Dear friend,

Kuen-Wah Cheung am working on behalf of the Brighton & Hove Community Safety Team to produce card aimed at people who have experienced homophobia or transphobia.As a result of feedback from the Spectrum mailing list, I have made sure that the material is aimed solely at victims/witnesses but not perpetrators.

I am aware of different work being produced that is also encouraging people to report incidents (with a rainbow eye design). After discussions with Lisa Timerick, she has provided advice over how this card can complement that information rather than duplicate it. I have been very open to making my design fit the look and feel of that pack, as I felt this made sense seeing as both were coming out around the same time, and I wished to support the work of other people. However, I was eventually persuaded that it was much better to make it fit the overall look of the set of four cards I'm putting together.

I must say that it has been very humbling and affirming going through this process of putting together the LGBT card. Humbling, because of my genuine lack of prior knowledge and experience of many of the issues it has fallen on me to draw together. But also affirming because of what I have learnt in the process, and also the wonderful support and feedback from people on the Spectrum list. In an ideal world I wouldn't be the one putting the text together (it definitely should be someone else), and not with such tight time constraints. However, I have to send the final work to the printers by the end of the week if they are to be available at our launch event on 30th march. (Incidently, I don't know who from the LGBT community has been invited to the launch event, but if anyone wants to come to it let me know.)

By the way, thank you all for your help so far. Some text will follow shortly. I got some draft text from a colleague but wasn't very happy with it, so am halfway through re-writing it. But I have some questions:

1. In the cards, we wish to make them inclusive of people who don't speak English as a first language. So there are plans for a single sentence in the card to be translated into 14 languages. Could you tell me what you think of this plan and its wording?

"Homophobia and transphobia are wrong. If you need a copy of this leaflet in larger print, Braille, audio tape or want to report an incident, please call..."

The idea is that this sentence would be available in English, German,Spanish, Albanian, Portugese, Turkish, Russian, Cantonese, Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, Farsi and Pashtu, with different telephones and voicemail message for each language.

2. Has anyone got any personal safety tips they wish to share?

3. In the draft text I was sent, it implied that homophobia and transphobia was mainly through abuse. I wanted to widen the focus to also include discriminatory laws, knowledge and resources, and portrayal through the media. I wanted to know what are your experiences of these things, and what do you think are the main ways of challenging these manifestations of prejudice?

Right, I hope this is OK.
Thanks!
Kuen-Wah Cheung
Email: Kuen-Wah.Cheung@brighton-hove.gov.uk