I’ve been a Nottingham resident for the past 8 years, and a Gay for 26- so to be nominated as a Notts LGBT+ Hero is a huge honour- especially getting to see my name alongside local icons and legends! Seeing how the city has embraced queer culture over the years has been a huge inspiration for me, and events such as the Queer Up Duck festival show how far we’ve come as a city and as a community (although there is still work to be done)! I first entered the world of LGBTQ+ activism through volunteer work- I’ve been an Ambassador with Just Like Us for the past 2 years, giving talks in school assemblies and sharing my coming out story with students in an effort to normalise being openly queer as a young person. I’ve also been a trainer with LGBT Foundation’s Pride in Practice Scheme- providing training and learning materials to GPs and doctors to ensure they have up to date information of the needs and rights of their LGBTQ+ patients. In an effort to replicate this work at a local level, I helped set up and run the Nottingham Pastel Project- a trans advocacy and human rights non-profit whose aim is to establish Nottingham as the UK’s first official Trans Sanctuary City. We aim to address inequality across the three key areas of education, healthcare and community- providing training and leading collaborations with various institutions across Nottingham. Some of our most recent projects include a referral scheme with Nottingham Victim Care, to allow LGBTQ+ victims of crime to access support without necessarily having to be referred through the police, developing training and resources packages for GPs, and launching a project to allow trans individuals to share their stories with MPs and gain a vital voice in parliament. Over the years I’ve worked with several prominent national LGBTQ+ charities including Stonewall and LGBT Consortium- focusing on fundraising and managing grants for smaller LGBTQ+ community groups and projects. Over the past year, I’ve made an effort to switch my focus from activism to political efforts- running as a Green Party MP in the recent general election, specifically on a platform of pro-human and pro-LGBTQ+ rights (as well as all your other standard left wing policy positions!) and have recently started my Master’s degree in Human Rights Law- with an aim to base my thesis on how the UK is failing in its obligation to protect trans human rights across all areas of society. There’s still so much work to be done in the field of LGBTQ+ rights, but as a community, we are managing to accomplish so much when we stand together- and we will take this tenacity, resilience, and compassion forward in all of the work that we do!