I haven't had much time in the last year to write up this summary before, but our recent victory at the 2010 NUS LGBT Awards and the relatively short amount of free time I now enjoy has prompted me to clear this off my rather long to-do list.

As many of you know from blog posts and various publicity at the time, myself and Kitten worked tirelessly since December to make LGBT History Month 2010 as successful at it could possibly be, which began with a productive meeting not long into the Xmas holidays with tea and cake.

The crux of this work was to resurrect Coalition West Midlands and be sure that it never collapses as it did before by following a core ethos: we scratch their back, they scratch ours; we have nothing to lose from trying.. In the past too many people have adopted the extremely subjective "what have they done for us" approach; naturally, Coalition quickly collapsed last year as a direct consequence. In hindsight, our new approach has been highly succeesful on a number of successful joint ventures including - but not limited to - History Month.

The Opening Ceremony

“Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.”

George Santayana

The opening ceremony was hosted by Coventry LGBT+ on Monday 1^st February in Cathedral Square, Coventry and was fairly well attended by representatives from Coventry, Warwick and Birmingham. There were candles set up in the form of the trans symbol and speeches delivered by Birmingham and Coventry Officers; namely myself and Tom.

My speech began with the above quote and a summarised history of the struggle for LGBT equality; historic religious oppression, the Holocaust, the Stonewall riots and, more recently the blood ban. More importantly, the speech then went on to describe the hugely progressive steps made toward equality in recent years; I used the Faith and Sexuality project this year as a keen example. Click here to see my rather ad-hoc speech notes.

Tom's speech presented a summarised biography of Alan Turing, one of the greatest scientific minds of the 20^th Century whose forced hormonal treatment lead him to suicide. The well-delivered speech led to a two-minute silence in memory of those killed for their gender and sexual orientation, and conclusion of the ceremony.

Talks

"As long as society is anti-gay, then it will seem like being gay is antisocial."

Joseph R. Francis

There were three talks hosted by Coventry LGBT+ over the course of the month. The first, entitled "Red in the Rainbow", was a talk on Gay Liberation and Marxism with guest speaker Geoff Dexter and took place on the 10^th.

The second talk was on Civil Partnerships and took place on Monday 14^th, just after Valentines weekend. It was delivered by Ian Dunn, current head of the Faculty of Engineering and Computing at Coventry University. It was informative, constructive and well-delivered and served to provide unique insights beyond just the subject matter.

Finally, a faith talk by Rev. Jen Croft of Coventry University Spirituality and Faith Centre took place on Tuesday 16^th. It was similar to our own Faith and Sexuality event in December and our ongoing collaboration with the Chaplaincy here, in that it gave LGBT* students in attendance the chance to look past the incorrect perception of all religious groups as inherently oppressive, and to acknowledge that faith and sexuality are not mutually exclusive aspects of one's identity.

I myself was only able to attend the talk on Civil Partnerships, but from that experience and what Tom told me, they were well attended by representatives from all four Coalition partners.

Workshops

I organised a Trans and Queer workshop during Monday 22^nd, in the final week of February, delivered by our very own Kai Weston and Patrick 'Poggy' Murray, then-Black Students' Rep on the NUS LGBT Committee. Sadly this was quite poorly attended and only by Birmingham students but I certainly like to think it was informative. ^_^

The big workshop-related event was the Dissident Disco and Drag Show that took place in Kelsey's bar, Leamington on Saturday 20th.

It was an incredible day of action during which participants took gender way beyond binaries in the most fabulous and horrific fashion, making clothes to dress women as butch men, men as monstrous queens and a bit of mixing and matching inbetween. The workshop was followed by a disco/party at the same venue which lasted until 2AM. Again, well attended by LGBT* students from all four Coalition partners and overall, a huge success.

Coffee Afternoons and Safe Space

We at Birmingham continued with our weekly Wednesday Coffee Afternoons, but each with an individual and unique social/political theme.

• Wed 3^rd: Introductory Coffee Afternoon and discussion of what LGBT History Month is and what it aims to achieve.
• Wed 10^rd: Guycons and Dykons - discussion of LGBTQ icons throughout history.
• Wed 17^th: Showing of Batty Man with BEMA, and ensuing discussion of faith and sexuality.
• Wed 24^th: Queer Identities & Disabilities with the then-Disabled Students Association (now DAMSA).

Similarly, Coventry LGBT+ continued running their Safe Space events every Thursday in their SU building. It was good to see guests from other Universities attend each other's recurring events and further strengthening Coalition.

Film Showings

Coventry and Birmingham took a forefront with this; again, good overall attendance across Universities. The following LGBTQ films were shown to celebrate History Month:

Wilde (1997) View Trailer	Goldfish Memory (2003) View Trailer
Transamerica (2005) View Trailer	The Laramie Project (2002) View Trailer

The main event in this respect was the showing of Milk (2008; click here to see the trailer) in the Vaughn Jeffries Lecture Theatre, Education Building on Birmingham Campus. This was hosted by myself and Emma.

Homophobia is Gay 4

As many of you know, the big main event intended to wrap up History Month was postponed from Friday 26^th February until Friday 12^th March.

Honestly, HIG was the event that I really wanted to run this year, if nothing else. Homophobia is Gay has been running since my first year (in fact, I dug out this old photo of myself, Fabian and Ed from the 2006/07 HIG barcrawl; bit of nostalgia :P) and it is a tradition that I insisted on continuing, despite initial resistance from certain others.

I maintain that the barcrawl itself was worth the number and scale of organisational disasters that happened during the barcrawl's organisation, and that it was an amazing success despite these nearly-disastrous challenges. The barcrawl had three groups covering Missing, Eden, the Fox and the Gale. Coach travel from Joes was provided and T-shirts were made available to those who had bought T-shirt tickets. If you have me on Facebook, feel free to check out my HIG photo album.

In summation

History Month marks one of the largest collaborative efforts between University LGBT groups, a major milestone in Coalition's development and hopefully, the first of many such collaborative events.