These Dissemination Days enabled us to showcase our project involving working with young people from the Havering College LGBT social & support group and Newham PARIS LGBT youth group. Three young people came along to these events with Margo Lindsay and I (Havering College) and Dawn Ballinger (Newham PARIS Youth Group). We displayed our project work and our young people spoke with several people from various other projects and also participated with 'views from learners' feedback at the end of each event.

Jay, one of our students, sang her original song for the audience, which she wrote about her experience as a young LGBT person. This can still be found as an attachment in one of my earlier blogs.

The young people involved have said they found the whole experience extremely positive and have gained new skills and confidence.

We will continue to:

• Raise awareness of LGBT issues within Havering College, as well as the wider community 
• Promote Havering College as an LGBT friendly College
• Develop our work with LGBT young people.

Our networking with Newham PARIS Youth Group is on-going and going from strength to strength.

I have attached photos from 2 of the Dissemination days.

Many thanks to Catina from us all! :)

The Pride event was attended by 15 young people, who were a combination of both LGBT groups of young people from Havering College and Newham PARIS group.

The College students wore the t-shirts with an original printed design on each, which advertised the College student social and support group.

These t-shirts actively promoted Havering College as an LGBT friendly place to study and several people commented on the  design and asked the students questions about what it represented.

One student took part in the celebration by joining the parade and some photos of the students were put on the official Pride website.

We now have our outcomes from the two Creative Arts Workshop days which we held in January and April 2014:

• One student recorded her original song during the Creative Verse workshop, which you can hear using the attachment link on this page.
• A group of students completed the LGBT History Timeline comic strip during the Computer Graphics workshop, which can be viewed using the attachment link on this page
• One student, along with ideas from the whole group, designed a new promotional poster for Havering College LGBTA Social & Support group, which can be viewed using the attachment link on this page

These outcomes will be utilised to promote Havering College as an LGBT friendly college to prospective students and the wider community, as well as raising awareness of LGBT issues within the college.

Please click this link for work related to this project.

The www.lgbt-safety.co.uk website is up and running. Would love some more feedback

Additional resources put into adding subtitles to videos from a Trans perspective http://www.lgbt-safety.co.uk/help-advice/video-gallery

Info on peer mentoring to follow

Transcribing three 'Coming Out' stories contributed by our learners and staff. So much honesty in these accounts which go further to underpin the reason for creating this guide as a awareness-raising tool to be used by staff with students. 

Should I incorporate an activity to link in with these stories on the broader political dimension of 'Coming Out' in addition to reflections on these individual experiences? I'm thinking in particular of the 'Outrage' campaign of recent years.

Such ponderings are all part and parcel of the final edit stage. 

Revisions for the 'Embedding' section of the guide now taking place in response to feedback received from Creative Industries curriculum area. New suggestions for additional 'Curriculum Role Models' for the guide which move away from the usual suspects. For example, the work of the gay US artist Keith Haring now providing the focus for an Art and Design Project and composer/electronic musician Wendy Carlos as a Transgender^definition role model focus for Music Technology learners. This method of embedding LGBT themes into the curriculum through identification of significant role models appears to be working. Awaiting feedback from STEM re. their ideas in relation to an Alan Turing project idea.

Need to re-visit some sections of the guide this week especially in relation to events in Russia in recent months and the attitude of the authorities there towards the LGBT community. In particular pondering upon the recent Eurovision contest and negative homophobic comments expressed. How to integrate such events into the guide in order to give it both a contemporary and international perspective? 

This coming week will see revisions being made to the LGBT Guide and addition of hyperlinks to take into account some recent cultural events. All part and parcel of the 'organic' nature of what we are creating.

We want the guide not to be 'set in stone' but to be responsive to changing contexts and views.

Even when the project ends, the guide will not stay 'frozen in time' but will change from year-to-year.

The last few months have seen work taking place towards progressing and completing our 'LGBT Good Practice Guide'.

The  draft is in place in electronic form and consultation is taking place with staff for their feedback and comments. Additionally, its important that we get feedback from members of the LGBT Forum here.

The document is to become a day-to-day working tool for staff at college in order to enable them to meet and understand the needs of the LGBT community and to embed LGBT themes into their curriculum teaching and beyond.

The final stages of the consultation process coincide with the 'International Day against Homophobia' and a number of toolkits with staff are planned in the coming weeks.

It's important to point out that the guide is an 'organic' document whose content will change from month-to-month, year-to-year in response to changing political and social contexts. 

Looking forward very much to criss-crossing the UK soon to disseminate our project practice with others.

Back at it hard after a break. Project going really well 3 out of 4 sections completed, staff section nearly ready for release but still not got students available  developing their version of our LGB & T eLearning training material.

It's been interesting researching materials to use, there is much more out there than we ever imagined although it is quite well hidden at first.