Southbank Centre Violet Nights: Food and Lycra x Queer Bruk
What a great start to 2020! We teamed up with Queer Bruk last week to host ‘We Move‘ as part of Southbank Centre’s month Violet Nights event.
Running monthly for the past few years at Southbank Centre, Violet Nights is a real-life forum for online conversations with music, performance and topical discussion in front of a live audience. What’s great about it, is that it is a free monthly event curated by young people for young people! We’ve been meaning to work with the team to host an event for some time now, and we finally made it a reality at the start of 2020.
We partnered with Akeil of Queer Bruk to discuss why diversity in fitness is important and how to balance it as part of your lifestyle. Founded in early 2018, Queer Bruk is a club night and platform for Queer People of Colour. Queer Bruk began as an inclusive night where LGBT+ people, specifically those of colour, are free to grind to Afro-Caribbean music safely and uninhibited by prejudice and hate.
This event was slightly different from events we normally host as it required a lot of audience participation in the discussion - usually it’s us talking at people haha! The conversation was kicked off by us and Akeil, then the stage was handed over to all the amazing guests where we asked them questions. This way, everyone had a chance to share personal experiences and opinions. Honestly, we couldn’t believe how open everyone was to sharing and talking! Made us realise what a safe space this event created. What was even more beautiful was seeing and hearing everyone share their tips to get into fitness, where they go workout, and who their favourite trainers are - especially spaces that are owned by people of colour, and trainers who are of ethnic minorities <3. Literally warmed our hearts so much!
If you missed out, you can listen back on the best bits of the discussion as Violet Nights also doubles up as a podcast too! See below for link to the podcast - whatever your streaming platform ;-)
After all that chat, we obviously got everyone up on their feet and moving with Beats and Fast Feet. The workout was accompanied by the sounds of Queer Bruk, with our resident DJ @_aqwea on the decks! See below for some images from the event.
Honestly, can’t express how much we love everyone who makes time to come to our events! Not only that, it means we are doing our jobs well because in doing so, you are also giving back that hour or so to yourself, to move your body <3.