by Annabelle Goonasekera
Over the last six months I have been working with the Queer Youth Services team in Queerspace as a Youth Peer Leader, helping to run our Queerspace Youth and (in)Visible program workshops. Prior to my employment with Drummond Street Services, I also attended as a participant in these workshops. In this post I will share what exactly we have been doing as a team during this period and examples of the workshops we run, drawing from my experience previously as a participant and presently on the ground as a Youth Peer Leader. I will also touch on what we see as the benefits and importance of our workshops for our communities.
So, what kind of workshops do we run?
We run a diverse range of workshops. We often seek out and hire facilitators based in our communities, with an aim to mutually empower their interest in building worker skills, like in facilitation, and obtain remuneration for it. Their ideas have brought us workshops from such as introductions to vogueing to hand sewing our own soft toys to drama classes. We have hosted excursions like visiting the local cat café or going to local museums and galleries. We have been to the aquarium and the zoo.
We also host community drop-ins in an open space we have set up next to our office in Carlton. There does not always have to be a reason for a drop-in, as usually activities just help bridge the social connections we aim to foster in the space. This is especially true amongst recurring participants who actively see our team and service as more than just a one-off workshop but a community hub. Drop-in activities have been centered around anything from board games to Nintendo Switch games, calendar events like Queer Halloween or Wear It Purple Day, where we rejoice to commemorate our rainbow youth lost to suicide.
In our (in)Visible program that is exclusively for Queer, Trans and Intersex, Black and Indigenous People of Colour (QTBIPoC), like myself, we’ve hosted more focused workshops around culture-sharing and healing like through sharing cultural foods and knowledge. Having an art therapist on our team now, we have also branched into providing more psychoeducational supports particularly through arts and crafts, from pastels to clay.
We actively seek feedback from our participants, to ensure we are engaging our community with what they are interested in. It is awe-inspiring witnessing these programs give space to our community for listening, healing, grieving, liberating. Seeing how participants are able to build our solidarities and locate our voices and our power as both individuals, and as part of our greater communities, is a beautiful process.
As a participant, the impact of a safe space is not to be taken lightly. Safety is a major reason folks are motivated to make the trek to us. From my perspective, as a Peer Youth Leader, our workshop spaces provide a reprieve from normative society, one that is also accessible and affirming to our disabled and neurodivergent community members. One that also centers community care with space for individual support as well. Essentially, we are running a peer space that is for community by community, focused on community building as well as a community hub for those who want and need it.
On the ground, I see participants come because they are actively seeking connection and social inclusion. They are seeking representation; they want to see and be with people who have similar lived experiences, practice interpersonal skills and maybe help imagine better and more for themselves. Liberation and empowerment are a big part of why these workshops are so special. A safe space fosters self-esteem and allows discovery for voice and power, knowing that many of us were denied those virtues from being systemically marginalised or discriminated against. A real safe space is a place where our community can practice authenticity, have their stories and truth held and have a peer reciprocate the same honesty and respect.
Our workshops have no waitlists and our roster is advertised and updated regularly on our social media pages. We encourage any queer, trans, or gender diverse folks to come as they are and see for themselves what such a space could offer them. Group-based, physical community safe spaces hold so much potential for building our individual power, perhaps even more so than simpler one-to-one services could offer alone.
Annabelle (she/he/they) is the Queerspace Youth and (in)Visible program’s Youth Peer Leader helping to organise and run workshop events. Prior to their employment with Drummond Street Services they had attended as a participant in workshops. He is a half Filipino and Sri Lankan second generation settler on Wurundjeri country who acknowledges the ongoing effects on colonisation, supporting all forms of resistance to colonial violence, no matter where, no matter who. Annabelle is passionate about community care, solidarity and building local power, making her role as a Youth Peer Leader right where they want to be.
For more information on Queerspace Youth and (in)Visible, programs proudly funded by the City of Melbourne, visit https://www.queerspace.org.au/our-services/queerspace-youth/
