We’ve seen first-hand the lack of consistent support for LGBTQIA+ within the sector and its impact on staff and learners. For a long while now, we’ve been alert to a tokenistic sector-wide ‘pink washing’ that takes place annually during Pride Month. We’ve been asking ourselves, ‘But what about the other 11 months? How are we supporting pride 365 days a year?’
So, we’ve taken matters into our own hands.
To be fair, we’d been guilty of this kind of tokenism too; we’d printed our Pride logo and posted it up through June, then taken it down again in July. When we reviewed observations which had taken place, we could clearly see that other important areas of inclusion like race and disability were regularly embedded into the curriculum, yet sexual orientation and gender identity seemed only to be covered during June.
