In collaboration with People’s Proud Picnic, and with support from Adur & Worthing Trust and The Rainbow Fund, in July, Colonnade House is hosting a week celebrating the creative LGBTQ+ community of Adur & Worthing.
The programme will include an Art Market & Exhibition, Networking, Creative Workshops, Artists Talks, Film Screenings & more!
If you would like to support the People’s Proud Picnic you can donate & support via their crowdfunder campaign here.
Queer Creatives Exhibition Week Breakfast // Journaling For Creative Practitioners, with Helen Jane Campbell // 2 July // 9.15 – 10.30 // Free
Join accredited coach Helen Jane Campbell (she/her) who will guide you in this inclusive workshop, sharing journaling techniques for grounding and creativity. Journal together with other creative people within the LGBTQ+ community, and enjoy a herbal tea and light breakfast snacks.
Helen is a member of Proud Wellness and co-founded the first Hay Pride in 2022. She’s an accredited life coach and author of Founders Freelancers & Rebels.
This inclusive event is suitable for adults of all genders and members of the LGBTQ+ community are particularly welcome.
No journaling experience is necessary.
Herbal tea, kindly provided by Bird & Blend and light breakfast snacks provided by Colonnade House.
Exhibition Opening & Networking // 2 July // 17.00 – 19.00 // Free
Join us in the gallery for the launch of the exhibition.
Come and meet the artists for the chance to network and hear all about the upcoming show and events that will be taking place throughout the week.
No booking required & refreshments provided.
The People’s Proud Poetry Workshop // 3 July // 18.00 – 19.00 // Free
This poetry workshop is for any and all LGBTQIA+ folks who’d like to write poetry, be it for fun, for self expression and/or for protest.
Film Screening: QUEENDOM // 4 July // 18.00 // £3 – £5
Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism – and put her life in danger.
Find out all about QUEENDOM at our screening in the gallery.
This event has been generously sponsored & refreshments provided by Hand Brew Co.
Writing for Performance with Savage Heart Theatre Company // 5 July // 10.15 – 11.30 // Free
Try your hand at writing a dramatic speech or scene, drawing inspiration from Worthing’s LGBTQ+ artists at Colonnade House!
We’ll use the Pride exhibition on display at the gallery as a springboard for creating characters, themes, and narratives. You can create autobiographical material or let your imagination run wild. This is a fun and supportive group workshop for people new to writing, or writers who’d like to explore playful ways of working. We’ll cover aspects of character, objectives, relationships, and basic theatrical structure, before diving into some writing. This workshop is for the LGBTQ+ Community and Allies.
The workshop will be led by playwright Rachel Mae Brady, who is currently in residence at Theatre 503, London and was on-attachment with Oxford Playhouse in 2019.
Make a Flag! // 6 July // 11.00 – 13.30 // Free
In celebration of Worthing Pride Week we’ll be hosting a make a flag workshop. Drop in on Saturday to have a go at designing and making your own flag that you can take away with you. The workshop is free and all materials will be provided.
No booking required – just drop in!
True Story Time: Gays Invade Angmering! // 7 July // 12.30 – 13.30 // Free
Are you sitting comfortably? In 1972 the Hotel Roger Dee opened in Angmering-on-Sea. Run by a 60s cabaret artiste and his boyfriend, they set about creating a fun safe place for gay guests to enjoy. It was one of the first explicitly gay hotels in the UK.
Come and hear their story, and of course the drama! They fought with Worthing Council and the English Tourist Board. After bricks through windows and fights in the bar, they put out an advert for the hotel (or was it a call to action): Gays Invade Angmering.
This story is one of three uncovered by all new research in the book: The Magic Farm and other queer tales. It is told by author Alf Le Flohic, through the voices of the people involved and those who knew them.
Artist Talk: Ladypat: Perhaps I Should Explain Myself // 7 July // 14.00 – 15.00 // Free
Sussex based artist, Ladypat, is on their way to Worthing to finally explain themself!
To round off our Queer Creatives week, join Ladypat to hear about their maverick ‘Queerodivergent’ arts career & reckless genre-hopping across technologies in an artist talk at Colonnade House, Worthing.
Find out all about Brighton Pride collaboration, exhibiting Fuzzy Felt pop art, 100 Music Videos, GIFS & Snapchat, Live Visuals, Mingland clothing line and more!
Bryony May (They/Them)
Bryony May will be exhibiting a series of LGBTQIA+ flag illustrations with written descriptions of their symbology.
A series of illustrations on the radical intersections of queer politics illustrating the overarching statement that “None of us are free until all of us are free.” a modern paraphrase of a quote by 19th century Jewish American activist and poet Emma Lazarus.
As well as a variety of jewellery made from resin and recycled materials such as bottle caps and sushi sachets.
Heidi Swigon (She/Her)
Heidi Swigon is an artist and creative workshop facilitator based in Worthing. Having studied Visual Culture at the University of Brighton, she enjoys forming new and unexpected meanings using found imagery. Collage is her preferred medium thanks to its association with Surrealism and Dadaism – art movements that embrace nonsense, irrationality and intuition.
SOLD
SOLD – Shoreham Opportunities for Learning Differences is a training hub based in the SOLD high street shop in Shoreham-by-Sea.
They offer purposeful and meaningful work experiences to adults with learning differences in a realistic shop setting. Their aim is that the adults who train with them furnish themselves with a whole range of work related skills they can take onto future placements and ultimately achieve the goal of paid employment.
All of their trainees have their own talents, which they love to support and help them grow their own skills in what they are passionate about.
Amelia Ace Armande (They/Them)
Amelia Ace Armande is a local storyteller, poet and artist. They have been gathering queer folktales and myths from traditions across the world to help amplify queer narratives in their storytelling practice. These images are a collection of just some of the queer characters they have come across in their story collecting, each one corresponding loosely to a different letter in the LGBTQIA acronym. Ace also has ‘story seed packets’ available for purchase, with short outlines of each story to accompany the image, encouraging people to explore further and make the stories their own.
IG: @theydyamelia
Teri Francis (She/Her)
Teri Francis is a passionate and dedicated artist located in the heart of Worthing. She specialises in creating exquisite, one-of-a-kind art pieces that can resonate with your individuality.
Website: terifrancisartist.co.uk
Mars Chicca (She/Her)
Inspired by outsider artists and those on the fringes of society, Mars channels difficult life experiences, mental illness, and questions about identity and sexuality into messy, chaotic drawings and collage.
Skylar Mulholland (She/Her)
Skylar experiments with materials, both natural and manmade. Many found abandoned, and gathered whilst walking. Her work is an attempt to reveal the beauty to be found in decay and brokenness. Searching for ways to describe the fragility and the strength that lies within it. For although life leaves its permanent scars and visible marks, and tears at our very fabric; there is beauty to behold in those unique stains, scars, tears and at their core is robust strength.
Cassidie Alder (She/Her)
Cassidie uses her comprehensive training and skills in traditional wood carving to create new bespoke pieces – blending modern and classical forms, and enabling ancient craft to endure, and inspire new work.
Keira Thomas (She/Her)
Following Keira’s ‘Out of the Artist’ exhibition in collaboration with Worthing Museum in 2023, which created space for local LGBTQIA+ artists to share their individual voice – Keira uses the written word to further explore the theme of ‘Voice’ through the depths and challenges of freedom of identity.
Alexandra Medwell (She/Her)
Alexandra Medwell is the general manager of The Airbrush Company, Lancing, which distributes top brands of airbrushes and hosts airbrush art classes.
Alf Le Flohic (He/Him)
Alf has just published a book of queer oral history called The Magic Farm and other queer tales. It tells the true tales of three LGBT+ spaces in the south-east created in the 1970s and 80s. Told through the words of the people involved and those that knew them, it includes some 40 images, half in full colour.
One of the stories is of a gay bar in the zoo in Bognor Regis, another concerns almost festival sized queer discos on a fruit farm in Kent.
The third tale is about the Hotel Roger Dee, one of the earliest explicitly gay hotels in the UK, which opened in Angmering-on-Sea in 1972. It was set up by a 60s cabaret artiste in a white catsuit and his boyfriend who was a dresser for Danny La Rue. Together they took on Worthing Council to make it clear they welcomed gay customers.
Gil Mualem-Doron
Gil Mualem-Doron is a transdisciplinary artist, curator and researcher. His work is rooted in activism, research and lived experiences of intersectionality.
Much of his work revolves around social, racial, and environmental justice, anti-colonial practices, and socially engaged art. It has been exhibited in places such as Turner Contemporary, Tate Modern, the Jewish Museum [London], P21 Gallery, The People’s History Museum, Manchester, and abroad in Israel/Palestine, South Africa, Brazil, Germany, and Norway. Gil is the founder and creative director of the Socially Engaged Art Salon.
Open Tuesday 2 – Saturday 6 July // 10.00 – 17.00 & Sunday 7 July // 10.00 – 16.00