Int.: Ok, we’re actually recording this time. Ok, so, take two. We’ll start with where you were born and where you grew up, and how you got to be in Liverpool?

Mel: So, I was born in a town called Neath in South Wales, and then I stayed there until I was 18, and then I moved to London. I went there for university, and then I lived there for three years and during that time I met the person who is now my partner. We stayed there for the three years, so I was there for a total of six years and then we kind of started realising it wasn’t for us. The money side of things wasn’t great, it was expensive to live there, and Ash said “Come up and visit my family, see my friends, see what Liverpool’s like,” and I was like “Oh yeah I’ve never been to Liverpool.” So, I went to Liverpool, and I loved it here, I thought it was a really different vibe to London. It had a much better way of life that it was more relaxed, it was a smaller city to deal with, so I said to Ash, “Look, you’re obviously not feeling it in London as well, you move up first and then I’ll follow you once I find some work.” I found work pretty quickly and then I moved up afterwards, I think there was seven weeks between us moving? So yeah.

Int.: When did you first start realising that you were different and queer?

Mel: So, I first realised I was different when erm…in the sense of just in general, when I was really young, like six-ish? I wanted to wear boy’s clothes instead of girl’s clothes, I kept getting my mum to buy me like, waistcoats and stuff, and they were always knitted, I don’t - I just remembered that part about it actually, they were like, knitted ones? I’ve got a picture of me on my birthday wearing one and I used to hate people singing happy birthday, cause it brought more attention to me, and I’d scream. But there’s this picture of me in this knitted waistcoat like “Aaaahhh!”, screaming, cause I didn’t want people to sing happy birthday. So um, yeah, it was the clothes thing at first, I realised I wasn’t like other girls. And then when I was thirteen, I started finding girls attractive, and like “Ok, this is not what other girls are into,” and it started in me from there thinking, Ok, what am I gonna - what is this? I didn’t even know what it was. And no, I didn’t even know what gay was, I had no role models to even know that. By the time I was 14, I saw Ellen Degeneres on TV and I was like, “Ah! She’s like me!” Googling furiously, and then I realised yeah, that’s actually - that’s exactly how I identify, so then I came out at 14. From that point I was very different from everyone else because I was the only gay woman - well, girl - in my school. Out, obviously. 

Int.: What was coming out for you in terms of like, the rest of the town and family and friends and that?

Mel: School was great, I didn’t get bullied, everyone accepted me. I actually was in a band, we were called the ‘ABC Band’, we were the ‘Anti-Bullying Campaign Band’ or something cringe. But that was great, because I actually actively promoted, y’know, anti-bullying in the school through my own experience of having a voice, being gay and that young. So that was great, but um —

Int.: What kind of a band was it?

Mel: Rock. It was a rock - well, I say rock, it was like, very soft rock.

Int.: Like, ‘School of Rock’ soft.

Mel: Yeah, yeah, and we used to sing like, covers of All Amer— what was it? — All American Rejects, and stuff like that. [laughs] Like, “No, oh they’ve got deeper meaning.” But we did that, and school life was great, even after coming out. But at home it was more tricky, my grandparents took it great in the sense that they didn’t really care, they’ve seen it all before. They’d lived life, they’d kind of had that opinion of “Oh, do what you like.” But my mum didn’t take it that well, she was supportive in the sense that I wasn’t kicked out or made to feel — Well, I was made to feel…I was made to feel quite bad about it actually at times, but as time went on and she’d got used to the idea and I’d had one or two girlfriends and she’d realised it wasn’t a phase, our relationship grew stronger and by the time I’d moved to Uni she was fully accepting of it.

Int.: That’s good!

Mel: Yeah.

Int.: Did you have any safe spaces when you were growing up that you felt you could just be yourself and there was no hiding anything?

Mel: Yeah. So erm, there’s actually two. So, my gran’s house was actually one of my safe spaces. She was always accepting of me, I could talk to her about absolutely anything. Erm, it was—that was in general, just a safe space. And two, I went to a youth group, called Cygnet based in Swansea because it was the only thing, I mean, Neath had nothing, absolutely nothing, not a gay bar in sight even, or a youth group. But Swansea was nearest. The group called Cygnet, and I used to say to my mum, “Right mum, me and Conor* are going to the cinema,” and she’d say “Alright” and then we’d go to this youth group, which is brilliant, because it had, it had loads of different people, from all walks of life. We had all the Ls, Gs, Bs, Ts, Qs and pluses, y’know, it wasn’t just — it wasn’t just one type of person, it really helped me open my eyes because I just had myself to reflect on, and Conor* my best mate was a gay man, and it was so like, one-dimensional? What my opinion of being gay was, or queer. So, yeah, that was my safety net really, yeah. 

Int.: How did you come to find it, and what was that first sort of experience of going there like? 

Mel: It was quite scary because one, going to any new group as a young person - or a person in general - is scary. But I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t know… I didn’t really know what queer people looked like? I said, “Well what are they gonna be like? Are they gonna be weird? I dunno.” It felt — it kind of — because of the way my mum reacted to me coming out, it felt seedy? It felt like, Am I doing something… disgusting, by going to this group? So that worried me, that — it was like, secretive, like ‘Ooh, creep into this group’. And I remember standing in this carpark with Conor*, my mate who came with me to the group, and this woman with a shaved head - what was? - I can’t even remember her name, with like, a Matrix-style coat on, coming up to me with like the biggest smile on her face and I was thinking, Oh my god, run away! But she was lovely and we walked all the way over to the group and it was a great resource for me, and I met my first girlfriend there, but yeah it was a really positive experience and all, but it was shrouded in secrecy and shame and I think that affected me was well? That I couldn’t just be open about what I was doing. It’s all about this shame thing, and that in Wales at the time, it was very prevalent that it - you just did not talk about it, and like, that wasn’t that long ago, that was what, 2004? It still felt very old school.

Int.: Yeah. So, how would you compare the gay scene going from Wales to London and up to Liverpool now?

Mel: Wales, I’d say, non-existent. Especially for young people, nothing at all. They did have a Pride just before I left and it was awful, it just didn’t feel safe at all, it really didn’t. But it was a Pride and it was good to be in Swansea. Nightlife, they had quite a bit of bars and pubs, I think there was six, now there’s one, so I’m sure it’s even worse than when I left there now. London, when I moved to London, I went from absolutely nothing and feeling a lot of internalised homophobia and shame, secrecy, all of that, to when I went to London, it was like an explosion of activity. So, I had a ball for like the first year, I was going mad, I was going to like all the clubs, all the bars, y’know, drinking a lot. Trying to really immerse myself into what I believed was ‘gay culture’, which was just bars and pubs to me, that’s all I knew it was in Wales, that’s all I aspired to do as a gay person. And then I started meeting other people because I did theatre in Uni - the technical side of theatre, not an actor. But I started meeting some really interesting characters, I started getting involved in like, I dunno, different theatre productions or cabaret, meeting artists. There’s a group called ‘The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’, they promote like safe sex and stuff like that and they all dressed as nuns, it’s great. I think they got quite a historic, like they’re quite a story, I think they’ve been going for quite a long time. Anyway, I got involved with them, and they were lots of fun. So, that was…I think what happened in London then was I quite quickly realised how toxic that kind of club/pub experience can be y’know, if you’re not looking after yourself and stuff. I thought, Well what do I want from a queer community? It was more about community, the arts, sort of y’know, cabaret, all that kind of side of it. It wasn’t so much the drinking and the going out in the nightclubs and stuff. So when I moved to Liverpool, I thought, Right, that’s what I’m going to look for, I now know what I want, I know I want community and I want socialising, and I want arts. I started looking for it and I couldn’t find much, and I didn’t know why, I didn’t know if it was because I was an outsider coming in, it just wasn’t here in Liverpool. So, I found that there was obviously, I went out to the pubs and clubs. It’s always your first go-to, isn’t it, when you go to a city? “Ooh, what gay bars are there?” You never really think, “Oh what”—I dunno, “what queer cafes are there, or a queer art exhibition I can research?” You’re straight on - I don’t know why, but we always straight on to like, “Where’s the gay quarter?” Like it’s a section we have to go to, y’know what I mean? So, that was, that’s what happened when I came to Liverpool initially.

Int.: Yeah. So— 

Mel: —Penned myself in. [laughs]

Int.: [laughs] So you now have quite a big, sort of, part to play in the queer community and the queer scene in Liverpool. Was that searching for things that you wanted to do… was that what got you going with the Queer Collective?

Mel: Yeah. So, myself and my partner Ash, when we moved here, we thought that because we lived in West Derby that was the main reason that we were out of the loop. We thought like, “We’re just not in town, we’re not seeing the posters, we’re not seeing like, people, we don’t know where to go, so then right, we’ll move to town.” We moved to town and it didn’t really improve? Ash was involved - me and Ash were involved in Homotopia Festival and that helped hugely connect us and make connections with some venues that they were using, and the people that were engaging with Homotopia, but it still wasn’t enough, that only happens in November, really, and there was obviously the Pride thing, but… So we thought, Right, what can we do to find out what’s going on? We thought, Well, let’s open a blog, let’s just start a blog and y’know, maybe that’ll bring people together, maybe we can find community that way. We can write about things that interest us to do with queer life in Liverpool, further afield, travelling, places we’ve found that we think are safe spaces, fashion brands that are great, I dunno. We’ll just think about stuff and then we’ll blog about it and to add to the website, we will make a calendar and we will drop into the calendar all the things we know that are going on to do with, I don’t know, queer night life or queer art in Liverpool that isn’t always scene related, it’s like doing other stuff? And we’ll do a big shout out and we’ll get everyone to try and get involved with this. And that’s what we started doing and it started growing from there. So, it was just like, it was a digital resource to start with, and we thought, “Ok, well if other people are doing stuff where are the gaps? Is there any gaps that we can fill,” because I do events as my day job so it’s something I’m used to doing and I’m used to organising events. I thought, What is missing? Y’know, ok so we’ve got this and we’ve got that, aah but we don’t have really have like, a day time event where people can come and have a coffee and have a chat and maybe do some arts and crafts or do an activity or have a discussion about a certain topic.” So then the Queer Hub started, and that was the first event that we did, it was Queer Hub and it just ran once a month, doing various activities and just meeting in one space that somebody would give us for free. So that filled that gap, so then we—y’know, Char and Andrew joined in just over…I think it was under a year, actually, that they joined. They had their own ideas as well, which then fed into it, such as storytelling events, or y’know, meet-ups that where non-alcohol meet-ups. Meet-ups where you can just chill and there’s no pressure on doing anything. So we started filling in those gaps and then that’s what’s become Liverpool Queer Collective, really. We saw a space that’s for promoting everything that’s going on so that people can feel connected, having one hub to do that, and then also maybe filling in a few gaps that other people aren’t doing to create more community. 

Int.: Yeah.

Mel: So that’s it in a nutshell, in a way. 

Int.: What’s your favourite event that you’ve been to, or ran…?

Mel: Oh yeah, so marching at Liverpool Pride was amazing, because I’ve never marched in a Pride before, and I’ve been to quite a few Prides, which is quite surprising? I don’t know why I’ve never marched. But yeah, last year was the first one, as the which felt really apt to do. It was great, it was a really good experience. The other one was Halloween event that we did, with Beers for Queers. It was just, I thought it was just really lovely to have Halloween event that wasn’t based in the scene, just in a club. It was actually about Halloween and people got proper dressed up without any kind of giving a damn about what they looked like, it was cheesy, it was fun. My mum came, it was that kind of event. Everyone was welcome, it wasn’t about being a ‘Scene Queen’ or who looks coolest, it was like, we had some entertainment on, cheesy music. And it was just a fab night, I stood there in the middle of the room at one point and I just thought, Oh my god, this is wonderful that we’ve achieved this, and we’ve got so many people, like a roomful here, y’know know what I mean? So, I think that was one of the highlights of last year for me. 

Int.: Is there any particular spaces in Liverpool that you feel the most either visible or just safe and just, y’know, your queerness is just accepted and you don’t have to think about it or think about who’s looking?

Mel: Yeah, so like, Lovelocks cafe, I’m always banging the drum for Lovelocks. It’s not a queer space, but it’s a queer friendly space and I mean, it may as well be a queer space, so many of us go in there. But I think most safe spaces are surrounding the arts aren’t they in Liverpool? If you’ve got any arty space or Static Trading, where we host one of our Friday night things, they’re great, just no judgement is given there and it’s a great space. Tusk in the Baltic, I think they’re a great kind of night spot, kind of cool area. Most of the theatres, so you’ve got the Unity, the Everyman, I don’t think so much like the Empire and the Playhouse, I think they’re more commercial-y kind of places, but the Empire and the Unity, they put on a lot of different work from queer artists as well so I always feel welcome in those spaces. And quite weirdly, actually, I’ve got like an office on Mann Island and that’s in my day job and I feel really welcome in that space … because it’s something to be said about feeling safe in your workplace, cause they’re never queer spaces normally unless you’re lucky enough to work in a queer organisation or a queer-friendly organisation. Your work is never a safe space, you’ve got to come out and you’ve gotta deal with people who are not in your zone normally and cis-het people who are like - you just don’t know how they’re gonna react to you? But I think it’s wonderful down there, and they are supporters of Pride, I think they give pride free space throughout the year and stuff. So, I think I really do feel safe in that space, which is nice. I haven’t felt safe in work in the past.

Int.: You mentioned how Lovelocks is… not necessarily a queer space, but it’s queer friendly and it’s a safe space. Do you think that there is a need for there to be something more permanent to go along with all the sort of events that you put on that aren’t alcohol-based? Because I think that that is, as you were mentioning before, what the queer scene is, “Where’s the gay bars, where’s the…”

Mel: Exactly.

Int.: You know, it just seems to be that our sort of social thing is we just feel that we have to go…

Mel: Pubs and beers.

Int.: Yeah.

Mel: Yeah, non-alcoholic spaces, cafe, arts, social spaces. Like we said, The Planet, all day every day. It’s not as easy… It’s easier said than done isn’t it? To create a space like that because, as people in the LGBTQ+ community, we don’t have a lot of money, and the people who do don’t want to spend it in their own community…I dunno. To me, it’s a no-brainer to create a space like that, if I had the money, I would make one tomorrow, but  that’s a huge area that will grow,  that’s the next area for like socialising, that’s what we need, we need more spaces that we can just pop in, pop out whenever, it feels more like a home and a community. But at the same time, we don’t feel like it’s an LGBT centre? You get what I mean? I don’t want people to feel like, “Aw, feel sorry for me,” or think, “Oh, that’s where you go if you’re, you’ve got no…” No, I want it to be a - it’s gotta be vibrant and cool, a place that people wanna go, and it doesn’t have to be exclusively queer. We’re not saying you stay out, we stay in there. But the rules are made by us. And it’s our space, and you’re welcome if you’re happy with these rules. Because I think, there’s something to be said about, there’s loads of obvious heterosexual, cis artists and creatives, wonderful people who would love to be in our spaces and they are in our spaces and that’s so important to us, because we’re not an island, we want people to integrate into what we do. I think that’s important, I think we need a space that feels very normal, it’s not like - it’s not like all rainbows everywhere and all that cheesy stuff. But we know that that’s a space where we’re safe, that we can be celebrated, and we can be who we wanna be, and we can meet friends there and not have to get rotten. That’s definitely I think, that’s where we’re going next, I don’t know how in Liverpool we’ll achieve that, but it will happen. 

Int.: Yeah, we’ll get there.

Mel: At some point. We need a crowd funder, that’s what we need.

Int.: Let’s get a Kickstarter going. 

Mel: Yeah [laughs].

Int.: So, you mentioned that you identify more with queer, over lesbian. 

Mel: Yeah, yeah.

Int.: Do you wanna talk about how you got to sort of. 

Mel: Yeah, I’ll try to keep it simple this time, I couldn’t even describe it last time. 

Int.: Oh no, go as far off as you want to.

Mel: It’s actually helpful for me, this, because I’m currently going through the whole… I don’t think the word’s turmoil, it’s not that dramatic, but just understanding of myself? Which - so the terminology’s tricky for me and like as we were talking about earlier, are labels too much? For some people, some people like a label, because that makes them feel, No, I belong there, I’m comfortable, I know what that is. And other people just don’t even want a label at all, but then I think, as human beings, I think that labels are just always going to be a thing. So, the word lesbian was a negative word for me growing up. It was associated with the word dyke, being called that, “Oh, lesbian, that dirty -” It was always a dirty word. I don’t know why or where it came from, but I think that, fair to say it is, it was. 

Int.: Yeah. 

Mel: Growing up and now, I don’t have the same relationship with it. But I still don’t…I still don’t necessarily identify with it, because for some reason I identify the word lesbian with being quite a stereotypical lesbian, or a femme, or like, I associate it with a female persona, if that’s the best way to describe it. And then obviously now it’s amazing that we’ve got like a non-binary they/them pronoun, but that’s not quite me either. Maybe it will…maybe I will think that’s me when I understand myself more, but at the minute I can’t see that being me. But at the same time, I’m not quite…I’m not a lesbian because that’s not me either. So queer works beautifully for me at the minute. I still use she/her pronouns, that’s what I’m comfortable with at the moment…I was thinking about they/them and it just doesn’t work for me right now but I think ‘queer’ is brilliant because anyone can be queer, can’t they? Y’know, and it’s such an encompassing word. Why should we have to give so much of our personal selves to the public? To justify who we are? Queer doesn’t give too much away, and I like that. I think it’s just like, “None of your business, I’m queer!”, you can’t ask me any more than that, cause like, saying other things invites more questions, d’you know what I mean? Yeah queer’s great. I’ve had plenty of conversations with older members of the community who don’t like that word and it was a big struggle calling the Queer Collective that cause I thought, If I call it that, I’m gonna lose people who I want to - to y’know, attract to what we’re doing because I think they need it the most as well? Older people are isolated and they don’t have like the internet and stuff, so we wanna reach them, but then using the word ‘queer’ is problematic because they think like I think ‘lesbian’ was a negative word, they think queer is? But I just think we need to own it. I think ‘queer’ is the way forward. I don’t think it takes away from our acronym, and all the letters that we want in our acronym, ‘queer’ is just a quick easy way of saying…I don’t know what it does say, actually?

Int.: It’s just I’m…I’m just not heteronormative. 

Mel: Or, I dunno. Yeah.

Int.: Do you like where the LGBTQIA+ or ‘queer’ community is at the minute, and do you think there’s areas…that we as a community need to improve on as well?

Mel: Yeah. So, how to say this? Globally, I think we’re in a terrible situation still. But we are anyway aren’t we, take away the queer side of it, I think just any way it’s just tricky, there’s lots of tricky things going on. I mentioned the Brunei situation, I think what’s interesting about that is that now we’ve got more influential people speaking out about things that are happening to us as a community things can be affected, which is great because they’ve affected the Brunei things that are going on and now there’s apparently not a death penalty. I mean I don’t know how much I believe that, in the back depths of what’s going on, but that’s what they’ve said. I think globally, it’s tricky, I wouldn’t like to say that it’s got better because I don’t think that it has. From a UK point of view, I think outward facing it’s much better. I think people are talking about queer issues more and… people are speaking out, saying “I don’t agree with that, you should change that” like, I think we’ve got power. Locally, to Liverpool, and day to day in my life, it…I think we’ve still got a lot more work to do when it comes to it. I think the notion of like, “Oh, lesbian, gay, bisexual” for everybody is getting there, I think that’s got a lot better, I think people, just general members of the public are like, “Oh! I know what that is, I can accept that, that’s cool.” But if you slip anywhere out of what is normal of that to them, you’re back to square one. I get shouted at in the street, or I get called “Dyke!” again out of car windows because they can’t accept me as being normal or looking normal. So, I think there’s a lot of work to do with how we look now, not just about sexuality, it’s about gender I guess, it’s about how we - how we portray ourselves, how we dress, how we look. I think people are still - they’re not there with accepting that a woman, or…a ‘female body’, essentially, can look like this, it doesn’t have to look a certain way. Rejecting femininity is a hot topic right now, people hate it. Like, it’s ok if you look a certain way or if you’re some sort of androgynous model, that’s cool, but if you’re just a normal person on the street it’s intimidating to them. So I think there’s still a lot of work to do on a local level and then that’ll kind of… spread out as we go along, really.

Int.: How do you think we get there, like, from a local perspective, how do we get Liverpool…?

Mel: We just need to be visible and carry on being ourselves. And having those conversations, y’know, they don’t have to be angry conversations or confrontations, but a lot of people ask questions. Answer those questions and be as open as you can with those people, because if they’re asking then they wanna know. A lot of people do ask questions whether they’re taking the mick, or they’re being serious and I think it’s important to acknowledge. Sometimes I feel it, because I live in a world in my day job where… I’m the token queer, and I always feel like the PC police, y’know like, I’ll be with like a bunch of boys, because I work with a lot of techies, and they’ll be like, “Oh that’s so gay!” And I’m always the one that’s like, “No! You can’t say that!” And it does get exhausting, but I think that there is responsibility on us as the next generation of people or as the generation who can do the most in our age bracket, I guess. To change things, and to say to people “No, you can’t say that. You need to say this…” or whatever will make it better for people who are coming up underneath us then, every time. And I think that’s the way to do it. Visibility, conversations and correcting people, basically.

Int.: Yeah, for sure. Do you think there’s things that we, as a community, need to improve on?

Mel: Yeah. I think we can love each other more. We can support each other more. There is more than LGB in the acronym and people need to acknowledge that in a positive way. There’s a lot of negative acknowledgement of like, y’know “Oh why we’ve done our fight, we’ve got to fight again now for the…I dunno, the T, the Q, the I, the A, the plus, all of that” and I don’t see why that’s an issue? [laughs] Like, trans people supported gay people when they were having their fight, and they were nigh on visible. I dunno, I think there’s a lotta hate, a lotta toxicity going on in our own community, and I think if we can just unify a bit more and love each other the outward look of who we are would be stronger and people would take us more seriously. There seems to be very fractured communities in our community at the moment, and that can never be good for making change. I think we just need to support each other, basically. 

Int.: Definitely. Cool, so, as a final message… Do you have anything that you would say to your younger queer self, as a fully-fledged grown up queer? Or just to the younger community right now who just wondering “What am I doing?”

Mel: Yeah. Just basically being yourself is important, be authentically you, don’t be apologetic for any part of yourself and just live your life as you want to live it. I think hiding yourself away, especially at a time when you’re developing and understanding who you are, if you hide any part of that because you’re scared of what people will think or what they will say, that is probably more harmful than the short term consequences of being that. I understand that we’ve gotta safeguard ourselves, and there’s some dangerous situations we can be in if we are outing ourselves, I honestly do think because of the whole ‘visibility’ thing, and y’know, people understanding us, just…being authentically you is the best way to go, and not saying it’ll be hunky-dory but…It’ll be a better life if you can be you. Yeah. 

Int.: Amazing. Thank you very much

MU: That’s alright.