Coming Home to Safer To Be Me

A decade ago, I was amongst a throng of strangers marching in Newcastle. The rain was pouring, and I was holding a taped-up sign made out of cardboard which read: ‘we don’t want your hate in our city’. Around two thousand of us were gathered, including my local MP, to send a message to far right campaigners who had chosen to host their first rally in my hometown. 

I had spent my childhood and teen years in Newcastle, a city tucked away in the top right corner of England, known for its approachable friendliness that seems to hold everyone together. But that warmth never quite settled under my skin. Growing up queer in Newcastle often meant facing hundreds of small reminders that it wasn’t quite my home – sometimes from outside of the LGBTI+ community, and sometimes from within it. By the time I turned eighteen, I was ready to leave, unsure of who I was, who I could trust, or where I might finally find home.

I credit this experience as the catalyst that led me down the path of LGBTI+ advocacy. My work took me across continents and global communities – I began to notice a pattern. So many of us were looking for a place of safety and belonging.

Building these spaces has gotten harder. The last nine months have seen overwhelming setbacks for LGBTI+ people across the world: From dramatic cuts to international aid which have slashed training programmes, drop-in centres, and HIV/AIDs initiatives. The impact has been immediate and devastating. But, for a week in October, Newcastle and Gateshead became a meeting ground for over 500 LGBTI+ voices to come together from across continents. 

So I went back home to join them at the Safer To Be Me Global Summit. 

Attendees and speakers – from Argentina, Brazil, Kenya, Malawi, Mongolia, Pakistan, the UK, the US and beyond – each brought similar stories of the challenges faced by their friends, communities and organisations; the dwindling funds, the increasing hostility, the physical threats, all of which feel more pointed and more targeted than ten, or fifteen years ago. Sessions grappled with where the global LGBTI+ movement finds itself today: tracing the origins of the anti-rights movement, unpacking the myths and misconceptions that persist around LGBTI+ people, and confronting the growing erasure of trans people. 

Yet time and time again, these conversations circled back to a gritty optimism, a shared conviction that connection must be our answer to division. But connection wasn’t only found in strategy and coalition building. It was also in the simple act of being together. After years of online teamwork and campaigning, I finally met so many people in person for the first time. Colleagues and friends I had long admired through my laptop screen. People who give their evenings, weekends and lives to defend human rights – not as a choice but as a necessity, because they are persecuted for who they are and who they love.

These spaces are a reminder that, in a world that is starving us of funds and desperately trying to tear us apart, we can still bring people together to build a home.

For me, the Summit’s most powerful message of connection was delivered offstage. The ‘Local to Global’ tagline wasn’t just branding, it was visible in the acts of care and mutual solidarity that made the whole week possible. Colleagues quietly covered the costs of speakers’ flights since funding fell short. Locals offered spare bedrooms or picked up the cost of hotel rooms for those who couldn’t afford accommodation. Ticket prices were capped- and waived for anyone who needed it. Volunteers denied visas continued to support month-long preparations virtually, patching in from bedrooms hundreds of miles away to watch their hard work come to life.

Generosity extended beyond just the delegates. Local venues – Gateshead College Stadium, the Assembly Rooms, and the Maldron Hotel – offered their spaces free of charge. College students ran the registration desks and poured the coffee. I saw community groups and small businesses set up stalls and share stories with first-time visitors to the UK. For that week, Newcastle became a home for global solidarity – a reminder that change doesn’t only happen in London, or Geneva or DC, but in the spaces and places that rarely make headlines.

At the Summit’s close, attendees gathered for a candlelit vigil to honor those who have died, and continue to die, as a result of global funding cuts and authoritarian rollback on LGBTI+ human rights. We paid tribute to activists, community members, and friends whose lives have been lost to discrimination, neglect, and policy decisions that harm people because of who they are. The vigil served as a reminder that behind every statistic lies a human story – and that our rights, though fragile, are worth coming together and fighting for.

Following this remembrance, the Summit concluded with the signing of the Newcastle-Gateshead Declaration. Developed by the UK Alliance for Global Equality, the Declaration reaffirms the universal rights and dignity of LGBTI+ people, calling on governments and global leaders to end persecution, discrimination, and violence against sexual and gender minorities. It serves as a collective commitment to solidarity and action, striving for a world where all LGBTI+ people are safe, free and equal.

This week in Newcastle reminded me that home isn’t just somewhere you’re from, it’s where you show up and who you show up with. We might have to use sticky tape and or hopes to hold together a bigger idea, but as our rights face new threats, that work continues. Every small act of solidarity, every connection formed, every space carved out, is part of that. In a world where it feels like everything we’ve worked for is being torn down, we keep building and rebuilding our home. Not as a place we return to, but as something we create over and over again, together.