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(they/them) Jaï Jaï is a trauma-informed coach, group facilitator, and public speaker specialising in systemic power dynamics, identity and belonging. Their work brings a systemic lens to personal growth and healing. They lead in-person and online workshops on Power, Privilege, and Prejudice; host online summits focused on trauma healing and related themes; and are the creator of Beyond Boxes with Jaï Bristow, a podcast and YouTube channel exploring labels, identity, and the ways we go beyond socially ascribed boxes. Jaï’s work draws from their lived experiences as a queer, multiethnic, neurodivergent, disabled person, alongside mindfulness, inquiry, Nonviolent Communication, and trauma-healing practices. They aim to raise awareness of systems of oppression – both in society and within ourselves – to empower people in finding freedom from them in order to take values-aligned positive action in the world. Jaï Bristow Looking for a Guest Speake r ? Get in touch Our Recent Articles... AI Is Exposing How We Lead. Visibility to Resonance: How to Shape Culturally Competent Communications. How Skill-Based Learning Is Powering AI-Ready Organisations. Create Space for Change. We work with 100+ Businesses, ERGs and Change-Leaders providing bespoke DEI solutions. Through consultancy we design shared learning experiences, produce insights and craft content that support individuals with strengthening their roles as change-agents within their communities and organisations. Discover our bespoke corporate solutions... Work with us

(she/her) Taz Taz is a bisexual woman of Bangladeshi Muslim heritage. She is former Director of Volunteering and Youth Programmes at an LGBTQ+ charity, where she ran programmes in universities and small charities, facilitating reforms by and for LGBTQ+ people and others. She has written about educational equality for The Guardian, and intersectional LGBTQ+ themes for Gay Times and DIVA. Taz runs inclusion experimental initiatives and training for UK small businesses and community organisations, at Inclusion Projects by Taz. She is interested in gender, race, power, and how change happens. Taz Rasul Looking for a Guest Speake r ? Get in touch Our Recent Articles... AI Is Exposing How We Lead. Visibility to Resonance: How to Shape Culturally Competent Communications. How Skill-Based Learning Is Powering AI-Ready Organisations. Create Space for Change. We work with 100+ Businesses, ERGs and Change-Leaders providing bespoke DEI solutions. Through consultancy we design shared learning experiences, produce insights and craft content that support individuals with strengthening their roles as change-agents within their communities and organisations. Discover our bespoke corporate solutions... Work with us

(he/they) Dan Dan is an educator, performer and film presenter recognised as 'Activist of the Year,' ‘campaigning role model’ and 'BBC Greater Londoner' for founding ‘Queer Tours of London’. His book(s) ‘United Queerdom’ won Observer book of the week and is now touring ‘Queer Footprints’. Dedicating his life to transformational leadership influenced by his Grandparents stories surviving the Nazi Holocaust, Dan is now on the international committee of Training for Transformation and an artist with ‘In Place of War’, catalysing empowerment programmes in Uganda, Poland and beyond. Dan recently founded Queer/Trans Muay Thai & Self Defence movement Bender Defenders. Dan Glass Looking for a Guest Speake r ? Get in touch Our Recent Articles... AI Is Exposing How We Lead. Visibility to Resonance: How to Shape Culturally Competent Communications. How Skill-Based Learning Is Powering AI-Ready Organisations. Create Space for Change. We work with 100+ Businesses, ERGs and Change-Leaders providing bespoke DEI solutions. Through consultancy we design shared learning experiences, produce insights and craft content that support individuals with strengthening their roles as change-agents within their communities and organisations. Discover our bespoke corporate solutions... Work with us

The real challenge facing organisations isn’t simply adopting AI. It’s what happens when technology accelerates output faster than leadership behaviour, decision-making, and organisational culture can evolve alongside it. Over the last 12 months, nearly every conversation I had with business leaders came back to AI and productivity. The conversations sounded relatively similar regardless of industry or organisation size. There was usually some version of urgency, some concern about falling behind, and a strong focus on tools, implementation, capability, and speed. Now those same conversations sound different. The tools are deployed. Some training has happened. A strategy exists somewhere, usually living inside a slide deck or transformation roadmap. Usage rates may even look encouraging on paper. Yet underneath all of that, many leaders are sitting with the same uncomfortable realisation: “I can’t honestly tell you our performance is any better.” That’s the conversation I want to write about, because I think we’ve reached a moment where the public story about AI and the private experience of leading through AI have started drifting quite far apart. The headlines are still focused on productivity gains, automation, efficiency, and capability uplift. Meanwhile, many of the leaders we work with are trying to answer a different question entirely, even if they haven’t fully found the language for it yet. What is AI actually doing to the practice of leadership itself? I’ll start with myself, because I think it would feel inauthentic to write this piece without acknowledging my own experience in it first. When I started using AI more deeply in parts of my own work, I expected it to make me faster and in many ways it did. What I didn’t expect was the extent to which it would expose parts of my leadership I still needed to improve. Not technical capability, but behaviour. It exposed the go-to-market decisions I’d been over-consulting instead of making. Or providing feedback I’d been putting off delivering because I wanted to mentally rehearse a few more times but softened it too much so the feedback wasn’t helpful. The moments where I realised I was refining communication repeatedly rather than providing clarity and direction. In subtle ways, the technology started removing the friction and volume of work that previously allowed certain leadership habits to stay hidden. The more the operational noise reduced, the more visible those habits became. At times it has felt less like adopting a productivity tool and more like receiving a real-time performance review. That experience is not unique to me. I’ve now had some version of this conversation with dozens of leaders across different sectors and levels of seniority. One organisation we spoke with had achieved AI adoption rates of over 80%, yet when they looked more closely at leadership behaviour, they found almost no meaningful shift in the quality or frequency of coaching conversations, feedback behaviours, or decision-making dynamics between managers and teams. The tools had changed. Many of the underlying behaviours had not. That’s the part of this conversation I think organisations are still struggling to fully confront. AI has a way of exposing what your human behaviour actually is. When parts of the work become easier, faster, or more automated, attention starts moving toward the things leaders were previously able to hide behind operational complexity, constant urgency, or sheer workload volume. The judgement call I wasn't sure I was qualified to make but needed to make weeks ago. The team I wasn't quite leading at my best because I didn't ask for or give feedback. The strategy I'd been hoping nobody would push back on because I already feel like an imposter some days. None of those things were created by AI. They already existed. What changed is that the environment around them changed. In many organisations, AI is accelerating output faster than leadership behaviour is evolving to support it. That gap matters more than most organisations currently realise because capability alone rarely translates into performance. What we’re increasingly seeing is that AI tends to amplify the behavioural patterns already present inside an organisation. In environments with high trust, clear decision-making, healthy feedback cultures, and strong leadership clarity, the technology often accelerates experimentation, confidence, adaptability, and execution. In lower-trust environments, the opposite can happen. The tools increase output while simultaneously amplifying hesitation, over-analysis, performative collaboration, unclear ownership, and dependency on consensus. From the outside, both organisations may appear equally advanced in their AI adoption. Internally, the lived experience is completely different. This is where I think a lot of organisations are becoming stuck. Many invested in AI expecting a technology transformation when in reality they also initiated a behavioural and leadership transformation, whether they intended to or not. The problem is that most leaders were prepared for the first conversation and very few were prepared for the second. In many cases, nobody has given them permission or language to even think about the work this way. The narrative around AI has been dominated by tools, systems, capability, and efficiency. Far less attention has been paid to what happens when leaders suddenly have fewer places to hide from the behavioural patterns that may already be limiting performance inside their organisations. I’ve made this mistake many times throughout my own career. I’ve often assumed the answer to performance problems was a sharper strategy, a better process, or a clearer plan. In practice, the answer has usually involved a behaviour I needed to change, a conversation I needed to have, or a level of clarity I needed to provide that I had been avoiding for longer than I wanted to admit. The tools have evolved enormously over time. Human behaviour moves far more slowly. That’s why I think the organisations seeing genuine performance shifts from AI right now are rarely distinguished by the sophistication of the tools alone. More often, they’re distinguished by the willingness of leaders to confront what the technology exposed and adapt accordingly. They’ve become more decisive. More honest. More willing to create clarity. More willing to challenge avoidance, ambiguity, and low-accountability cultures while pressure is increasing around them. Because pressure is really the important part of this conversation. AI changes what happens inside organisations under pressure. When information moves faster, expectations increase faster, and outputs accelerate faster, hesitation and behavioural friction become visible much faster too. The organisations struggling most are often not struggling because people lack access to tools. They’re struggling because leadership behaviours, organisational dynamics, and cultural conditions haven’t evolved at the same pace as the technology itself. I suspect this will become one of the defining organisational conversations over the next few years. The divide won’t simply be between organisations that adopted AI and those that didn’t. Increasingly, it will exist between organisations whose leadership behaviour evolved alongside the technology and those whose did not. That’s a far more uncomfortable conversation than most AI strategies anticipated. So if you’re a leader questioning why your AI investment isn’t landing the way you expected it to yet, these are the reflections I’d encourage you to spend time with before sitting through another vendor presentation: Where are we using AI to accelerate output without improving decision-making? Which leadership behaviours inside this organisation become most visible under pressure? Where are people generating more work without creating more clarity? Where do teams have the tools but lack the confidence, safety, or trust to use them effectively in moments that matter? If every AI tool disappeared tomorrow, which improvements inside our organisation would genuinely remain? I think those questions matter because the organisations that answer them honestly are far more likely to experience this moment as a genuine inflection point rather than an expensive productivity experiment that never fully translated into performance. At We Create Space, this is increasingly the work we find ourselves doing with leaders and organisations. The work has never really been about technology alone. It has always been about leadership, behaviour, communication, trust, decision-making, and the cultural conditions that allow capability to become performance. AI hasn’t changed that work. It has simply made the absence of it much harder to ignore. If this resonates with you, or reflects conversations you’ve already been having inside your organisation, I’d genuinely encourage you to explore it further. The AI Performance Diagnostic we’ve developed is designed to surface exactly these types of behavioural and organisational gaps, and the first conversation is free. You can find it on our website, or reach out to me directly. Jon-Paul Vicari (he/him) Jon-Paul is Managing Director at We Create Space. He is a queer Lebanese man living with depression who understands the complexities of holding multiple identities. He has volunteered with HIV/AIDS NGOs, organized community events for LGBTQ+ youths, created DEI programming, advised on inclusive products and services, supported LGBTQ+ political candidates, and worked on recruiting diverse talent. Additionally, Jon-Paul is a strong advocate for mental health and well-being, neurodiversity, self-empowerment, and culture change. He is passionate about community building and activism, and has spoken about these topics at various events. While you're here... At We Create Space, we support organisations in bridging the gap between AI capability and real-world application through leadership development, skill-based learning, and culture transformation. Our AI Adoption Diagnostic and Leadership Accelerator are designed to help organisations understand where adoption is breaking down, and to build the behaviours, confidence, and alignment required to unlock meaningful impact. Because ultimately, AI is not just about what organisations invest in. It is about what their people are able to do with it.

Taofique Folarin shares strategies to shape effective, culturally competent communications in your organisation. As an Afro-queer gay man with Nigerian, Jamaican, and Scottish heritage, I move through many cultural, social, and structural boundaries. These parts of my identity are connected and shape how I experience systems, how others see me, and how I understand communication. As a result, I believe that for communication to be effective and equitable, cultural competence needs to be built in from the beginning. This article explores how communication that lacks cultural competency can exacerbate inequities and why this matters, as well as sharing practical tips for creating more culturally competent communication and practice. I speak as someone whose work combines public health, communications, and psychology. As part of the London HIV Prevention Programme, I am the HIV coordinator and digital engagement lead for the GMI partnership, delivered by Spectra and Positive East. As founder and director of TAF Collective CIC, I use communication to improve health literacy, access, engagement, and equity for marginalised and racialised LGBTQ+ communities, as well as wider groups. We design initiatives that are inclusive, representative, and culturally resonant. Across this work, I have learned that communication and engagement are never neutral - they are always influenced by culture. Who is reached - and who isn’t? Digital communication often exposes how cultural attitudes appear in systems. It shapes what gets visibility, who is included, and also what is valued. When digital communication is designed with cultural awareness, it helps build connection and trust. Without this awareness, messages may seem inclusive but fail to truly engage people. Social Identity Theory, developed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s, posits that if people do not see themselves in a message, they might ignore it. Through my own work, I now understand that representation alone is not enough; real engagement requires resonance. Communication must go beyond visibility and truly reflect the lived experiences and perspectives of its audience. This is especially important for LGBTQ+ racialised communities, where identity is always intersectional. People in these groups navigate multiple layers of identity and cultures, including race, sexuality, and gender. If communication fails to reflect these layers, it can erase real experiences, create mistrust and lower engagement. In health, policy, and communication, there has been a major shift toward inclusion. More organisations now consider representation, visibility, and ways to reach communities that have often been left out. At its best, this shift has led to more thoughtful approaches, co-designed campaigns, and better storytelling. However, communication is not just about sharing information. It is also about how people interpret what they receive. Our identity, memories, and experiences shape how we interpret messages, and different audiences can derive very different meanings from the same message. Frameworks such as the Campinha-Bacote Model help us understand cultural competence in professional practice. This model highlights five key parts: cultural awareness, knowledge, skill, encounters, and desire. Each part shows the importance of reflecting, learning, and engaging to build culturally responsive practice. These components apply directly to communication: Cultural awareness helps us examine our own assumptions and biases, which shape how we create messages. Cultural knowledge means understanding communities, their social backgrounds, experiences, and views. Cultural skill is about turning this understanding into the right language, tone, and messages. Cultural encounters involve direct engagement with communities, so communication is grounded in real interaction rather than guesswork. Cultural desire is the motivation to keep participating with real intent. While these components are a good starting point, they do not always lead to effective communication in practice. There is often a gap between what individuals know and what organisations actually produce. Practitioners may be knowledgeable, but still work within systems that produce generic messages. Case Study: Recently, I observed a drug use survey for London’s queer community that illustrated how design and language choices can reinforce bias and directly affect engagement. The campaign imagery and wording linked the only visibly Black individual to the question “What does chemsex mean to you?”, a highly stigmatised and negatively framed practice. Other visuals featuring white or non-black individuals were paired with broader, more humanising language, such as “mental health,” “boosting social confidence,” “coping strategies,” and “enhancing sexual connection.” From an objective viewpoint, this created a racialised narrative, implicitly associating Blackness with risk and deviance, while positioning whiteness within more nuanced and empathetic contexts. This is not simply an issue of representation, but of framing and perception. For some Black queer individuals, the term “chemsex” does not reflect their lived experience or language around substance use. By centring this term within the only Black-facing visual, the campaign risked alienating its intended audience, reinforcing existing stigma, and signalling that the research was not designed with their realities in mind. The consequence is not only ethical but also methodological. When communities feel misrepresented or stereotyped, trust drops, participation declines, and the resulting data becomes skewed. As highlighted by the low engagement among ethnically diverse groups, this was not just a recruitment issue but also a sign that the communication failed to resonate. This shows how subtle design decisions, such as image selection, wording, and visual pairing, can have major effects on both inclusion and the validity of research outcomes. Communication failures have deep, lasting impacts. This dynamic has existed for a long time. During the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s, public health communication frequently framed gay men primarily in terms of risk. Messaging often focused on danger and fear but rarely acknowledged the complexity of individuals’ lives, culture, or realities. Today, this tension continues in HIV prevention efforts to balance urgency with humanisation. Although messaging has changed, many campaigns still focus on risk and responsibility without fully reflecting the cultural realities of those affected. As a result, communication may be clinically accurate but emotionally distant when messages are developed without understanding or embedding the social, cultural, and structural contexts that shape the lives of affected populations. When communication treats marginalised and racialised population groups as homogeneous audiences, it overlooks the realities of people living at these intersections. The same is true for migrant communities facing language barriers, immigration stress, and culturally specific stigma, as well as for trans communities who are often erased or only shown in crisis. The commercial focus on the “pink pound” and repeated corporate tokenism during Pride Month highlight a bigger issue: visibility is welcomed when it is marketable, but not when it calls for real change. If communication is not developed with these intersecting realities in mind, it jeopardises the ability to address audiences broadly, resulting in only surface-level connections. It may reach people but fail to resonate with or truly engage them. Intentional messaging requires cultural competence. People do not just process information; they quickly assess intent, safety, and relevance. When messaging overlooks barriers such as mistrust of services or past experiences, it creates a gap between the intended message and how it is received. Culturally competent communication should anticipate these perceptions by using a tone that is informed rather than instructive, imagery that reflects real-world context, and stories that mirror real-life situations. These cues show that the audience’s culture has been considered throughout the design process, not just added in at the end. This makes it more likely that the message will be seen as safe, relevant, and actionable. That said, it is important to recognise the challenges organisations face. Time pressures, limited funding, and the need to reach broad audiences can make tailored communication hard. These challenges do not lessen the need for cultural competency. Instead, they show why it is important to prioritise and design communications carefully within existing limits. There are practical ways to navigate these barriers. For example, organisations can start by working closely with a few priority communities before expanding as resources allow. Using existing partnerships with community organisations can help ensure reach and relevance without needing major new infrastructure. By building on established trust, lived experience, and local expertise, communication can embed cultural resonance even with limited resources. Tips for building cultural competency. To help translate this idea into practice, here are some key steps for integrating cultural competency into communication: 1. Begin with early consultation: Engage members of the key population at the start of the planning process to understand their perspectives, needs, and histories. 2. Assess cultural context: Gather insights on cultural beliefs, values, and past experiences that shape the audience’s engagement with the topic. 3. Diversify teams: Include individuals from various backgrounds in both the creative and decision-making processes. 4. Co-develop content: Collaborate with communities to create messaging, visuals, and narratives that reflect their lived realities. 5. Test and refine: Pilot campaign materials with focus groups or advisory panels from the intended audience and use their feedback to make improvements. 6. Evaluate impact: Monitor the campaign’s effectiveness across different groups and make adjustments to address disparities in engagement or outcomes. Conclusion Culturally competent communication centres on accountability rather than solely improved messaging. It acknowledges that communication influences access, trust, and outcomes. Ineffective communication design can perpetuate exclusion as readily as it can mitigate it. For people navigating multiple intersections, the question is not just whether they are included, but also whether they are understood, recognised, and accurately reflected. Culturally competent communication requires practitioners and systems to do more than just communicate clearly. We must also communicate responsibly, with awareness of power, context, and consequences. As you reflect on your own work, consider what specific actions you will take to integrate genuine cultural competency into your practices. Whether you are shaping messages, designing campaigns, or working with diverse communities, your commitment can help close the gap between intention and impact. Let’s challenge assumptions and design communication that truly resonates. By doing this, we can help create more equitable and inclusive systems where everyone feels seen, understood, and valued. "Travail à faire” (work to be done) Taofique Folarin (he/him) is a public health practitioner, multidisciplinary artist, and community advocate working at the intersection of LGBTQ+ health, psychology, and creativity. He is the HIV Prevention Coordinator and Digital Engagement Lead at Spectra, where he leads culturally competent digital engagement and communications. He holds an MSc in Psychology (BPS GBC), sits on the UK-CAB steering group, contributing to national HIV prevention policy and guidance, and is the founder of TAF Collective, a public health and creative platform serving racialised and marginalised LGBTQ+ communities through culturally aware engagement and inclusive messaging. While you're here... At We Create Space, we support organisations in bridging the gap between AI capability and real-world application through leadership development, skill-based learning, and culture transformation. Our AI Adoption Diagnostic and Leadership Accelerator are designed to help organisations understand where adoption is breaking down, and to build the behaviours, confidence, and alignment required to unlock meaningful impact. Because ultimately, AI is not just about what organisations invest in. It is about what their people are able to do with it.

Guest Writer and WCS team member, Doug A. G. gives us an insight into their complex and evolving relationship with the Queer Community where they currently live - Barcelona - as well as what brings them light. by Doug A. G. Imagine a bustling metropolis of 4 million people, set alongside an idyllic landscape of the Mediterranean coast. In this magical place, there is a feeling that queers from all over the world try to make their way there to soak up the sun and enjoy relaxing times at the beach in this piece of heaven on earth. However, and even after four years of living in this city, I am still struggling to find my place within Barcelona’s culture. Maybe because I first decided to come here for a short-term stay, only a temporary stop in the way of securing permanent residence status in Canada, where I had lived for almost a decade before moving here. Having been born in Venezuela, and having existed as a queer, femme, and gender-variant person for as long as I can remember, I grew up with a deeply ingrained sense of placelessness that permeated every fibre of my being. Many of us who grow up in hostile environments, and in cultures that aren’t ready to accept the vastness and beauty of our queer existences, can relate to this feeling of awkwardly attempting (and failing) to belong somewhere. You’re expected to view a certain place as your home, but you may also experience the feeling that this very place could never fully encompass all the intricately complex hues of the richness that make up who you are. To be a queer kid who grew up in a place that wasn’t right for you is to be perpetually emotionally displaced, wondering if you will ever be able to replace this sense of home that was stolen away from us by bigotry and intolerance with a space that you carve for yourself, by yourself, and then in the company of others who love and respect you for who you are. It’s this feeling, an almost less poetic but equally as inspiring sense of wanderlust, that first pushed me to leave Venezuela at the age of 18 and build a life for myself in Toronto, where I could unapologetically thrive as a queer person while enjoying the support of other queer people, especially those who also shared a immigrant background or were also visible minorities. However, and as the old adage goes, all good things must come to an end, and so this fairytale fantasy of a wonderful life in a chilly queer paradise eventually became something I had to learn to let go after a decade of happiness and self-fulfillment. I landed in Barcelona in December 2018, scared and vulnerable, but willing to give this place a chance and see if I could make it my own. I mean, I had already been doing that for the past ten years in Toronto, so how challenging could it really be to do it again, especially now that I was older, wiser, and more capable? Also, it was a welcomed change to have my family with me once again, as they had finally made the decision to leave Venezuela a decade after I had done so, in search of a better life for themselves in Barcelona. At first glance, it appeared as though the stars had aligned, illuminating the path towards a life of fulfillment in this new city. However, an uncomfortable feeling of dread and unease soon filled every crevice of my mind and soul, and I knew right then and there that, despite all the wonderful things I had heard about the gay capital of the Mediterranean, this just would never be a place I call my home. The first time I went out wearing makeup in Barcelona, I knew it felt different to Toronto. I could feel the faces of everyone staring at me, making me feel like I stood out. I also remember the first time someone treated me differently because of the way I speak, even though I speak Spanish natively albeit with our own unique and tropical accent. All of a sudden I found myself sticking out like a sore thumb because of the irrevocably queer, femme, and ethnic markers of my personhood. It’s my experience in situations like these that have created a void in my heart that longs for the things I had in Toronto. This void craves lasting connection with diverse people from varied cultural backgrounds and different walks of life. It desires access to radical conversations on undoing hegemonies and violent power structures, the same ones that Europe has propagated all over the world for centuries while simultaneously pretending that racism, power, and privilege are a uniquely North American factor. I think my main point of contention with my life in Barcelona is that there is a very marked imbalance in how many opportunities there are to have unbridled fun until the early morning hours with how little avenues there are to find a community for yourself as a radically-oriented queer person. This inability to find spaces to talk about the issues that matter the most to me, coupled with the little visibility that exists for collectives doing this kind of work and for activists working tirelessly to undo these systems of harm, has left me feeling utterly lonely and resentful of this city after four long and painful years of living here. And so, for many years it was easier to become reclusive and close myself off to new opportunities and socialization spaces, as I just didn’t want to be exposed to any direct and indirect harm from people who didn’t see life and the world in the same way as I had grown to understand it in my former home. For a while this was absolutely manageable (or so I thought), as I focused on growing my career in international human rights advocacy and tried to shut down the parts of me that longed for community. I really thought I had it all under control and could continue going on like this, but after a while I had to be realistic and acknowledge that the heart inevitably craves connection and affection, and the happiness I needed could only be felt while being surrounded by other queer and trans people. And so, even though I felt scared and hopeless after so many years without the community component that was once so central to my life, I decided I needed to fill the social void that begged me for close connections and contact with others like me. Thankfully, I came to the realization that queer people exist everywhere and are often available to offer their love and support, provided that you make an effort to seek a glimmer of hope in what might appear as an inhospitable place, and to present yourself as your truest self for them to recognize and appreciate. I don’t know how we always do it, but us queers are magical like that, in the way that we will always manage to find each other, time and time again. Almost by chance, I came across this workout group by and for trans and nonbinary people, that in addition to offering attendees a space to work on their fitness in a gender-affirming and non-judgemental way, it also served as a powerful catalyst for social interaction. It is also a serendipitous coincidence how this shift in my mindset that inspired me to seek out deeper and more genuine connections also coincided with the launch of operations in Barcelona by We Create Space. I first reached out to the team after attending a conference and seeing that some of the people I had met there were part of the repertoire of panelists that often collaborated with them. As someone who had a lot of things to say about queer community life, and who has a unique, radical, and thought-provoking perspective on social justice and human rights issues, I was eager to join the WCS speaker collective and soak up the eventual opportunities that could come from partnering with these new friends. What I didn’t know is that this new professional relationship would eventually become a catalyst that would bring all these loose ends of my personal life together in one place, where I could openly speak about the issues that mattered to me, in the company of those who shared a similar point of view and weren’t afraid to learn and unlearn more about the world together with me. As I said before, queers always have a unique way of finding each other, so who I thought would be random panelists, participants, and attendees, soon turned out to be my new friends and family now that I had an outlet to interact with them in public. Being a queer person who always felt like they existed outside the norm, coupled with having to migrate twice for things outside of my control before the age of 30, certainly made me feel displaced, confused, and hopeless. But this same relentless magic that characterizes queer people inevitably leads us to always seek better for ourselves, leaving behind the toxicity and negativity of what didn’t work for us in the pursuit of a better life filled with love and community. In this light, my best advice to other queer and trans migrants finding themselves in this position, lost and aimless in a place that seems to not understand them, is to always seek strength in being your most authentic and unapologetic selves. No matter how challenging this current chapter of my life has been so far, it never made me forget, and only reassured me, that there was inherent power and strength in being true to myself and the radical queer aspects of my personhood. It was only when I decided to face this city with this new outlook on the world that I realized that there many others going through the same things as me, and that what I thought were unique experiences of loneliness were actually shared by so many all over Barcelona. Sometimes it seems incredibly tough to seek a better life for yourself when you give in to the sadness that comes with feeling lost and misunderstood, but I promise that if you chase the little glimmers of light that show up in your life, this same light will soon encompass your life and transform what seemed like utter hopelessness into a new chapter filled with kindness, compassion, and community. Even though struggling with depression and loneliness can virtually destroy our will to make things change for ourselves, I also have to acknowledge that even the smallest actions can eventually bring forth life-changing consequences that transform our lives for the better. To all my queer and trans migrants who may find themselves in similar positions, I want to impart a powerful truth: the very things about yourself that you believe to be burdensome are, in fact, your greatest strengths. When you have the courage to reveal your true self to others, you will undoubtedly discover meaningful connections and a sense of community, regardless of your location. Our queerness and our experiences with migration imbue us with unparalleled strength, boundless potential, and unwavering resilience. Life is too short to silence these parts of ourselves, especially when there are countless people who are eager to embrace and love us for who we truly are. If we can find the courage to let our authentic selves shine, we will undoubtedly attract the right people, no matter where our journey in this world takes us. Doug A. G. (they/them) Doug is an accomplished activist, speaker, and researcher on LGBTQI+ and human rights issues from Caracas, Venezuela. As a human geographer, Doug is skilled at providing critical analyses of sociopolitical phenomena through an intersectional feminist and decolonial lens. They have experience working with multilateral and international organizations such as IGLYO, ILGA World, and the Equal Rights Coalition, in addition to local and community groups in Europe as well as North and South America. You can find out more about Doug's work here. If you are interested in booking Doug as a speaker, please get in touch with us at hello@wecreatespace.co While you're here... Did you know we consult with Businesses, ERGs and Change-Leaders providing bespoke corporate solutions? Through consultancy we design shared learning experiences, produce DEI insights and craft bespoke content that support individuals with strengthening their roles as change-agents within their communities and organisations. Find out more here. We also organise FREE community events throughout the year! We offer a variety of ways to get involved - both online and in person. This is a great way to network and learn more about others' experiences, through in-depth discussion on an array of topics. You can find out what events we have coming up here. New ones are added all the time, so make sure you sign up to our newsletter so you can stay up to date!