I, recently, published a piece on here asking whether the lights are going out on Liverpool’s queer scene. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d encourage you to, because what I’m about to share is a direct response to it.

Writing that post helped me realise that feeling concerned isn’t enough. Saying something publicly is a start, but it isn’t the same as doing something… So I’ve done something.

There is now an open letter addressed to Liverpool City Council, its partners and stakeholders, asking them to acknowledge that the decline of LGBTQ+ safe spaces in the Pride Quarter is a real and serious problem, and to provide some actual answers about what, if anything, is being done to protect what’s left.

The letter covers Liverpool’s LGBTQ+ history and why it matters. It references the Eberle Street refurbishment in 2016, designed in part as a tribute to the legacy of Garlands, a venue that closed within a year of that investment being completed. It covers where the scene stands now. And it sets out what the community is asking for.

Organisers and leaders of LGBTQ+ groups and organisations across the Liverpool are being asked to add their names to it. The more voices behind it, the harder it is to file away and forget about.

You can read the full letter HERE.

If you lead or represent an LGBTQ+ community group or organisation, or simply want to add your support, and you’d like to sign it, get in touch at hey@proudlysaid.co.uk with your name, organisation, and role as you’d like them to appear.

OMG closes on Saturday. The conversation about what comes next starts now.

We recently heard the news that OMG Liverpool is closing its doors for the final time, as of Saturday 6th June, and it’s tempting to view it in isolation, just one venue, just one closure. But it isn’t isolated, and that’s what makes it so difficult to sit with.

OMG experimented over its eight years in the city, tried different things, different formats, different identities within the few venues the parent company owns. Dorothy’s Show Bar, Dorothy’s Diner. For whatever reason, those iterations didn’t quite land, and ultimately the venue is closing. You can acknowledge that honestly without it diminishing the loss, because the loss is real.

When you take stock of what we’d genuinely class as queer venues in Liverpool right now, the list is short. Lisbon, Masquerade, Superstar Boudoir, and upstairs at the Poste House. Heaven operates as an after-hours venue. The Haus of Fun complex caters largely for hen parties, and look, in this economy, you do what you have to do. And GBar, once a cornerstone of the scene, feels like a venue that has quietly drifted from the community it was built for.

That’s it. That’s the scene.

And here’s what makes that so stark. According to the 2021 UK Census, 123,367 people across the Liverpool City Region described their sexual orientation as gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, queer, or other, a figure equivalent to the entire GLB population of San Francisco, one of the most recognisable LGBTQ+ cities on the planet. And yet our welcoming spaces are dwindling.

So what’s driving this? There are two conversations happening at once, and both are worth having.

The first is the broader reality of running a bar or club right now. The hospitality sector recorded two venue closures per day during the first nine months of 2025, driven by rising business rates, National Insurance contributions, energy bills that remain significantly higher than pre-crisis levels, and a cost-of-living squeeze that has made people more cautious about how and where they spend. These pressures don’t discriminate, and queer venues are often smaller, more independent, and without the financial cushion of a larger operator behind them, which makes them even more exposed.

The second conversation is harder, and more specific to us as a community. Are we actually giving new venues a chance? There’s something to be said for the fact that many of us are creatures of habit, and new spaces can open, struggle to build a loyal crowd quickly enough, and close before they’ve had the opportunity to become what they might have been. That’s definitely not an accusation of any sort, it is, however, a pattern worth reflecting on, and both things can be true at once.

What concerns me most is what this means for Liverpool’s so-called Pride Quarter. The rainbow adorned street signs are still there, but the spaces they were meant to represent are thinning out, with gentrification creeping in and bringing with it certain types of venues that don’t have our community’s safety or welcome at the centre of their offer. The physical geography of queerness in this city is shrinking, even as our population remains enormous.

And the ripple effects matter. Liverpool attracts a significant student population, and a meaningful proportion of those students are LGBTQ+. Will the absence of a genuine, thriving queer scene factor into where young queer people choose to study? Will we see fewer spaces for emerging drag performers and queer artists to develop their craft, with more people chasing the same shrinking number of residencies? These aren’t hypothetical questions, they’re the logical end point of the trajectory we’re on.

The honest answer to what we do about it is that there isn’t an easy one. Queer venues need to be queer owned, run by people who genuinely understand the community’s needs, its concerns, its safety. But the capital required to open and sustain a venue like that is significant, and very few queer individuals or organisations are in a position to take that on, particularly in this climate.

OMG Liverpool closing is not just a venue shutting its doors. It’s another light going out, and right now, we can’t afford to keep losing lights.

There’s a particular kind of stress that comes with being self-employed… It’s not that dramatic, movie version of stress that you see, you know, the kind with a ticking clock and a boardroom showdown – it’s quieter, and a little harder to put a name or label on.
It’s the background hum of knowing that if things go wrong, there’s no one else to pick up the pieces and keep things moving.

Right now, things have gone wrong. Not catastrophically in any single way, but in that typical frustrating manner where it feels like everything is messing up all at once.

My MacBook has been sitting in the Apple Store for over a week with a keyboard fault, which means no video work, no proper workflow, just alternating between my iPad and iPhone and a whole lot of improvising to do simple clerical tasks to keep me ticking over.

My car is in the body shop for a few days.

I’ve spent the last week and a half being ill.

And underneath all of it, the delightfully quieter stress of self-employment, wondering whether the effort you’re trying to put into your work is being matched on the other side.

There’s an unspoken pressure when you’re self-employed to always be grateful, always be available, always be the one chasing. And sometimes you are, and that’s just the harsh reality of building something… But it doesn’t mean it isn’t exhausting.

Managing without the right tools, whether that’s your laptop, your car, your health, or just the energy that comes from feeling like your work is valued, is something nobody really prepares you for. Sure, you adapt, because you have to. You find workarounds, you lower your expectations of yourself in the short term, you try to protect the things that matter most. But adaptation has a cost, and that cost is usually invisible to everyone except you.

I don’t have a neat conclusion to this one, as I’m still in the middle of it.

I know the MacBook will come back, the car will be ready and I’ll feel better. But the broader questions about sustainability, about making sure the relationships and projects that fill your working life are genuinely reciprocal… it’s those things that don’t resolve as easily.

Sometimes the most honest thing you can say is: this is hard right now…

And that’s where I am.

There’s a photo of me outside Liverpool Experience Campus (LEX, formerly ACC Liverpool) holding my Proudly Said notebook, grinning in the May sunshine. To most people, it’s just a nice picture outside a big venue, but to me, it marks a return, and one that feels very much on my own terms.

Let me explain.

I first got involved with Liverpool Pride as a volunteer in 2016. I wanted to do something locally, something LGBTQ+ related, and Liverpool Pride felt like the natural fit. I started out handling social media and content creation, and apparently couldn’t help having opinions about everything else while I was at it (shock), which, it turns out, was exactly what the board was looking for. By 2017 they asked me to become a trustee, and by 2018 I was Co-Chair of what became the biggest Liverpool Pride festival to date.

That same energy, the belief that Liverpool Pride could be something bigger, something that both acted as a means to convey the message of Pride BEYOND Pride, whilst also drawing the national LGBTQ+ community to our city for a whole weekend, was part of what drove the co-founding of LCR Pride Foundation in early 2019. One of our ambitions from the very beginning was a “Pride at the Arena” moment: a large scale, ticketed event that would help sustain and support the delivery of the free Pride festival, while putting Liverpool on the map as a destination for the national LGBTQ+ community. A flagship event that said: come to Liverpool, see how extraordinary this city and this community is.

I stepped down from the LCR Pride Foundation board later that year, and life, as it tends to do, took over. I moved to Northern Ireland in 2020, where I faced my own challenges and demons, before returning to Liverpool in 2023. Throughout all of it I remained a vocal LGBTQ+ advocate, because telling queer stories has never felt optional to me.

Pride in Liverpool, though, felt like something I had stepped back from (and was more than happy to keep it that way). But then in 2025, when, through my role at Sahir, Liverpool’s oldest LGBTQ+ and HIV charity, I found myself part of the early conversations and planning around what became Liverpool’s Pride, following the cancellation of LCR Pride Foundation’s Pride in Liverpool event. It was a surreal experience to find myself part of again.

And now this. I’ve been brought in to work alongside Liverpool Experience Campus to support the delivery of their Liverpool’s Pride Opening Party, a paid ticketed event on the night before the main Saturday celebration, helping to sustain and grow what Pride weekend in this city can be.
Community outreach, PR and marketing: the kind of work I’ve been doing in various forms for the better part of a decade. And crucially, involvement on my own terms, without the weight of organising the whole thing.

That arena dream we had back in 2019 is happening, and it’s incredible to see that it emerged organically, through partner organisations working together, which is, honestly, so much better. That’s what a healthy community ecosystem looks like.

I said it on LinkedIn, and I’ll say it again here: true full circle moment.

Standing outside LEX, Proudly Said notebook in hand, I felt something I don’t always let myself feel…

That everything has come together, wrapped up in a neat bow. That the journey, the volunteering, the trustee role, the co-chair years, the co-founding, the time away, the return, the podcast, all of it has been part of something coherent. Something worth being proud of.

Last year, the arena happened. A conversation, a tight timeline, and a community that truly showed up.
It was reactive, brilliant, and proof that the instinct we had back in 2019 was right.

This year, it’s growth, making the Pride weekend in Liverpool the destination it always had the potential to be. And, somehow, I get to be part of shaping that.

That’s not a small thing. Not to me.

I delivered my first paid speaking engagement this week at the University of Liverpool, and I’ve been sitting with it ever since, trying to work out how I actually feel about it.

The talk itself was about visibility: what it means to be seen, what it creates, and what it takes from you. But in a way I didn’t fully expect, the experience of giving the talk ended up reflecting those same ideas back at me in real time.

Watching it back, I’ve been thinking a lot about how it actually felt to deliver.

I’m Not a “Speaker” (At Least Not Yet)

Public speaking is something I’ve always wanted to do more of, but I’ve never really thought of myself as a “speaker”. I’m much more comfortable being handed a mic, given a rough sense of direction, and allowed to just get on with it. That’s where I feel most like myself… in conversation, on camera, or recording something where I can follow the thread rather than force it.

Structure, on the other hand, has always been a bit of a double-edged sword. Without it, I can go off on tangents. With too much of it, I can become overly aware of what I’m meant to be doing, and that awareness starts to get in the way. For this talk, because there needed to be a clear takeaway, I built something far more structured than I usually would. A full presentation. A defined narrative. Something that, in theory, would hold everything in place.

In practice, I think it did the opposite.

Why This Felt Different

It was an honour to be invited to speak at the University of Liverpool. That didn’t feel lost on me at any point. But alongside that was a level of pressure I hadn’t quite experienced before. Not just to deliver something coherent, but to justify why I was the person standing there delivering it. The talk was based on my own experiences, but that doesn’t make the feeling go away. If anything, it sharpens it. There’s a particular kind of discomfort that comes with talking about your own life in a room full of people you don’t know, especially when parts of that life are framed as “achievements”. It’s not something I sit comfortably with, regardless of how it might look from the outside.

In the lead-up to the talk, I was also made aware that posters promoting it had been taken down in parts of the campus. It wasn’t the main focus of the day, but it stayed with me. A small reminder that visibility, particularly around LGBTQ+ experiences, is still something that can be challenged, resisted, or pushed aside. That context doesn’t disappear when you step up to speak… It stays there, whether you acknowledge it directly or not.

Did I Deliver It How I Wanted To?

By the time I actually delivered the talk, I knew I wasn’t fully in the version of myself I’d practised. I’d rehearsed it multiple times and had a clear sense of how I wanted it to land. But when you’re in the room, things shift. I came in under time. I felt slightly flustered in places. Certain points didn’t land with the clarity or weight I’d intended. It wasn’t that it went badly… but it also wasn’t what I’d built in my head.

And that’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.

Because it’s easy, after something like that, to focus on the gap between what you intended and what actually happened. To replay the moments where you felt slightly off, or where you know you could have done something differently. But that’s only part of the picture.

The other part is that I did it.

I stood up and delivered a talk about something that matters to me, in a space that felt both significant and unfamiliar, and I held it. Not perfectly, but genuinely. And for a first paid speaking engagement, that matters more than whether every line landed exactly as planned.

What I’m Taking From This

What this has given me, more than anything, is a clearer understanding of how I need to approach this kind of work going forward. I don’t need to force myself into a version of “speaker” that doesn’t feel natural. I don’t need to over-structure something to the point that it restricts how I show up. The strength of what I do has always come from being able to connect, to speak honestly, and to respond in the moment. That doesn’t disappear just because there are slides behind me.

If anything, it’s something I need to trust more.

The talk is called The Cost of Being Seen, and in a quieter way than I expected, giving it reinforced that idea for me. Being seen isn’t just about the moments where everything comes together. It’s also about showing up when you feel slightly off, slightly unsure, and doing it anyway. It’s about allowing yourself to be visible even when it doesn’t feel polished.

That’s part of the cost too.

And it’s also part of the reason it matters.

If you’ve watched the talk, I’d genuinely be interested to hear what you took from it.

And if you’ve ever stepped into something new and felt like you didn’t quite deliver it the way you wanted to, you’re probably closer than you think.

What can I say about the Gaydio Awards 2026? Far too much, and also the words escape me.

First of all, to actually be in the room was such an awe-inspiring experience. Events like this always bring together some of the most amazing people doing incredible things within, and for, the community, as well as those who use their platforms to spotlight what’s going on across it.

So to hear about the work of each nominee, and to see personalities from Drag Race UK queens to Big Brother housemates, soap stars and online influencers all championing the LGBTQ+ community, was genuinely special.

I always leave rooms like that with a fire lit up my backside to do more, to make the most of what’s in front of me, whilst also thinking about how I build on it.

That Purple Carpet

The venue, Manchester’s Deansgate Hotel, was a fabulous backdrop. As you enter, you’re immediately met with a full window wall looking out onto the vibrant Purple Carpet, where people were walking, posing for photos, and speaking to press about the importance of recognising our community.

Walking upstairs and looking back over it all, seeing the colour, the movement, the outfits… if you ever want to witness the full force of queer fashion creativity, this is exactly the kind of space you want to be in. It perfectly set the tone for the night ahead.

Arriving, Settling In, and Baby Beers

My best friend Kim was my wingwoman for the night, and given we’ve known each other since I was 12, having her there meant everything. She was a huge support… and, I mean, come on, look at her.

As you stepped into the main bar area, the first thing you noticed was the constant criss-crossing of people catching up, reconnecting, and meeting for the first time. That kind of energy is hard to describe, but you feel it straight away.

And then there was “The World’s Smallest Gay Bar”, presented by Licor 43. A tiny hut serving baby beers, which were essentially a shot of Licor 43 topped with cream liqueur… and yes, they went down FAR too well.

Celebrating Queer Achievements

The night itself went so smoothly, from hosting with Dave Cooper, Helen Scott & Yshee Black, performances from XO, MEEK, Bailey J Mills & Louisa Johnson, and of course, the awards themselves – with very apt gaps in-between where guests could network and schmooze… and even continue the party in the gender neutral toilets!

Honestly, some big business went down in front of those mirrors!

We had the honour of being sat on a table filled with other nominees:

• Izzy Hard, shortlisted for the Enterprise Award
• Bigg Taystee, who was representing Great Yarmouth and Waveney Pride
• Trenton Tomlinson, representing the Universal Pride Network
• James Cartwright, Coronation Street’s Theo Silverton

Hearing about their work and what they’ve been building was genuinely brilliant.

Proudly Said and the Bigger Picture

When it came to the awards themselves, Proudly Said was shortlisted alongside two absolutely incredible podcasts – Gossip Gays and The Pieces with Bimini – so, as a fairly brand new platform, just to be named alongside these icons was something else.

Ultimately, The Pieces with Bimini took home the award, and Bimini made a really important point. Following the cancellation of I Kissed A Boy/Girl, once again it falls to the community to create the content that tells our authentic stories – That matters.

Leaving Inspired

All in all, it was an absolutely fantastic night. We left feeling inspired, energised, and with that familiar fire to keep going and keep shining a spotlight on stories within the community that might not otherwise be heard.

Huge thank you to Gaydio, to everyone who supports the podcast, and to those who continue to share their stories and lift our community up. ❤️

(And Why Public Speaking Is Part of It)

There’s a version of my life that looks accidental from the outside. One job led to another, one opportunity followed a crisis, and one microphone somehow kept finding its way back into my hand, which, when I say it like that, is actually quite funny. But if I’m honest, very little of it has been accidental. Maybe it has been more a case of right place, right time, mixed with a willingness to say yes when something felt aligned, even if I did not fully understand why at the time.

Since going self-employed, I have been asked more than once what “the plan” is, as though stepping away from a structured role must automatically mean replacing it with a beautifully formatted strategy document, complete with arrows, timelines and projected income streams. Yeah, right. The truth is there is something of a plan, it just does not live on paper. It lives in my head. It is less a roadmap and more an instinct, a quiet sense of the kinds of rooms I want to be in and the kinds of conversations I want to contribute to, even if I cannot always articulate that neatly.

And public speaking has always been somewhere within that.

When I think back properly, speaking has threaded its way through almost every chapter of my adult life. YouTube content, Pride stages, council chambers, press activity. I never labelled myself a public speaker. It was always something else, an activist, a councillor, an advocate, a connector. But the through-line was consistent. I was using my voice in rooms where it mattered, whether those rooms were welcoming, tense or openly hostile, and each of them taught me something about presence, about tone, about intent, and about how much responsibility sits within simply being in the room.

I did not set out to build a speaking career. I set out to speak honestly.

Going freelance has not shifted that, but it has given me the space to look at it more deliberately. Leaving full-time employment forced me to confront questions I had been circling for years. What parts of my experience do I want to carry forward intentionally, and how do I make them part of the work I do in a way that sustains both me and the communities I care about? I have never wanted to drift away from advocacy. If anything, I have wanted to continue in that space on my own terms, choosing platforms rather than simply reacting to circumstances.

That is where speaking becomes something I actively want to pursue rather than something I happen to fall into.

Advocacy does not only live in community centres or grassroots meetings, important as those spaces are. It lives in workplaces, conferences and leadership events, in rooms where people are grappling with inclusion, culture and representation but do not always know how to move beyond policy into practice. I have been in enough of those rooms now to know that I can hold them, not through rehearsed slogans or performative confidence, but through lived experience, honesty and storytelling that reflects the complexity rather than smoothing it out.

Being represented by Raise The Bar does not feel like a dramatic pivot. It feels like an acknowledgement of the work that has already been happening quietly in the background. It formalises what has, until now, been organic, and it gives shape to something that was always part of that internal plan. It says that this work has value, that these experiences translate beyond the spaces I have traditionally occupied, and that advocacy can exist within professional environments without losing its edge.

It also feels aligned with this freelance chapter more broadly. If I am building something that blends communication, creativity and advocacy, then speaking sits naturally within that ecosystem. Proudly Said is about conversations. My client work is about helping others communicate with clarity. Public speaking is where those strands intersect with lived experience in a way that feels coherent rather than forced.

I do not pretend to have everything mapped out. Freelance life is still uncertain, sometimes expansive and sometimes unnervingly quiet, with weeks that feel full of momentum and others that feel like gently nudging doors to see which ones might open. The plan may not live in a colour-coded document, but it is there, evolving, becoming clearer with each room I step into.

And this feels like part of that shape coming into focus.

Check out my profile reel below, and you can find out more about booking me to speak on my Raise the Bar profile, HERE.

Proudly Said started as a simple idea: to create space for LGBTQ+ people to tell their stories in their own words, on their own terms.

The podcast is filmed in places where guests feel comfortable, whether that’s their home, a familiar venue, or somewhere that holds personal meaning. I keep the setup intentionally low-tech and conversational, because the focus has always been on people rather than production gloss. The location becomes part of the story, a safe space where honesty feels possible.

How Proudly Said Has Grown

Since launching, Proudly Said has grown steadily. The platform now attracts audiences beyond Liverpool, receives critical recognition, and welcomes guests from across the country who want to share their lived experiences.

That growth has been slow and intentional. I’ve built it on trust, community, and consistency rather than chasing trends or algorithms.

The Work Behind Each Episode

Behind every episode sits a lot of unseen work. I research guests, record conversations, edit episodes, and create regular social content to keep those stories visible. Proudly Said is independently produced, and I manage every part of the process myself.

As the podcast continues to grow, making that work sustainable has become essential.

Why Sponsorship and Partnerships Matter

This is where sponsorship and partnerships come in.

Rather than traditional advertising, Proudly Said looks to work with values-led businesses and organisations that genuinely care about LGBTQ+ visibility and storytelling. Support here isn’t about logos or interruptions. It’s about standing alongside a platform that exists to amplify voices often missing from mainstream media.

Listeners and viewers actively choose to engage with Proudly Said. They listen closely, share thoughtfully, and notice which brands show up in ways that feel authentic.

How to Get Involved

I’ve put together a short sponsorship and partnership document that outlines different ways organisations can support the podcast. These range from single-episode sponsorships to longer-term partnerships aligned with shared values, themes, or communities.

I approach every partnership with care. The integrity of the platform and the comfort of guests always come first.

👉 Proudly Said Sponsorship Document

Let’s Talk

If you’re a business, organisation, or individual who believes in supporting LGBTQ+ voices, authentic storytelling, and independent creative work, I’d love to talk.

Even an initial conversation to explore whether there’s a good fit can be valuable.

You can get in touch at hey@proudlysaid.co.uk or via social media.

Less than a year after launching, Proudly Said has been shortlisted for LGBTQ+ Podcast of the Year at the Gaydio Awards 2026.

What began as a simple but powerful idea, creating space for everyday queer stories through honest conversation, has grown into a nationally recognised platform celebrating LGBTQ+ lives in all their complexity.

A grassroots podcast, nationally recognised

Being shortlisted for a national LGBTQ+ media award is something I never imagined when I pressed record on the first episode. Proudly Said is created entirely by one person, with no production company, no studio, and no financial backing. Every episode is recorded in spaces where guests feel comfortable, with nothing more than a smartphone, handheld microphones, and a shared sense of trust in telling our stories.

Since launching, the podcast has grown steadily and organically:

• Over 2,000 downloads

• 38 episodes published so far

• 5 more already scheduled

• Conversations booked and planned that will take the podcast to episode 50

That’s 50 unique LGBTQ+ stories, each one offered generously by someone willing to sit down and say something proudly.

What Proudly Said is really about

At its heart, Proudly Said exists to document queer lives as they are actually lived. The podcast centres voices from across the LGBTQ+ community, from activists and creatives to people simply navigating work, relationships, identity, grief, joy, and everything in between.

There’s no requirement to be famous, polished, or “successful”. Just honest.

That commitment to everyday storytelling is what makes this shortlist recognition feel especially meaningful. It’s not about scale or spectacle, but the stories of everyday people.

Standing alongside podcast heavyweights

The LGBTQ+ Podcast of the Year category includes some huge names, Gossip Gays and The Pieces with Bimini. These are well-established, high-production podcasts with major platforms and personalities behind them.

To see Proudly Said listed alongside them is both surreal and deeply affirming. It shows that there is room in LGBTQ+ media for smaller, independent, community-based projects, and that quieter stories still matter.

Built by community, sustained by trust

This shortlist belongs as much to the guests as it does to the podcast itself. Every person who has shared their story has shaped what Proudly Said is becoming, and every listener who has pressed play, shared an episode, or recommended it to a friend has helped it grow.

Following the announcement, The Guide Liverpool published a feature, highlighting the podcast’s Liverpool roots and its national reach. That local-to-national journey mirrors the heart of the project itself.

What comes next

Regardless of the final outcome at the Gaydio Awards, this recognition marks an important moment for Proudly Said. It’s a reminder that community storytelling has power, that independent platforms can travel far, and that queer voices do not need permission to be heard.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the podcast so far, especially those who trusted it with their stories. This shortlist is yours too.

🎧 Proudly Said is available wherever you get your podcasts.