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I had been discussing increasing the impact of Moving Love film project with ImpactMakers producer and director, Vera Born, and during this discussion, I pitched creating a number of workshop sessions based on visionary world-building principles. Making use of these principles, I proposed a quartet of sessions, first focusing on what the community of LGBTQ+ asylumseekers wants and needs, then moving outwards to gathering insight into what the larger Dutch public thinks, before going on to inviting policymakers, lobbyists and lawmakers. The final session, which is yet to happen hopes to gather all these threads together and incorporate them into a reader which the producer (ImpactMakers) wants to make.

The issue of safety for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and for vulnerable groups in the asylum seekers centra is one that’s also highlighted in the news. Sandro Kortekaas of LGBT Asylum Support has also been tireless in highlighting the urgency of attending to the safety of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. In March, LGBT Asylum Support sent a broadly supported petition to the Minister of Asylum and Migration highlighting the egregious fact that ten percent of queer asylum seekers dies by suicide in asylum centra.

From working with the community of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers, it’s impossible to not hear stories about the acts of violence and abuse that are regularly directed towards LGBTQ+ and in particularly to those who are openly queer. These are the facts. Vulnerable groups are regularly subject to violence and threats and it can’t continue. There is a reason why LGBTQ+ asylum seekers flee and the circumstances under which they live in the asylum centra is far from the luxurious fabulation that we see fed to those of the population. Yes, the asylum center might have once been a hotel, but is it a place of luxury when two to four people are stuffed inside a room for months on end? Is it luxury when you cannot choose what you eat? Is it luxury when you know that you are not safe because you never know where the violence or abuse will come from?

Listening in on these sessions, I also realised that for a lot of Dutch people, there is a rather vague understanding of what life is like in asylum centers. A point rightly raised by one of the participants to the second sessions, was the lack of knowledge on how to support and also where to find community–particularly if one is in a town that is predominantly right wing. This second workshop which was facilitated by my dear friend, Marielle, built around the question of belonging. What do we need to feel we belong and what are the things that make us feel a sense of belonging. It’s a universal question and a great point from which to launch into imagining and thinking around how we might create this sense of belonging.

There is a lot of support for providing safe asylum centers for LGTBQ+ and vulnerable asylum seekers. From the third session, we learned that there are asylum centers for vulnerable groups in North Westphalia in Germany and that lawmakers from The Netherlands have visited these centers. I believe that there is a will to improve accommodations and to improve safety for vulnerable groups but the law is a slow moving institution and it is rather frustrating as we bear witness to the urgency of a matter that seems to just drag on without any concrete resolution.

Nevertheless, it was hopeful to hear of initiatives and to hear of what people are doing around this matter.

On the 19th of July, the final session will be held in FramerFramed. Do drop by if you have time. As one of the politicians present so rightly said: this isn’t a right wing or left wing issue, this is a human rights issue. We all have the right to live safely. We all have the right to thrive.

Maraming salamat for reading. Blessings and peace and maraming salamat for the support.

Here’s the link to the Moving Love Sessions at FramerFramed: https://framerframed.nl/en/projecten/workshop-series-moving-love-think-tank-sessions/

(Image from Moving Love project)

After the first LIMBO of 2024, I find myself eager to see how future LIMBO’s will unfold. We started the first LIMBO with some discussion and reading and from that discussion and reading we went on to write our own letters inspired by some readings from The Letter Q: Queer Writers Notes to their Younger Selves. For those interested, some of these letters are available on poets.org.

The letter writing was a divergence from the workshop theme/plan which I had in mind, but in coming to LIMBO, I felt what was important was to find out first where the discussion would lead us. Every announced aspect of the session was a placeholder for what might come up as being more important or beneficial to the participants at the moment. I think the fluidity of conducting meetings in this way might be more helpful/fruitful than creating a set program with activities we nudge participants towards. I think of how participants might come up and say: can we do this instead? Or can we work together on something? I’m curious as to that last part as I do want to try something at a future meeting.

For me, LIMBO is an ongoing process and it’s one that I find quite joyful. I do wonder how workshop culture would change if we shifted our approach and started asking ourselves: what is it that those coming to the workshop need in this moment? Is it be possible to make room for a different approach and would a consumer-minded society be willing to embrace a workshop that doesn’t clearly label itself from the get-go?

For all the complexity that comes with it, I find LIMBO to be freeing. No doubt there will be difficult moments but LIMBO is about working together to hold and keep this space wherein we can all just be (as one of the participants so beautifully put it) just be human.

Here’s a challenge that mirrors what we did: Read one or two letters from the Letter Q out loud. Give yourself 30 minutes and write a letter to yourself: could be your younger self, your present self or your future self. No editing. No passing judgment on yourself. Just write. Afterwards, read out loud. Ask yourself: what surprised you?

Blessings and peace to you who read and may you find yourself joyfully surprised.