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‘Speaking Solidarity: Gentle Listening, Thoughtful Talking’ is a new interactive poetry display created by young people from the local community promoting tolerant and inclusive dialogue. 

In collaboration with the Brighton Museum and The Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities, the exhibition is a sonic presentation of poetic responses around themes of self-expression, identity, and belonging. Young participants were invited to create collaborative spoken poetry responses to the Harriet Elphinstone-Dick automata, on display in the Queer the Pier exhibition, which celebrates her record-making seven-mile swim on 9 September 1875 from Shoreham Harbour to Brighton’s West Pier.  

The installation has been developed as part of the research project Speaking Solidarity, funded by the AHRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) at the University of Sussex. Led by the AHRC IAA Impact Fellow, Dr Katy Mack, and sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence, the project aims to spark poetic dialogue between young people and poets from the LGBTQIA+ community. The project worked with poets Maria Jastrzębska and Erin James, who facilitated workshops with local young people in different locations around Greater Brighton. Jastrzębska ran workshops with young participants at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, and James’s workshops took place at Lewes Football Club. For Katy, this project is ‘about voice and voices; it’s been about the sorts of spaces that certain voices inhabit. Speaking Solidarity has tried to think about how we as a society tend to prioritise some voices over others -- and the kinds of spaces where, traditionally, certain voices have perhaps been absent.’ 

Through spoken word poetry, Speaking Solidarity addresses the use of spoken language as an instrument of anti-LGBTQIA+ hate and prejudice. It seeks to inspire young people to engage with language in new, inventive and positive ways. In locating spoken language as a site of creative, playful, and thoughtful self-expression, this innovative research has created space for young participants to speak with confidence, tolerance, and compassion - with one another and their wider community. 

Katy reflects that ‘it has been a real privilege to work with the young poets who took part in this project. To hear their thoughts, opinions, and feelings fill this wonderful space at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery is a brilliant thing. If I have learnt one thing from this project, it is simply that I hope we can all take our lead from these impressive young people --, and that we can be more thoughtful about the ways that we interact with - and try to build connections with - one another in the future.’ 

‘Speaking Solidarity: Gentle Listening, Thoughtful Talking’ exhibition is open until 31 December 2024 at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. It was launched with a private view on Saturday, 28 September, attended by many of the young people whose responses can be heard in the installation. The exhibition is free for members and with admission to the Brighton Museum. Find more details about the exhibition on the Brighton & Hove Museums website.