QUEER FUTURES
2025
Co-created by artists Bex Harvey and Sarah Li with young people from Dawdon in Seaham and Barnard Castle in Teesdale Queer Futures was a celebration of youth culture and inclusivity. The project included the development of a new travelling heritage asset the ‘Gay Shed’ developed with Beamish and Bowes Museum and a the first Queer Futures Festival held at TCR Hub in Barnard Castle in October 2025.
Building on the work Dawdon led ‘Creating Our Queer Landmarks’ Queer Futures explored themes of safe space, identity and inclusivity in spaces and events led and created by young people. This includes the ‘Gay Shed’ which was created to represent modern heritage of young people, a space that they could feel free to be entirely themselves and share future focused messages of hope and belonging.
Meanwhile the Queer Future Festival gave space to showcase this work featuring a programme of music and performance entirely chosen by young people, workshops led and developed by the young producers and a festival feel that utilised the unique outdoor spaces and varied rooms available at TCR Hub whose young people joined Dawdon to shape the programme and lead the event.
“Joy, collaboration and diversity. Lovely community and happy atmosphere.” - Event attendee
“You can be yourself here.” - Young person
“They’re able to talk about their feelings in a safe space, a place where they’re fully accepted.” - Youth worker
“The Gay Shed created a safe space to spend time.” - Young person
“Sessions were very inclusive and young people felt calm, happy and confident to take part. “ - Artist
*Queer definition (from Key Concepts in Body and Society)
"Queer's original meaning is ‘odd’ or ‘irregular’ but it became an insulting term for gay men, in English, around the 1920s. The political revivification of the word queer reclaims a term of vilification, in the way many marginalized or oppressed peoples have turned insults into empowering weapons of identity-formation. In doing so, queer has come to mean more than ‘gay man’. As an identity, at its widest, it includes all sexualities that are not hetero-normative. As a political practice, queering is an act of re-reading and disrupting narratives of heterogeneous hetero-normativity. As a theory and an academic practice, its agenda is to show that queerness is and always has been present across time, space and cultures."
Project Partners:
— The Leanne Kennedy Centre (NMN Cultural hub), the DYCC Youth Hub and the young people of Dawdon in Seaham
— TCR Hub (NMN Cultural Hub) and the Young people of Barnard Castle in Teesdale
— Artists Sarah Li and Bex Harvey
— Beamish Museum
— Bowes Museum
— Commissioned by No More Nowt and funded by Arts Council England