London is a vibrant city for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to live in. There are more lesbians, gay men, bisexual people and trans people in London than any other city in the UK. Despite this, around 68% of us agreed, or agreed strongly, with the statement “I sometimes feel lonely” when asked. This may be because living in a city can sometimes make us feel a bit isolated or it could be that we need more ways of socialising outside of bars and clubs. Either way, we’ve decided to do something that helps bring us together and make new friends.
The idea is simple. The Health Equality and Rights Organisation (formerly GMFA) has a great meeting space in our office that can hold up to 25 people. It is free in the evenings and we want to use it to host groups where people from the LGB & T communities can do a hobby together, discuss an interest or learn a new skill. We don’t mind what it is as long as it doesn’t cost much to do (we want everybody to be able to join in, irrespective of income) and it provides a welcoming space for all members of our communities - where everyone is able to be themselves, make new friends and enjoy themselves. We're hoping to set up at least 15 groups.
And that’s what this survey is about. We want to find out what interests you have so that we can set up groups which we know will appeal to groups of people within the London LGB & T community. If you’d like to do knitting, join a book club, set up a Manchester United fan club or play cards or scrabble etc; we want to hear about it.
We know that some of you may have no interest in joining a group but your views will still help us to find out the type of interests LGB & T people have.
If you leave your contact details at the end of the survey, we’ll get back to you when we get the results of the survey or let you know if we’ve set up a group that matches your interests.