Pre-launch 2011 – 02 November 2010 – Twickenham Stadium
Since 2004, the event has taken place at Tate Modern, the MPS’s Empress State Building, the Congress House, The Royal Courts of Justice, a school in Hackney and the British Museum. This year the pre-launch event took place at Twickenham Stadium, and, like last year, it covered a whole day and included an LGBT sports summit.
For the next two years, History Month is focusing on sports, one of the last bastions of homophobia.
Below are links to resources, documents produced for the day that should help you with organising events for History Month. Further information can be found by using the left-hand menu on this page
You can download the messages of support by Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, and Lynn Featherstone MP, Minister for Equalities here (ppt – 1.1Mb).
Christine Burns, equalities campaigner and LGBT History Month patron, was unable to attend the LGBT History Month Pre-Launch held on the 2nd of November, but she sent this video expressing her support and explaining why LGBT Equality in sport is so vital.
A full report of the day is available here (Word07 – 204Kb).
A PowerPoint presentation showing pictures of famous LGBT sports personalities can be downloaded here (ppt – 8.4Mb).
Images of the day by Karen Kodish Photography (www.karenkodish.com) are available here. Others images can be viewed on flickr here (please tag your own images of the event prehm2011).
| Contributor | Organisation | Documents |
| Elly Barnes + students |
Stoke Newington School Elly highlighted the work done on diversity at her school and how using LGBT History Month in a sports context has affected the school positively. |
ppt (34.2Mb) video |
| Christopher Lillington | Prince Henry’s Grammar School Specialist Language College Christopher is Assistant Headteacher in Otley, West Yorkshire. He talked about his school’s celebration of Diversity Week this year and how the PE department led on this initiative. |
ppt (12.2Mb) video |
| Funke Awoderu | Football Association The FA discussed its plans for LGBT engaement and addressing homophobia in football. The presentation covers broad objectives that will shape the FA’s future work in this area. |
ppt (327Kb) |
| Sarah Williams | Rugby Football League An overview of the RFL’s LGBT initiatives implemented over the last few years; practical steps taken to tackle homophobia in the sport, and showcase of the innovative and ground breaking initiative by the Sheffield Eagles to be launched for LGBT History Month 2011. |
pps (1.1Mb) |
| Dave Merchant | Marlin Swimming Group Marlin is a Manchester swimming group for trans people, which has now been running for over 2 years. Dave, one of the founders, talked about the barriers facing trans people in accessing sports, and how sport providers can do to ensure their clubs and facilities are both inclusive and accessible for trans people |
pps (586Kb) |
| Trevor Burchick, Louise Englefield | Pride Sports The team from Pride Sports talked about the UK’s annual LGBT multisport festival, Pride Games, now in its 6th year, and how it has been a vehicle for tackling homophobia, growing LGBT participation in sport, encouraging volunteering and active citizenship, and has engaged mainstream sports organisers, including national sports governing bodies. |
ppt (19.7Mb) |
| Dikeledi Sibanda | The Chosen Few A South African soccer team comprising 25 young black lesbian women from townships in and around Johannesburg. They are all activists for the rights of lesbians in RSA. |
ppt (22.9Mb) |
| Emma Reed | Government Equality Office Talk about the GEO’s commitment to eradicate homophobia and transphobia and to making us part of the mainstream in UK society and what that means in practice. |
ppt (2.3Mb) |
| Cathy Hughes | Sport England Talk about Sport England’s commitment to equality of opportunity and diversity in sports participation, showing what they have funded, where they have increased accessibility and how they have carried out equality impact assessments. |
ppt (586Kb) |
ppt/pps = PowerPoint presentation