BACKLASH:
A QUEER CULTURAL STATE OF THE NATION
18/03/2026 | CAMBRIDGE JUNCTION
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ABOUT THE DAY
Curious Arts, Marlborough Productions & Fatt Projects present a day of research, panels, workshops, training and conversation for the UK cultural sector launching the findings of the LGBTQIA+ Cultural Barometer’s recent research into experiences of anti-lgbtq+ backlash.
This day will be an essential opportunity to hear initial findings from our research with over 100 participant individuals and/or organisations working in the cultural sector on their experiences of backlash, with speakers from a range of organisations and individual practices. The programme will also include tips and best practice on how to manage and mitigate potential backlash, and invite us consider the ways that we might start to counter this as a sector.
RUNNING ORDER & OUTLINE PROGRAMME
10:30 - 11:00: ARRIVALS
tea & coffee available on arrival.
11:00 - 11:40: WELCOME AND LAUNCH
Welcome address, launching the Backlash report sharing findings from the LGBTQIA+ Cultural Barometer Research, time for questions.
11:40 - 11:45: PERFORMANCE from MIDGITTE BARDOT
11:45-11:55: SPOTLIGHT ON STORYHOUSE
Short case study on dealing with recent experiences of backlash, protest, and political challenge from Annabel Turpin, Chief Executive at Storyhouse.
11:55-12:50: PANEL DISCUSSION - ALLYSHIP & ACTION
Travis Alabanza (Artist & Author), Sue John (Co-Director of Glasgow Women’s Library), and Claudia West (Cambridge Director for Arts Council, England) will discuss experiences of backlash and how they’ve dealt with it. The Panel will be chaired by Lara Ratnaraja.
12:50: SPOTLIGHT ON CAMBRIDGE IS CHOPPED
Short presentation from Guillotina, ‘Cambridge’s only Black drag performer’ and founder of ‘Cambridge is Chopped’, a newly formed grass-roots movement focusing on improving the quality of life for QIPOC individuals who live, study, and work in Cambridge.
13:00 - 13:05 - MORNING REFLECTIONS from MIDGITTE BARDOT
13:05 - 13:50: LUNCH
13:50 - 14:15: BUILDING A BACKLASH TOOLKIT
Introduction and overview introducing how to build a skeleton strategy to prepare for and deal with backlash thinking about care, wellbeing, identifying risk, managing stakeholders, and planning for if the sh*t hits the fan.
14:15 - 14:45: TOOLKIT ROUND TABLE DISCUSSIONS
In this session attendees will be able to choose one of four round table sessions each addressing a different area of toolkit building in more details, including: artist and staff wellbeing, backlash comms, stakeholder and partnership management, and artistic production (making the work).
14:45 - 15:00: BREAK
15:00-15:15: RESILIENCE BUILDING ACTIVITY
Wellbeing practitioner and director of the Artist Wellbeing Company Lou Platt will share a short practical exercise for how to manage and respond with clarity in a moment of crisis.
15:15-15:40: QUEER MEHNDI NIGHT CREATIVE ACTION
Founder of Queer Mehndi Night and facilitator Natasha Taheem will lead a short creative exercise inviting attendees to reflect on the day’s programme inspired by her practice running Queer Mehndi Nights, a creative social event for LGBTQIA+ South Asian communities in Birmingham.
15:40-16:00: NEXT STEPS & CALL TO ACTION
The day concludes with a wrap-up, considerations of how we take the day’s learning forward, and a call to action from performer & writer Felix Mufti.
SPEAKERS & PANELISTS
Travis Alabanza (they/them)
Travis Alabanza is an award winning writer and performer.
Starting in the London club scene, Alabanza's debut show Burgerz toured internationally. Winning the Total theatre Award at Edinburgh Fringe. Their other shows, Overflow and Sound of the Underground, received critical acclaim and Overflow was shortlisted for the George Divine Award.
Their book None of the Above was a Waterstones Bestseller, won the Jhalak Literary Prize and was listed in Time Magazine as one of the top 100 books of 2023.
Artist & Author
Lou Platt (she/her)
Lou is an Artist Wellbeing Practitioner, Dramatherapist, Internal Family Systems Therapist, EMDR Therapist, Clinical Supervisor and has lived experience of being a performer and writer in the theatre industry. She has worked in various mental health settings and private practice for over 20 years.
She is the founder and director of The Artist Wellbeing Company and began supporting the mental health of those working in creative industries in 2012. Since then she has worked with various individuals and production companies in theatre, dance, TV and Film, providing individual on-call therapeutic sessions as well as team workshops and process supervision.
Lou believes in not only supporting the individual but also developing processes and structures that aim to centralise the wellbeing of those who make the art happen. She is dynamic and compassionate in her approach to wellbeing within the arts, and hopes to create new practices that are ethical, equitable, sustainable and enjoyable.
Director & Founder, The Artist Wellbeing Company
Annabel Turpin (she/her)
Chief Executive. Storyhouse Annabel Turpin is Chief Executive of Storyhouse in Chester, one of the UK’s largest arts centres, bringing together theatres, a cinema and the city’s library, and welcoming more than 880,000 visitors each year. She is also Co-Director of the 180+ strong Future Arts Centres network, championing the role of arts centres in driving social, economic and cultural change.
Since 2023, she has been a Chair of the North Area Council and a member of National Council for Arts Council England.
Previously CEO and Artistic Director of ARC in Stockton-on-Tees, Annabel led the organisation for 15 years, establishing it as a nationally influential venue, recognised for initiatives including Pay What You Decide pricing and progressive freelancer policies. She founded Venues North to support artists making new work and produced and toured theatre nationally and internationally.
A long-term advocate for strategic collaboration, she helped secure more than £20 million for creative industries in the Tees Valley, and now serves on the Business Advisory Board to the Cheshire & Warrington Combined Authority, alongside wider advisory and speaking roles.
Guilotina (they/them)
Guillotina is the only Black drag performer in Cambridge. They began doing drag there in 2024 and quickly took their act to cities across the UK.
After experiencing a racial hate crime in public, they posted a reel speaking out about how difficult Cambridge can be as a QPOC (Queer Person of Colour). After navigating a police investigation, sudden virality, and online hate, they decided that the best way to make Cambridge a safer and more welcoming place for QPOCs would be to start a movement.
They founded Cambridge is Chopped is a movement focusing on improving the quality of life for QIPOC individuals who live, study, and work in Cambridge.
The aim of the movement is to amplify experiences of racism, make spaces not just anti-racist but welcome for QIPOCs, and help create communities and events for QIPOC individuals and allies.
Drag Artist
further speakers to be announced soon
Claudia West (she/her)
Staring her career as a freelancer working in theatre, Claudia has over 25 years of experience working within the cultural sector.
She holds a Masters degree in Arts Policy and Management from Birkbeck. Joining Arts Council in 2011, Claudia has supported cultural development in a range of places across the East of England, working closely with cultural leaders, local authorities and others.
As the national development agency for creativity and culture, Arts Council England invests in artists and organisations to make and deliver inspirational work for communities, unlock local growth, and increase access to the many benefits that engagement in culture can bring to people and places.
More information on Arts Council’s objectives and priorities can found in the ten-year strategy, Let’s Create.
Director Cambridge, Arts Council England
Adam Carver (they/them)
Adam Carver is an artist, producer, community organiser and professional hot mess also known by their stage persona Fatt Butcher.
They are the founder & director Fatt Projects, a Birmingham based community centred non-profit that uses queer performance as a strategy to advance queer joy and create change for LGBTQ+ communities. Their projects range from putting choirs into nightclubs, building sober accessible dance parties, and creating a pioneering development model supporting the creation of queer-positive performance for children and families.
They have created resources supporting nightlife organisers to create accessible events, and deliver training and consultancy for arts & cultural organisations on mitigating and managing backlash, and building a strategies for care to support people experiencing this.
Director, Fatt Projects
Chloe Turner (they/them)
ResearcherChloe Turner is a trans writer and researcher based in London, who works internationally.
Turner is currently completing a PhD with the Centre for Feminist Research, Goldsmiths University of London on transgender disinformation. Turner's PhD thesis connects anti-transgender rhetoric to studies of disinformation and an information environment characterised by moral panics about manipulation and coercion, the propagation of falsehoods and the production, organisation, detection, and perception of contagious and deceptive communication. Turner writes a regular SubStack called WHIPLASH, they are the research lead for the LGBTQIA+ Cultural Barometer.
Independent ConsultantLara Ratnaraja (she/her)
Lara Ratnaraja is an independent consultant.
She works nationally with the cultural, heritage, HE, public and private sectors, delivering strategic, inclusive, impactful consultancies and has worked extensively on programme design and management of projects with multiple stakeholders and partners.
Lara’s work champions culture as a driver of social change, tackling inequalities and supporting organisational resilience through inclusive practice.
Sue John (she/her)
Sue John is the Co-Director of Glasgow Women’s Library, the only Accredited Museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK, a Recognised Collection of National Significance and a multi award winning, unique organisation.
She is also currently studying for a PhD in History at the University of Glasgow, researching material culture of the suffrage movement. Sue has been a feminist and LGBT activist for over 40 years.
Co-Director of Glasgow Women's Library
Felix Mufti (he/they)
Writer & PerformerFelix Mufti is a Scouse actor, writer, and performer, best known for playing Roman in Sex Education (Netflix, Season 4).
Alongside acting, Felix writes for screen and stage. Their short film Lonelier Than Love, which they also star in, was funded by BFI x Film Hub North. They come from a playwriting background, with two funded productions, Be Gay Do Crime and How to Kill a Rose, staged at venues including Shakespeare North and Unity Theatre.
Felix is currently developing an Arts Council–funded book project, Goths, Mings and Scruffs, alongside a programme of community workshops.
Midgitte Bardot (she/her)
ArtisteMidgitte Bardot is brilliant. They have a beautiful singing voice that often brings an audience to tears while contemplating all the vivid possibilities life can bring us.
Midgitte is hilarious, and can often be found leaving crowds collapsed on the floor while their guts explode from laughter. They have phenomenal timing, dragging the emotions of spectators from joy to despair on the turn of a second. Their work can be acerbically, invoking a revolutionary zeal in the most inhibited of people, bringing new horizons of power, disgust, and the brute force of confronting our shared humanity on a dying planet.
They also do drag.
Natasha Taheem (she/her)
Artist & Founder of Queer Mehndi NightsNatasha Taheem is a queer British Punjabi artist based in Birmingham. Working across drawing and print, her work explores identity, desire, and social tension with warmth and resistance.
She founded Queer Mehndi Nights to create space for South Asian queer community, and today’s session carries that same spirit of softness, ritual, and shared care.
David Sheppeard (he/him)
Co-Director Marlborough ProductionsDavid co-founded Marlborough Productions with Tarik in 2009 and together they creatively direct Marlborough Production’s programmes.
After fifteen years David is still delighted and surprised by working with queer artists and helping them realise the potential of their ideas. David has a special interest in queer heritage and leads on Queer Heritage South; a digital community archiving project, celebrating and promoting the rich cultural life of LGBTQIA+ people in Brighton & Hove.
Tarik Elmoutawakil (he/him)
Co-Director Marlborough ProductionsTarik focuses on steering Marlborough Productions with a commitment to intersectionality and inclusivity. This dedication stems from their own experiences of frequently feeling like an outsider within various cultures.
Tarik is driven by a desire to improve the lives of disabled queer people of colour, as well as other marginalised groups, striving to create a more equitable and enriched community for everyone. He is the project lead for Radical Rhizomes, a creative social network curated by and for Queer/Trans/Intersex Black and People of Colour (QTIBPoC) living, working or studying in Brighton & Hove
ACCESS INFORMATION
We have introduced the following access provisions for the event:
All event spaces at Cambridge Junction have step-free access.
The day’s programme will be live captioned apart from the Tool Box Table Discussions (where the event will break into smaller sessions).
A quiet space will be available on site for anyone who needs it to use during the day.
We recognise the day will include emotionally sensitive subject matter. As such, a wellbeing support worker will be available throughout the day for anyone who might need it throughout the day.
Additional access budget is available to support anyone attending.
Additional access budget is available to support the needs of anyone attending. If you need any support which hasn’t been listed above or or wish to discuss your access needs further please contact research@curiousarts.org.uk and we’ll get back to you asap.
BURSARIES FOR FREELANCERS & INDEPENDENT CREATIVES
We are pleased to be able to offer a small number of bursaries for freelancers and independent creatives to attend the event. These will be offered on a first come, first served basis to anyone who meets the eligibilty criteria below:
you are based in the UK, and working professionally in the UK’s arts/cultural sector.
you are currently not in full time education.
you are able to tell us (in a few sentences) why it would benefit you to attend.
you are over the age of 18 (no upper age limit).
You can apply for up to £150 to support your costs of travel/accommodation etc., please only ask for what you need as the budget is limited. All recipients will also recieve a free ticket to attend the event. To apply for a bursary please complete the short application form in the link below before (approx 5-10 mins time required), the deadline to apply is Midday on Monday 9th March.
Please note, applications will be handled in the order we receive them and award on a first come, first served basis.