A while ago I had the idea of getting one of our local LGBT organisations together with a bunch of interested bisexuals to help the organisation set strategy around bisexuality and also plan near-future provision for bisexuals:
I would like to see more for bisexuals in Leicester with the aim of reducing current erasure, invisibility and inequality of happiness and quality of life.
We have the long-running (40 years!) Leicester LGBT Centre with good local connections and I’m in contact with plenty of bisexual people. The Centre is a charity & limited company and has directors, paid staff and also volunteers. They host various groups, some with direct service support like the youth groups and some more autonomous.
I thought it would be good to invite a range of bisexual people to Leicester to meet with the Centre directors, staff and groups to:
- Prompt conversations among bisexuals about what we would like to improve the lives of people like us and also how we properly include bisexuals who are different from us.
- Work on longer-term, strategic directions for improving bisexual lives with the Centre in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland and come out with a plan
- Decide on things we can be getting on with now for bisexuals
- Take away ideas from Leicester to share with other bits of the country
I’ve spoken to people at the Centre and in the bisexual community and I am happy to coordinate the event.
If the Leicester event goes well we could consider extending this work to other infrastructure organisations, LGBT charities and LGBT events.
The charity BiCon Continuity Ltd. have agreed to help fund expenses to remove barriers to access.
I would particularly like to encourage people to participate from underrepresented groups such as people of colour and if there is anything I and others can do to help this happen please ask.
It hasn’t happened yet.
Having spoken to some folks at the last Bi Activist Day:
- This could be hosted at any LGBT organisation and could be for just them or a group of organisations
- Doing such an event needs to feel worthwhile for the bi people involved and needs to feel worthwhile for the organisation
- If people aren’t attracted enough to doing a summit it won’t happen
- We’d want some plans for bi people to come out of this
- We’d want organisations to come up with and take ownership of their own plans
- We could have a skeleton of things we’d like organisations to do strategically and tactically
- We could agree some followup appraisal and re-planning
How do we make this attractive to organisations (and activists)?
What should be on the skeleton list of suggested bi strategies (i.e. stuff over the next few years) and the list of suggested bi tactics (i.e. stuff that could happen now or soon)?
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