You Belong Here

You Belong Here

On the street outside The Queery in Brighton, we have a small, home-made bench for sunny days. YOU BELONG HERE is sprayed on the side. It's a simple message but everyone sees it and smiles. It's our moto. We're a safe, welcoming volunteer-run cafe and bookstore for LGBTQIA+ people and those who identify as queer to meet, socialise, relax, learn and develop, and find freedom and belonging in an often hostile world.

We have a lot of young people through our door and we've identified a service that we cannot provide without your help. Our 2 year youth project is called You Belong Here and will provide LGBTQIA+ identifying 16-18-year-olds (16-25 with special-educational needs & disabilities) with:

Youth Literary Events

Featuring Young Adult Fiction authors, readings, book-signings and meet-and-greets with authors popular with young, queer audiences. We already have interest from some massive names in young adult fiction but we need to be able to pay them. Your support can make this happen.

Graphic Novel Workshops

The fastest growing literary form for LGBTQIA+ 16-18-year-olds, our workshops provide an opportunity for young people to meet leading, local queer artists in-person, learn the artistic process and be mentored in a fun learning environment, designed for LGBTQIA+ 16-18-year-olds. This is a fantastic pathway into professional graphic art work, a popular career for LGBTQIA+ people, and no other youth service here offers anything close. With your support, You Belong Here and The Queery provides digital tablets, paper, refreshments, all materials necessary for the workshops.

Pottery workshops

This creative art form has become very popular with queer youth: a free expression of creativity combined with a unique artistic discipline. Few colleges offer pottery or clay working and no council youth services here offer it. It's a wonderful community-bonding activity, vital in young people's formative years and we are proud to offer this for free, with your help.

Trans Youth meet-ups

Nowhere nearby offers a safe-space for trans 16-18s to meet, where they are comfortable to come on their own, in a venue they want to spend time in. The Queery is already a place of safety and it isn't a local bar, dull community hall or starbucks. The Queery is a fun, welcoming queer space, away from the public gaze, ideal for young queer people to find each other. We also provide trans-specific resource sign-posting (something we already do for adults) and we subsidise snacks and drinks from You Belong Here, hosted by trained volunteers with trans lived-experience.

With your help, we can transform the lives of young people.

Trans-specific Supplies

The Queery already offers a unique, free cloths swap service and trans-specific garments such as chest binders are always in demand, especially by young people. Binders are difficult to source, expensive and often provided with no safeguarding or guidance. You Belong Here would expand this offering for 16-18-year-old trans-identifying, offering binders and other trans-specific garments on a free lending/swap system, managed by a trained professional with lived experience, removing barriers and improving lives.

You Belong Here Project Coordinator

Since the beginning, The Queery has been co-op run, entirely voluntarily, with no paid positions. Now that our numbers have grown considerably, we've decided collectively that the cafe, the bookstore and our outreach services each need a paid position so that we can offer all our services consistently.

For young people, consistency is vital so You Belong Here will pay a coordinator role at 56 hours/month.

Show me the money

You Belong Here costs around £42,000 a year and we're funding it in various ways. Crowdfunding makes up about 30% of the total cost, so we need your support now more than ever to make this all happen. The services all run outside of college hours and we kick off in March 2024.

Free coffee!

To say thank you, you'll get a free coffee at The Queery when you come and browse the bookstore (just tell us you supported this Crowdfunder) and check out our instagram for more.

For many of us, places like The Queery and services like You Belong Here simply didn't exist when we were young. The people that run this place have so much love and talent to offer and we operate with community and solidarity at our core.

This is your opportunity to give something back to your local, young, queer community, so that they can have a better go at life than many of us had. Choose one of the reward tiers, or choose your own pledge amount. 

You can even support us long-term with a subscription, see below.

Thanks for being here and come and see us soon for a coffee and a browse!