Q Space Northampton

Q-Space – Dreaming of the Future

Hi There,

Can I take a moment to tell you about you about Q-Space, a little of what happens during the week, what makes us different and the journey we have been on for the last 5 years to get where we are now?

At the moment, you are in our café, this is the hub of everything that happens at Q-Space. We run with both paid staff and many amazing volunteers. All the team are committed to helping you have a better day.

When you call in there is always someone around that can stop and see how you are doing. So sit down and order a coffee and let’s see what we can help you with.

If it’s a tight month and you are skint, don’t worry. We run a loyalty system like most cafés, and your 9th cup is free, or you can stamp our coffee and chat card, anyone can then use the “free drink” when they are struggling and need a bit of help, its instead of keeping the stamps for yourself. Lots of our regulars do this as their part of giving back.

The art you see on the walls is all from LGBT artists, most of them are local, many in college or unis in the town. Its all for sale and the money goes to them.

The resource section is full of books and flyers to tell you what’s going on, there is probably more in Northamptonshire than you realise, they can give you that extra bit of information about life, maybe a help for a friend or family member. They are all free.

Need a boost? Head up to our Wellbeing Centre on the 1st floor, with hairdressing, beauty treatments, clothes swop and a chill out room oh and not forgetting the mini gym. Our staff can talk to you about presenting in a way that’s right for you, if you just want a make over or you want help passing in your gender.

The list of social groups is ever growing, it all started with our youth groups, they don’t meet here anymore as there is so many of them! but we have a people of colour, a newly out, a trans man and trans woman group, living with HIV, over 60s, parents and toddler, parents of LGBT, a fitness group and a swimming club

I’m sure the list will change, we keep updating our plans with regular meetings, all the groups have helped shape who we are, and we are always excited by new ideas.

We also do quite a bit of campaigning. You may have seen us in the media. With our neutral toilets campaign.

We don’t attempt campaigns just on our own, and have built strong friendships with National organisations including Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence.
We like to work in the community, we have good links with the other LGBT groups in the town. But also we have visited many of the other social groups in Northampton, and have given them a LGBT flags, our rating system from 0-5. We were pleasantly surprised about some of the churches and religious groups that have scored 3-4 rainbows. But the best group we found was the over 60s knitting club who now run a fundraiser for us once a year. They were the most welcoming group we have ever visited.

We have a STI clinic and nurse visit every Saturday morning as we found that some of the LGBT community felt judged, and miss understood at the hospital centre.

We also understand that your sexual health is important. We have trained staff that can talk about the best options for staying safe. Protection isn’t just about a condom.

Sorry I have been talking so fast, its been quite a journey getting here.

Let me tell you how it started;

Back in 2017 we started with a couple of youth groups. The young people felt that no one was truly helping them, or listening to there needs.

The group grew quickly and we ended up taking on all the secondary schools in the first year. Schools were ignoring the rights of Trans teens, not letting them express their gender, that was having a massive impact on their mental wellbeing and education. Some of them were dropping out of school because they felt school didn’t accept them.
I pleased to say they are so much better now.

After working through these the list just kept going. LGBT people drop out of sports, faith, family and can easily end up with poor mental and physical health.

We set up a mentoring team to work one on one with people to listen and make short term life plans. It’s still a big part of what we do now. Helping someone take the steps they need to accept them self is so important. You can’t expect the world to accept you if you don’t accept yourself.

We soon worked out that having safe places is what the whole LGBT community needs, at least to start with. That is what started the swimming club, it started with 8 young trans people once a month and now is about 40 once a fortnight. Swimming is an important life skill as well as great exercise and so many trans people stop, or have never learned due to not knowing how to be accepted in their gender.

Our First big event was Somewhere under the rainbow, one of the UKs First Winter Prides. That was back in 2018, I didn’t think it was going to work, there was so much to do, but now it’s an annual event, ran by its own team fortunately.

When we accept ourselves we then need to work hard for society to accept us as equals. We hold a LGBT conference once a year to help build links and understanding in the community. We are now pleased to say we are working with local businesses in the town to make equality high on there radar.

Anyway, I got very distracted. Did you want a tea or a coffee ?