in cultural work that remains in relationship with its communities — where institutions are questioned, not protected, and where art, social justice, and health are understood as inseparable through queer ways of living and caring. For me, QUEERCIRCLE embodies this commitment… working with clear intention to foster meaningful, lasting change.” - Mo is a creative producer, cultural programmer, and community organiser with over 15 years’ experience delivering socially engaged arts and cultural programmes across the UK and internationally. Their work spans creative health, political education, queer liberation, decolonial cultural practice, and large-scale artistic direction. With a background in art and politics, Mo specialises in co-creation and community building, shaping cultural environments that centre LGBTQIA+, Global Majority, disabled, and marginalised communities through care, equity, and collective empowerment. Mo has led inclusive, large-scale programmes and festivals including Shangri-La at Glastonbury, Shambala, and Envision Festival, and has worked with organisations supporting displaced and under-represented artists. Mo is the founder and programmer of Nomad Stage at Glastonbury, a space for the under- represented.

✨ Announcing our 2026 Programme ✨ Across the year, each season operates as a site of experimentation, exploring key questions through our four strategic pillars: Season 1: Where We Meet Artist Rachel Sale undertakes a three-month residency across the QUEERCIRCLE ecology, exploring shared identity, needs, skills and ambitions. Together we’ll map existing and emerging forms of mutual aid and strengthen alliances in response to rising fascism. Season 2: A Queer Atlas — Counter-Mapping Creative Health Extending our inquiry across London, this season uses counter-mapping to explore queer health, creativity and place. Our new research commission examines how mapping reveals both the forces shaping queer wellbeing and the practices that resist them. Season 3: Rehearsing Democracy We'll explore somatics as a tool for practising democratic processes, focusing on how people make decisions, negotiate differences, and participate in collective action. Six artists will be invited to use the space freely alongside participants from previous seasons. Season 4: Queer Community Library QUEERCIRCLE becomes a Queer Community Library: a physical space and living knowledge practice holding research, publications, tools, artworks and documentation produced throughout the year This is a programme shaped collectively; learning as we go, together. 🔗 Find our more about the strategy for the year: https://lnkd.in/eVkSMZT4

We're Co-developing A New Emergent Strategy! Over the past three years, we’ve brought together artists, health practitioners, young people, organisers, academics, researchers, grassroots groups and cross-sector partners to better understand our role within society. What’s emerged isn’t a fixed institution, but a growing, shape-shifting ecosystem — changing as new people join, relationships deepen and priorities evolve. As an organisation-in-process, 2026 marks a significant moment for QUEERCIRCLE. Over the next 12 months, we’ll be co-developing our future strategy with this wider ecology, shaping a shared framework built around four interconnected pillars: • Collective Governance: embedding experimentation, values and participation into our systems • Cultural Democracy: resourcing communities with tools to create change • Community Knowledge: lived-experience as expertise • Solidarity Economies: building cross-sector, reciprocal financial and non-financial infrastructures As we move through 2026, we’ll continue to share learning from our programme of inquiry — what’s working, what’s difficult and what’s shifting ✍️  🔗 Read the full strategy:

Today we’re releasing Let’s Create Change: Artistic Freedom in a Time of Genocide and Rising Fascism, a new report commissioned by QUEERCIRCLE. The report exposes a growing climate of censorship, funding pressures and political influence across the UK arts sector, particularly in relation to Palestine and trans rights. Swipe through to see the key findings and recommendations for change. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/e3dhx3Jt

We’re #Hiring a Cultural Democracy Lead 💫 This new senior role will shape and embed QUEERCIRCLE’s commitment to co-creation, equity and accessibility across all our programmes. If you’re passionate about placing queer communities at the centre of cultural production, political education and creative health we want to hear from you. Term: Permanent Schedule: 4 days / week Working hours: Tue - Fri, 10.00 - 18.00 Some evenings and weekend work will be required, compensated by time off in lieu. Salary: £ 42,000 (based on four day working week) Application deadline: 7 December 2025 Find out more & Apply: https://lnkd.in/eKTJFEJQ