The Beat of Our Hearts - Staging new histories of LGBTQ+ loneliness

Many LGBTQ+ people in Britain have been subject to exclusion and isolation, both historically and in at present. This can result from explicit discrimination and hostility in family homes, on the street, and from institutions such as our education and healthcare services, as well as a more diffused cultural bias which favours and naturalises some lives and relationships over others.

Loneliness is one of the most significant emotional and psychological expressions of this marginalisation. It is a frequent and complicated problem, and can lead to serious difficulties in mental and physical health. It is also an understudied and under-discussed phenomenon, with scholarship and visibility low in relation to other at-risk groups.

LGBTQ+ loneliness has a long history, as do the relationships and spaces that LGBTQ+ people have built for solidarity, creativity, and care. This project will engage LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ audiences with these histories, reconnecting them with past queer lives.

Over the last two years, Dr Charlotte Jones and Dr Fred Cooper (PI and RF) have been working in partnership on arts-based, interdisciplinary approaches to loneliness. This collaboration included the creation of a large data set on loneliness in Britain, collected through Mass Observation, a national writing archive; a one-year participatory project with a cohort of Exeter students, who worked in partnership to deliver a workshop series on student loneliness; and a creative journaling project during the Covid-19 lockdown.

LGBTQ+ loneliness has been a recurring theme in this research, as well as in Jones's work with intersex people, and Cooper's historical practice on loneliness and estrangement.

This fellowship will transform this research into a programme of creative workshops about loneliness with LGBTQ+ communities in Devon and Cornwall, in partnership with the Intercom Trust, a leading LGBTQ+ charity in the South West. This will culminate in the development and staging of an original performance at Exeter's Northcott Theatre across one week in November 2021, as part of the Being Human festival.

The performance will be written by the playwright Natalie McGrath, drawing on a community of queer writers and artists, and responding to research outputs by Jones and Cooper. The performance will be accompanied by a parallel festival of events, bringing in local and national LGBTQ+ charities, groups, and initiatives.

Engagement Activities

Our programme of engagement will begin with six workshops to initiate conversations on LGBTQ+ experiences of loneliness, hosted in collaboration with the Intercom Trust. These workshops will be an extension of the Trust's community work, part discussion-based and part creative writing, and will ask participants to respond to Jones and Cooper's research.

Two will be age-specific (16-25 and 50+), on the theme of 'intimacies', and four will be intergenerational (16+), on the themes of 'communities' and 'margins.' Participants will respond creatively to brief vignettes taken from early, unfinished sections of the script drafted by McGrath, and to research conducted by Jones and Cooper. They will also engage with the final development of the creative work, including conversations about access, response, and the future of LGBTQ+ programming and outreach at the Northcott.

The project's work will then be brought to multiple audiences through an innovative theatrical performance and a parallel festival of events and activities at the Northcott. This will take the form of a cluster of short vignettes on queer history, loneliness, and solitude. The accompanying festival will include discussion groups on the performance, conversations with actors and other collaborators, and opportunities to explore the academic research behind the project.

The festival will also engage local LGBTQ+ students and act as a meaningful intervention on loneliness at university, which LGBTQ+ students are disproportionately likely to experience.