Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your
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Joanne Lockwood: So just your earbuds and settle in. It's time to
Joanne Lockwood: ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 118
Joanne Lockwood: with the title thriving through adversity. And I
Joanne Lockwood: have the absolute honor and privilege to welcome Oscar Hoyle.
Joanne Lockwood: Oscar is the CEO at Blossom
Joanne Lockwood: LGBT CIC. They oversee 4 projects,
Joanne Lockwood: a workplace mentoring scheme for young adults trying to get into work,
Joanne Lockwood: an arts and heritage scheme to help young people feel engaged
Joanne Lockwood: within their community, and a social and well-being cafe
Joanne Lockwood: takeover, and also a business consultancy
Joanne Lockwood: scheme. When I asked Oscar to describe their superpower and inspiration, they
Joanne Lockwood: said that this is the amazing queer young adults that they
Joanne Lockwood: see achieving absolutely amazing things
Joanne Lockwood: in an incredibly scary and hostile environment.
Joanne Lockwood: Hello, Oscar. welcome to the show. Thank you.
Oscar Hoyle: It's a pleasure to to be here today and to say hello to you.
Joanne Lockwood: Absolutely. Absolutely fantastic. We bumped into it probably
Joanne Lockwood: within feet of each other many times, but probably never actually had a conversation before.
Joanne Lockwood: So this is quite exciting. It is. And I think that's a reflection of
Oscar Hoyle: the the small, weird, little world we have within the sort of
Oscar Hoyle: LGBT and specifically trans inclusion space. Right?
Joanne Lockwood: It it it yeah. It is. Yeah. Even though I often joke to people that
Joanne Lockwood: there is no trans directory where we all know each
Joanne Lockwood: other, we we all kind of we're one step removed. We all know
Joanne Lockwood: of each other through people, if not directly. Yeah. Yeah. It's like
Oscar Hoyle: a weird little family where everybody's an aunt that's once removed or
Joanne Lockwood: Yes. It's a crazy haunted property.
Oscar Hoyle: Yeah. Me too. Don't worry. But, Oscar,
Joanne Lockwood: thriving through adversity is a pretty tough and hostile environment, as you
Joanne Lockwood: said. Tell me more. Yeah. So when
Oscar Hoyle: when I was kind of considering how what we could talk about, I thought it
Oscar Hoyle: was so important that something that I'm really passionate
Oscar Hoyle: about and that actually almost all of my career now centers around is
Oscar Hoyle: the experiences of, you know, GEN-Z who are
Oscar Hoyle: LGBTQIA+. And and with a
Oscar Hoyle: quarter of LGBTQIA+ GEN-Z is going back in the
Oscar Hoyle: closet when they enter work. It became very apparent
Oscar Hoyle: when I started my career at Blossom that there's an issue here
Oscar Hoyle: that people don't just hide who they are for no reason.
Oscar Hoyle: Right? And when we talk about adversity at
Oscar Hoyle: the moment, I see that in so many different directions for young adults at the
Oscar Hoyle: start of their career. You know, you have a really hostile
Oscar Hoyle: social and political climate for early stage
Oscar Hoyle: career young adults. Yeah. Not only do you have the
Oscar Hoyle: facts that the press is pretty hostile towards young people
Oscar Hoyle: generally, you know, the narrative GEN-Z don't wanna work. GEN-Z are lazy.
Oscar Hoyle: GEN-Z quit keep quitting jobs, and we can't work out why.
Oscar Hoyle: Then when you add on that the the same hostile attitudes
Oscar Hoyle: towards their identities as LGBTQIA+
Oscar Hoyle: people, often intersectional people who maybe
Oscar Hoyle: experience disability or a person of color. These all
Oscar Hoyle: add up to make a really, really difficult hostile environment
Oscar Hoyle: for the young adults before they even get into the workplace.
Oscar Hoyle: And then we see young adults get into the workplace. And,
Oscar Hoyle: actually, there's a really clear generational divide here where
Oscar Hoyle: where businesses and people who are working within an organisation
Oscar Hoyle: are aren't necessarily gelling with the younger generation. And
Oscar Hoyle: we've seen this for a long time. We spoke with millennials. But actually, what
Oscar Hoyle: we see through a piece of Ipsos research is that actually,
Oscar Hoyle: gen z are considered to have or be the furthest removed
Oscar Hoyle: from what we would consider traditional values within a society.
Oscar Hoyle: So knowing that there's such a gap, there's a real
Oscar Hoyle: difficulty integrating this generation into the workforce.
Oscar Hoyle: And, of course, you know, there are there's so many different experiences. I can't
Oscar Hoyle: speak for everyone. But these two things I see as massive
Oscar Hoyle: factors, yet throughout all of that,
Oscar Hoyle: I see a generation of LGBTQA plus
Oscar Hoyle: people who are, in often cases, absolutely
Oscar Hoyle: smashing it when they have the tools to thrive.
Oscar Hoyle: And big part of my work is giving them those tools. You
Oscar Hoyle: know, I see young adults start their sort of
Oscar Hoyle: journey with us. They're not in work. They're not in education.
Oscar Hoyle: They feel incredibly shut out to actually
Oscar Hoyle: seeing them go, hang on. Like, Oscar, this
Oscar Hoyle: whole entry level work has been fantastic. But now how can I be a
Oscar Hoyle: manager? And, you know, how can I set up my own organisation? I'm
Oscar Hoyle: seeing a generation that's really hungry for success.
Oscar Hoyle: And it's so interesting that despite being in such a
Oscar Hoyle: hostile environment, despite not knowing any different to a hostile
Oscar Hoyle: environment for a lot of them, they still
Oscar Hoyle: are absolutely, genuinely doing everything they
Oscar Hoyle: can to succeed. There's a wow. A huge amount. But I'm
Joanne Lockwood: picking up on that is, you know, it's it's just that it's that massive disconnect
Joanne Lockwood: between young people, the GEN-Z's, and,
Joanne Lockwood: as you say, the the incumbent workforce. So millennials,
Joanne Lockwood: boomers, Gen X's like myself. And you said
Joanne Lockwood: there's there's a there's a lack of relatability. And, yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a gen xer, so my my kids are
Joanne Lockwood: are millennials. But I I I am aware of,
Joanne Lockwood: you know, sort of the GEN-Z sort of, cohort coming
Joanne Lockwood: through. And and it's it's tough being a young adult because I never I didn't
Joanne Lockwood: have to grow up with a spotlight on me in
Joanne Lockwood: terms of social media, in terms of it being expected
Joanne Lockwood: to perform, to be popular in a way. And, you
Joanne Lockwood: know, I think there's a huge amount now where
Joanne Lockwood: young people have something that I never had. I I could go home at night,
Joanne Lockwood: shut the front door, and I was pretty much safe Mhmm.
Joanne Lockwood: Until the next day when I may get yeah. I have to face the world
Joanne Lockwood: again. But young people today, they go at home, and they're
Joanne Lockwood: even more unsafe than they are maybe in the in the real world because they
Joanne Lockwood: got all of this social media pressure. Oh, I mean, a
Oscar Hoyle: 100%. You know, something that I rarely say, because every time
Oscar Hoyle: I do, I get scouring looks from people, is that I am the
Oscar Hoyle: 1st year of GEN-Z, which, really does
Oscar Hoyle: upset a lot of people, surprisingly. And
Oscar Hoyle: being in such, you know, a chief executive
Oscar Hoyle: of an organisation that's turning over roughly, you know, half
Oscar Hoyle: a1000000 is a lot of responsibility for someone my age already.
Oscar Hoyle: And then I I have a tendency to want to use social media because my
Oscar Hoyle: generation has always used social media. Yet,
Oscar Hoyle: I have a real difficult bad time balancing the two. And
Oscar Hoyle: that's somebody who I believe as a person that's doing relatively well
Oscar Hoyle: in in my career. I still sometimes put things up and I
Oscar Hoyle: think, maybe I shouldn't have said that, or
Oscar Hoyle: or finish a really stressful day at work and start doom
Oscar Hoyle: scrolling through know, anti trans rhetoric on TikTok and
Oscar Hoyle: think maybe that wasn't the best thing for my well-being
Oscar Hoyle: today, but it's inescapable. And, you know, and
Oscar Hoyle: I think, like you like you said, with this generational
Oscar Hoyle: divide is that progress has been
Oscar Hoyle: so quick. If you look at where we were, where sort of the
Oscar Hoyle: oldest generation that's currently in work started work versus
Oscar Hoyle: where GEN-Z's are in terms of technology, in terms of
Oscar Hoyle: culture, in terms of politics. The the landscape
Oscar Hoyle: is vastly different. There are, of course, lots
Oscar Hoyle: of similarities, but we we're
Oscar Hoyle: seeing a generation that's, you know, always had tech, that's
Oscar Hoyle: always had access to the computers, that's always had access to a phone,
Oscar Hoyle: and that expects everything to be quite instant and quite
Oscar Hoyle: quick to the point where I employ people who are
Oscar Hoyle: like, what do you mean you're gonna email me? The idea of
Oscar Hoyle: an email is just completely redundant now, which is even a shock
Oscar Hoyle: for me. So I think there's a massive gap
Oscar Hoyle: between sort of one end of the workforce and the other end of the
Oscar Hoyle: workforce that I'm not sure that we're doing in a
Oscar Hoyle: fantastic job at bridging, or at least that's what the
Oscar Hoyle: people I work with are telling me. Yeah. I I spoke to intergenerational
Joanne Lockwood: consultant experts in the past, and one of the things they've highlighted to me
Joanne Lockwood: is is is the it's incumbent on the older generation
Joanne Lockwood: to reach down. We shouldn't be expecting the younger generation
Joanne Lockwood: to reach up to us. So, you know, I I have to put the the
Joanne Lockwood: work in to to understand the younger generation, not expect the
Joanne Lockwood: younger generation to to meet me where I am. I think a lot of people
Joanne Lockwood: forget that because what we see a lot of the stuff in the in the
Joanne Lockwood: in the press, in the media, the toxic doomscrolling we do on Twitter and other
Joanne Lockwood: places, is that it's it's the older generation
Joanne Lockwood: basically telling the younger generation they don't know what they're doing. They're they're too immature.
Joanne Lockwood: How how can they possibly know what's going on? And I
Joanne Lockwood: whether it's around gender identity, neurodivergency,
Joanne Lockwood: whatever it may be, there's this there's this belief that
Joanne Lockwood: young people are not
Joanne Lockwood: not mature enough to know who they are.
Oscar Hoyle: Yeah. And and I think I I know where a lot of
Oscar Hoyle: consultants come with that narrative that we need to make
Oscar Hoyle: sure that we connect. You know, the older generation are reaching
Oscar Hoyle: down. But I think I approach almost all of my
Oscar Hoyle: work slightly differently where I feel that, actually,
Oscar Hoyle: it's it's a mutual collaboration. We're not
Oscar Hoyle: trying to create workforces where people
Oscar Hoyle: are, you know, dictating how things are done anymore. That's that's that's changed a lot
Oscar Hoyle: in the last sort of few years. And I think this this sort of
Oscar Hoyle: culture of collaboration has to extend beyond
Oscar Hoyle: getting work done and actually has to come into building
Oscar Hoyle: teams and culture within an organisation. And I think, actually,
Oscar Hoyle: whilst there's always gonna have to be an element of reaching down to bring people
Oscar Hoyle: up, you know, when we talk about things like mentoring,
Oscar Hoyle: sponsoring young adults, then, yeah, absolutely, that's reaching down. But I
Oscar Hoyle: also think that, young adults have their
Oscar Hoyle: part to play in developing a workplace as well
Oscar Hoyle: and something that I think we need to move past sometimes
Oscar Hoyle: with sort of DNI consultancy
Oscar Hoyle: is this idea that it's them and us when actually it should
Oscar Hoyle: be more about collaborating to create, you know, really
Oscar Hoyle: healthy, and sort of community esque
Oscar Hoyle: spaces, which I think speaks a lot to what GEN-Z are looking
Oscar Hoyle: for. You know, we did a piece of research. We found
Oscar Hoyle: that, I I believe this was Ipsos again, found that on
Oscar Hoyle: average, a GEN-Zer will leave their job within 12 months if they don't fit
Oscar Hoyle: in with, like, the the ethics and culture of the workforce.
Oscar Hoyle: When we spoke to the GEN-Z audience that we work with, it was even
Oscar Hoyle: shorter. It was 6 months when they're LGBTQIA+ and
Oscar Hoyle: GEN-Z, which shows that they
Oscar Hoyle: younger people are quite quick to move out of a space.
Oscar Hoyle: And it's actually worrying when you think that, you know,
Oscar Hoyle: roughly 1 in 4 GEN-Z is our LGBTQIA+. That's a quarter of the
Oscar Hoyle: workforce every 6 months when you look at GEN-Z. And I think
Oscar Hoyle: that we all have a part to play in developing a culture
Oscar Hoyle: that we wanna work within a business. You say yeah. I
Joanne Lockwood: I grew up in a generation where my parents
Joanne Lockwood: effectively had a job for life. They were they didn't they didn't
Joanne Lockwood: move around much. They didn't travel much. They kind of lived and worked
Joanne Lockwood: a bus ride away or a walk away, yeah, in a dockyard, in the government,
Joanne Lockwood: in the council, in a in a big traditional company. And they they kind
Joanne Lockwood: of stayed there for life. I got I was probably the one of the
Joanne Lockwood: first generation where you probably expect 4 or 5 years and then move on 4
Joanne Lockwood: or 5 years, and it was frowned upon if you move too quickly. And I've
Joanne Lockwood: seen recent stats from The REC, The Recruitment
Joanne Lockwood: Employement Confederation, where they talk around tenure moving
Joanne Lockwood: down to 2a half, 3 years. So what we're saying here is is
Joanne Lockwood: GEN-Z's are looking for, well, potentially 6 to 12 months worth
Joanne Lockwood: of tenure. What what could organisations do to
Joanne Lockwood: to try and get, I suppose, 18 to 24 months?
Joanne Lockwood: Because presumably, they're moving on because they they want something more. What what is the
Joanne Lockwood: more they want? Yeah. So Deloitte did a piece of
Oscar Hoyle: research, and they classified gen z as an
Oscar Hoyle: activist generation with regards to
Oscar Hoyle: the way that they act both in their workforce and as a society. And I
Oscar Hoyle: think you only have to look at TikTok to to see that's really
Oscar Hoyle: true. Everyone has this issue, the social issue they care
Oscar Hoyle: about whether or not they're working in the same directions. You
Oscar Hoyle: know, actually, you still have a social issue and and it being not a
Oscar Hoyle: very progressive one. But GEN-Z as a whole
Oscar Hoyle: care a lot about their personal morals and ethics,
Oscar Hoyle: and I think that creating a workforce where
Oscar Hoyle: the the culture aligns with that moral and ethics
Oscar Hoyle: is really important. But I also think that getting
Oscar Hoyle: D&I right, so diversity and inclusion, as much as we might
Oscar Hoyle: think, it's just often processes. Actually,
Oscar Hoyle: GEN-Z is the most racially diverse, ethnically diverse
Oscar Hoyle: generation on record as well. So I think to
Oscar Hoyle: to really attract and retain GEN-Z, we're talking about
Oscar Hoyle: developing cultures here which go beyond getting work done
Oscar Hoyle: and really starting to bring the belonging part of
Oscar Hoyle: what has been D&I, ED&I,
Oscar Hoyle: EDB&I. Actually, this the belonging part is
Oscar Hoyle: becoming increasingly important in a workplace because they want to
Oscar Hoyle: feel part of something bigger and something that aligns
Oscar Hoyle: with who they are and their values and morals. And I think that that
Oscar Hoyle: really helps to retain people. You know, I see within
Oscar Hoyle: my work only a small team, a team of
Oscar Hoyle: 8. And when we did our last
Oscar Hoyle: cultural survey where everyone anonymously feeds back on the
Oscar Hoyle: working conditions in the organisation, All of my
Oscar Hoyle: staff rated the fact that they loved work 10 stars
Oscar Hoyle: out of 10 stars. We worked really hard, but it's the
Oscar Hoyle: opportunity. It's the fact that we're working in a direction that aligns
Oscar Hoyle: with their personal ethics and morals, which I think makes such a difference. And
Joanne Lockwood: that's the fundamentals, isn't it? You you you need to be able to be
Joanne Lockwood: well, the old adage of bringing yourself to work, psychological safety. It's
Joanne Lockwood: about being celebrated with who you are, and the belongingness
Joanne Lockwood: resonates in the mission of the organisation as well. So you're not you're not having
Joanne Lockwood: to compromise your own personal values, and that's yeah.
Oscar Hoyle: Absolutely. But I think also to touch on what you said around, you know, your
Oscar Hoyle: parents' generation having a job for life. If you think about it,
Oscar Hoyle: gen z are the 1st generation but are really going into the
Oscar Hoyle: workforce, maybe millennials actually. And you're saying to them, you're gonna work your
Oscar Hoyle: entire life, and you're probably never gonna own a house. You're probably not gonna retire,
Oscar Hoyle: and you're probably not gonna have that much money to live comfortably. You're probably gonna
Oscar Hoyle: earn about £30,000, which will about cover the council tax bill if you
Oscar Hoyle: live in parts of the southeast of England. You know, I think
Oscar Hoyle: because of that, because there isn't the prospect of
Oscar Hoyle: almost using work to catapult your social and personal
Oscar Hoyle: life, there's more of a need to integrate the 2
Oscar Hoyle: now. Do I mean, my my perception, I could be completely wrong, is
Joanne Lockwood: that gen z are are multiple
Joanne Lockwood: income generators. You know, they have their own they monetize
Joanne Lockwood: gaming, monetize personal brand. They they have
Joanne Lockwood: cottage industries. They're on Etsy. They're producing stuff. They're
Joanne Lockwood: so their, yeah, their their day job is just part of
Joanne Lockwood: their portfolio of of income generation opportunities, isn't it?
Oscar Hoyle: Massively. Really. So many of the young adults that I work
Oscar Hoyle: with, you know, one of them at the moment has been working really
Oscar Hoyle: hard to get into the law industry. He's also a dog
Oscar Hoyle: walker in the evenings, he's also selling
Oscar Hoyle: little pendants that they make on Etsy, and I I think that's really common. I
Oscar Hoyle: remember when I was starting out, you know, over the last sort of
Oscar Hoyle: I've been doing this job now for coming up 5 years, but prior to that,
Oscar Hoyle: we'd always have a day job and a gay job, which should be, you know,
Oscar Hoyle: daytime corporate jobs, selling bathrooms for the most part, and
Oscar Hoyle: then in the evenings was paid as a a youth worker
Oscar Hoyle: for LGBTQIA+ young people. And I think,
Oscar Hoyle: yeah, the idea of just doing one thing at a time is is gone as
Oscar Hoyle: well because it's it's not it's not affordable to do
Oscar Hoyle: that, really. No. I'm well, as a Gen X, I
Joanne Lockwood: value my portfolio business, if you like. I
Joanne Lockwood: I feel much more empowered now than I ever did in my
Joanne Lockwood: traditional, old fashioned one job mentality. Mhmm.
Joanne Lockwood: I love the ability to pick something up, do something with it, pick something else
Joanne Lockwood: up, and have 10 different things on the go all the time. And it's,
Joanne Lockwood: it's immensely empowering putting your eggs in multiple
Joanne Lockwood: baskets rather than just having, this one income stream. Jo
Joanne Lockwood: we we look at what's going on, you know, socially, politically, if you
Joanne Lockwood: like. We I turned on gender identity, and I mentioned it briefly about
Joanne Lockwood: neurodiversity. There is a we're scaring
Joanne Lockwood: adults, aren't we, with these things? Adults get really scared that there's
Joanne Lockwood: this explosion. How can we help adults to understand it? Or sorry. Older
Joanne Lockwood: adults, not young you know, not young people, young adults. How do we how do
Joanne Lockwood: we help older people get used to the idea that this is the reality of
Joanne Lockwood: the world? Yeah. Well, I almost see this
Oscar Hoyle: this anti woke narrative as almost being
Oscar Hoyle: the the culture that a fear of not understanding has created. I mean,
Oscar Hoyle: even to the point that actually the the meaning of woke is to be
Oscar Hoyle: socially engaged and aware of others, it's actually not bad thing,
Oscar Hoyle: but, like, even that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what it actually
Oscar Hoyle: means to be woke. I think the reality is is that these
Oscar Hoyle: identities have always been here. You know, we can trace being
Oscar Hoyle: trans back to the origins of humanity. We can we can
Oscar Hoyle: see, you know, trans goddesses and gods
Oscar Hoyle: within Mesopotamia, within ancient Egypt, within
Oscar Hoyle: Rome. But for some reason,
Oscar Hoyle: often, I think that that hasn't been on on the front
Oscar Hoyle: foot. You know? Whether that's because of Section 28, whether that's because of
Oscar Hoyle: criminalization, cultural norms, that it's
Oscar Hoyle: just that whilst these identities have always existed, they've always been
Oscar Hoyle: considered on the fringe. I think that where
Oscar Hoyle: it's coming more into the forefront is because people
Oscar Hoyle: have more of an opportunity to explore, to be
Oscar Hoyle: themselves. We see such higher numbers of GEN-Z
Oscar Hoyle: identifying within sort of different marginalizing
Oscar Hoyle: categories. Whether that's the right term to use, I'm still not a 100%
Oscar Hoyle: confident. And I think to bring people along on the
Oscar Hoyle: journey, it's it's about creating empathy and compassion for
Oscar Hoyle: these people. I I think that's the main thing that we're often
Oscar Hoyle: missing in all of these conversations is that when I
Oscar Hoyle: think when you know somebody who is trans or when you know somebody who's
Oscar Hoyle: neurodiverse, you often have a
Oscar Hoyle: little bit more compassion to what it means to be that. Whether
Oscar Hoyle: or not you understand it doesn't necessarily matter. But the fact
Oscar Hoyle: that you know, you know, Oscar, the nonbinary, is actually
Oscar Hoyle: a lovely person as as long as you feed them and and don't give them
Oscar Hoyle: water after midnight or whatever it is. Is actually a lovely person.
Oscar Hoyle: All of a sudden, this this horrifying
Oscar Hoyle: narrative that is, you know, trans people are harming children starts to
Oscar Hoyle: fade into the background because you know somebody who is
Oscar Hoyle: trans, who is a nice person, who actually means the
Oscar Hoyle: world to a lot of people. That sounds like I was really
Oscar Hoyle: sort of blowing smoke there. That's not it's just an example. No. I didn't have
Oscar Hoyle: to use myself or my own name. But I think that is
Oscar Hoyle: how we can really help to change the tide is to, you
Oscar Hoyle: know, educate, but also to build empathy and compassion. No. I I don't
Joanne Lockwood: think you're blowing smoke there. I think what what you're doing is you're trying to
Joanne Lockwood: do what we all need to do is humanize the conversations Mhmm.
Joanne Lockwood: By bringing a real name, a real person, a real lived experience into this
Joanne Lockwood: conversation. But saying, like, you know, you can't just create this dehumanisation,
Joanne Lockwood: this this this this myths and tropes that keep getting rolled
Joanne Lockwood: out as as this nebulous group of activists. You know, if you look
Joanne Lockwood: at they're all we're always described as trans activists.
Joanne Lockwood: If you look at the pictures that are shown, it's always people with banners,
Joanne Lockwood: placards with flags around them, not people sitting around a desk trying
Joanne Lockwood: to have sensible conversations, and it's it's framing doctors
Joanne Lockwood: and professors looking all smart over here, and
Joanne Lockwood: activists being angry and shouting and being disruptive, and
Joanne Lockwood: anarchic over here. And I it's it's playing into that. The
Joanne Lockwood: voices of sanity is the establishment. It's
Joanne Lockwood: young people being young people being radical. Yeah.
Oscar Hoyle: And, you know, I I have to say, I do have a little bit of
Oscar Hoyle: a soft spot for direct action. But I think
Oscar Hoyle: I honestly feel as if, you know, why is it that
Oscar Hoyle: politicians, regardless of party, the
Oscar Hoyle: media choose to pick on trans
Oscar Hoyle: people, on people with disabilities, on migrants.
Oscar Hoyle: And it's because we're small. We're a small
Oscar Hoyle: demographic of people, so there is much less of us to go
Oscar Hoyle: around, which means it's much harder to build empathy and compassion
Oscar Hoyle: into the conversations, and it's very much easier to
Oscar Hoyle: profile a whole community. You know, when you make up less than 1% of
Oscar Hoyle: the population, it's not that likely that a
Oscar Hoyle: lot of people will know a trans
Oscar Hoyle: person. And I think that's where the media,
Oscar Hoyle: as much as right now, it can be, say, hostile against
Oscar Hoyle: us, can also be one of our best tools in building that
Oscar Hoyle: empathy and compassion and, you you know, especially things doesn't
Oscar Hoyle: necessarily have to be television, but I feel
Oscar Hoyle: TikTok, Dylan Mulvaney has a huge
Oscar Hoyle: following. Regardless of what you think about what they the
Oscar Hoyle: content they put out, what they put into this world,
Oscar Hoyle: they are a role model. And they're a role model of a
Oscar Hoyle: trans person and a a very early stage trans experience
Oscar Hoyle: that actually people are witnessing for the first time, and
Oscar Hoyle: that in itself is building compassion and empathy. So,
Oscar Hoyle: yeah, whilst we were sort of talking at the start around
Oscar Hoyle: how media is quite harmful for for
Oscar Hoyle: GEN-Z, it's also a fantastic opportunity for them as
Oscar Hoyle: well. Yeah. And as soon as Dylan popped up
Joanne Lockwood: on whatever platform it was advertising swimwear or
Joanne Lockwood: whatever, beer and all these other things, It's the the
Joanne Lockwood: hate machine kicks in, and it's that's the reality of of
Joanne Lockwood: putting a head above the parapet as a queer person these days. When
Oscar Hoyle: Dylan wore the I don't know if it's Nike or Nike. So excuse
Oscar Hoyle: me if I say it wrong. But when Dylan wore the Nike leggings and it
Oscar Hoyle: upset, you know, Twitter, go woke, go broke was the
Oscar Hoyle: narrative that popped up. Nike actually saw a spike in profits
Oscar Hoyle: and ended that quarter higher than
Oscar Hoyle: was expected on the stock market. So it's
Oscar Hoyle: a really weird the loudest voice doesn't actually
Oscar Hoyle: meet the everyday lived experiences.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. The loudest voice tends to occupy the the wavelength. It doesn't that's
Joanne Lockwood: that's the challenge where if you're a centrist, you're
Joanne Lockwood: you're you're on the fence, you're not really sure, you often only
Joanne Lockwood: hear the loudest voice, and that controls the narrative. And that's the danger that the
Joanne Lockwood: minority view is actually becoming the loudest view
Joanne Lockwood: and, and shout yeah. Shouting down
Joanne Lockwood: and accusing young people of not knowing their own minds. And,
Joanne Lockwood: I challenge anybody who's in their twenties, thirties, forties,
Joanne Lockwood: fifties, sixties to think back to when they were a young person and
Joanne Lockwood: think about how they knew their own mind really. And they
Joanne Lockwood: made some silly mistakes. They made some fantastic mistakes, but it was their mistakes
Joanne Lockwood: to make. Absolutely. And I think when we look
Oscar Hoyle: at young adults, we often when we do try to
Oscar Hoyle: say you don't know what you're doing, like, you're, you know, you're too young,
Oscar Hoyle: all we're really doing is making them wait to experiment
Oscar Hoyle: because they're still gonna do it. They're gonna do it either
Oscar Hoyle: when they can legally or in a dangerous way.
Oscar Hoyle: You know, I think what we see so often in our services is
Oscar Hoyle: things like young adults self medicating because they can't get what
Oscar Hoyle: they need for the NHS or aspects like that. And
Oscar Hoyle: and, obviously, that's a massive safeguarding concern in itself
Oscar Hoyle: and one that you know, what do you do when a system is failing a
Oscar Hoyle: young person? All you could do from, from our work perspective
Oscar Hoyle: is re refer back into that same system. You know, it's it's a
Oscar Hoyle: broken system, which actually I think the cast review for all its
Oscar Hoyle: flaws really highlighted really well. But I
Oscar Hoyle: feel as though when we say you don't know your own experience,
Oscar Hoyle: you're gonna you know, maybe you're not Joanne. Maybe you'll detransition.
Oscar Hoyle: Well, I actually, you know, from from the peep very, very
Oscar Hoyle: few, but few people that I know that have detransitioned,
Oscar Hoyle: they actually say that if they didn't transition in the first place, then they would
Oscar Hoyle: never be the person that they are now and and that they needed to do
Oscar Hoyle: that to actually learn what was right for
Oscar Hoyle: them. And I think we we often jump to the
Oscar Hoyle: extreme negatives with with this sort of thing. And,
Oscar Hoyle: actually, it's really important that we're careful to acknowledge that young people
Oscar Hoyle: do know themselves. They know what they need. And if we
Oscar Hoyle: stop the process of exploration in whatever way that
Oscar Hoyle: looks, we only damage them. Yeah. I think
Joanne Lockwood: everybody has the right or should have the right
Joanne Lockwood: needs to have the right to step out of the
Joanne Lockwood: the framework of social constructs Joanne just step back and
Joanne Lockwood: go, who am I without anybody imposing any rules?
Joanne Lockwood: And being trans, being non binary, being neurodiverse,
Joanne Lockwood: neurodivergent in some way is a bit the ability to step back and
Joanne Lockwood: go, I want to have control and agency over my life. I want to have
Joanne Lockwood: control about who I am, how I perceived, and things that matter to me. And
Joanne Lockwood: I think too often in older generations, we've gotten this conveyor belt of
Joanne Lockwood: life and not had the opportunity to press stop. Go hang on a
Joanne Lockwood: minute, I'm going in the wrong direction. So rather rather
Joanne Lockwood: I'm not saying I would change my life, but I I got to the
Joanne Lockwood: age of 48, I think it was before I was able to push the stop
Joanne Lockwood: button and pause, get off and go, right. Okay. Where am I heading? Who am
Joanne Lockwood: I heading there with? Do I wanna go there? Do I wanna go with these
Joanne Lockwood: people? Or do I have who who am I? And I'm not saying I
Joanne Lockwood: would have made different decisions 50 years ago, but if I had the
Joanne Lockwood: opportunity to to map out my life and know things were I was having
Joanne Lockwood: career counseling, having destination by life
Joanne Lockwood: counseling. Where do I wanna be? Yeah. Do I wanna be an electronics
Joanne Lockwood: engineer? No. I didn't wanna be electronics engineer. I ended up doing that.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think having the ability to step step off
Joanne Lockwood: through and as you say, the cash report got a lot of things right. It
Joanne Lockwood: got a I I always think I think some of the analysis was right. The
Joanne Lockwood: conclusions were misguided or the yeah. The recommendations.
Joanne Lockwood: So, yeah, I I think the the conclusions the the sorry. The the
Joanne Lockwood: process of recognizing that young people need better support.
Joanne Lockwood: Families around them need better support. We need better evidence not to
Joanne Lockwood: stop people transitioning or exploring their identity, but
Joanne Lockwood: to enable them to do it in a in a safer, more
Joanne Lockwood: secure as you not going off on finding their own
Joanne Lockwood: own advice on the Internet or drugs or or medication, but doing it within
Joanne Lockwood: the bounds of a controlled environment. And that's not to slow them down. That's not
Joanne Lockwood: to stop them. It's to enable them to do it safely with their families and
Joanne Lockwood: society. And that's what Cass said right.
Joanne Lockwood: But the wrong bit was effectively pun trying to put the brakes on everything.
Joanne Lockwood: And then the demonizing language that came out of it as well. Yeah. And
Oscar Hoyle: and I think what we need to be really aware of is that by
Oscar Hoyle: putting the brakes onto this and to make sure that this podcast remains
Oscar Hoyle: worky, is that if we put the brakes on in a young person's
Oscar Hoyle: development, whether we don't let them transition or however that
Oscar Hoyle: looks, What we're actually doing is impacting on their
Oscar Hoyle: ability to perform when they get into a workplace. You
Oscar Hoyle: know, how on earth can you do a good job
Oscar Hoyle: when you you you finally have the opportunity to get into
Oscar Hoyle: work, but you also have the opportunity to finally transition after
Oscar Hoyle: waiting 10, 20 years. You know?
Oscar Hoyle: Let's be real. Waiting lists probably mean that if we took
Oscar Hoyle: the option away from children, that a lot of young
Oscar Hoyle: people aren't going to even be seen by a GIC until that gender identity
Oscar Hoyle: clinic until they're 25. So what we're actually doing
Oscar Hoyle: here is hindering the careers of young
Oscar Hoyle: LGBTQIA+ people, And I think this is
Oscar Hoyle: something that we really need to be conscious of in workplaces and really be
Oscar Hoyle: aware of is I I feel that
Oscar Hoyle: through making sure that workplaces are prepared to handle this, if if that does
Oscar Hoyle: happen, they're going to see a lot more loyalty
Oscar Hoyle: within their workplace and a lot more sort of support. And I think,
Oscar Hoyle: generally, if young people do have to wait that long, then
Oscar Hoyle: making sure that they've got the right support in a workplace, it it it
Oscar Hoyle: brings us back to this culture of belonging conversation, which is, you
Oscar Hoyle: know, we we have to make sure that we're ready to
Oscar Hoyle: support them when the politic political and
Oscar Hoyle: media aspects are impacting on their childhood so
Oscar Hoyle: soon? I think there was a a total jobs report. I think it was 22,
Joanne Lockwood: 1920 sorry, 2022. And one of the things that came out of that was
Joanne Lockwood: that 40% of LGBTQIA+, probably
Joanne Lockwood: mainly the TQ+ element, are concerned
Joanne Lockwood: about working in an environment where there are hostile views
Joanne Lockwood: about them. And so we talk about belonging. Belonging,
Joanne Lockwood: you're going in there expecting to be respected, to have peoples who
Joanne Lockwood: have your back, who who you can trust. But if you're
Joanne Lockwood: constantly looking over your shoulder, believing that there are people around you
Joanne Lockwood: who effectively wanna see you eradicated as a human being
Joanne Lockwood: or people like you, that's really damaging. So workplace
Joanne Lockwood: culture has to create a safe space where people can be
Joanne Lockwood: themselves. And that if people do hold
Joanne Lockwood: critical views that are abhorrent and not part of polite society,
Joanne Lockwood: then there has to be really good policies and protection for these people. And, you
Joanne Lockwood: know, we've seen the 4 starter employment tribunal
Joanne Lockwood: where they effectively green lighted misgendering
Joanne Lockwood: and and and stating truth and doing air quotes at this
Joanne Lockwood: point. Air quotes. Or we we or as we might
Joanne Lockwood: say, perspectives or opinions rather than
Joanne Lockwood: truth. And if you know you're working with people like that, you're
Joanne Lockwood: not gonna feel great coming to work every day, are you? No. Absolutely
Oscar Hoyle: not. And I think a conversation that I have with a lot of my
Oscar Hoyle: clients is where is the line. And it's something that I don't feel
Oscar Hoyle: as if I can personally tell a workplace where their where their workplace
Oscar Hoyle: line is. But when I look at my interpretation of
Oscar Hoyle: the Equality Act, which is assured by Equality Act
Oscar Hoyle: Lawyers, is that holding a
Oscar Hoyle: protected belief or protected characteristic doesn't
Oscar Hoyle: allow you to discriminate against another protected characteristic
Oscar Hoyle: or a protected belief just because you hold it. So
Oscar Hoyle: as an example, we know that if somebody was
Oscar Hoyle: running a a person of faith was running a bakery,
Oscar Hoyle: they they couldn't refuse to service an
Oscar Hoyle: LGBT couple just because they're LGBT. And I
Oscar Hoyle: think this is what we need to be really mindful of when we're creating these
Oscar Hoyle: workplace cultures, where we are creating policies and processes. Those people
Oscar Hoyle: are a 100% entitled to a belief. There's a real difference between holding
Oscar Hoyle: a belief and actively discriminating against an
Oscar Hoyle: individual. And I think this is what workplaces really need to be aware of and
Oscar Hoyle: how they need to draw the line is you can create, you know, you can
Oscar Hoyle: create both. Whether or not that creates an
Oscar Hoyle: environment that I would want to work in, absolutely not. Personally, on a
Oscar Hoyle: personal level, I wouldn't wanna be involved in that. And you can see why a
Oscar Hoyle: lot of GEN-Zs will leave a workplace when they see that. But a
Oscar Hoyle: workplace can very carefully
Oscar Hoyle: curate a space that is very psychologically safe for trans and non
Oscar Hoyle: binary people without actually harming anybody. And
Oscar Hoyle: it's a lot of work. If you'll get policies right, you have
Oscar Hoyle: to create culture and and make sure that
Oscar Hoyle: people are there to each other. But I I almost feel
Oscar Hoyle: as if by the time a workplace has got to the point
Oscar Hoyle: where colleagues are hostile towards each other, that the
Oscar Hoyle: belonging element and the cultural element of of
Oscar Hoyle: this piece has already been missed. The boat has sort of sailed, and,
Oscar Hoyle: actually, it's more so about reining that back in
Oscar Hoyle: now, creating a space where we respect each
Oscar Hoyle: other as people who have a job to do, who work together.
Oscar Hoyle: I'm just starting from that fundamental level of mutual
Oscar Hoyle: respect that we need to pose to everybody is,
Oscar Hoyle: I think, the most important part to get right, but often the fundamental
Oscar Hoyle: that I think has been completely missed by the time we see things
Oscar Hoyle: like agenda critical staff network being set up in the civil
Oscar Hoyle: service as an example. And that's directly
Joanne Lockwood: hostile. It's not passive. I mean, it's it's you know, you
Joanne Lockwood: talk about protected beliefs. You think about people's different
Joanne Lockwood: religions and different faiths or lack of,
Joanne Lockwood: and you think there are there are a number of different principles in most of
Joanne Lockwood: the major religions around deities, gods, symbols,
Joanne Lockwood: icons, all these various things. And they tend to coexist.
Joanne Lockwood: People aren't trying to convert people to different religions within the workplace
Joanne Lockwood: that that different faith groups are happily coexist Mhmm.
Joanne Lockwood: Under one umbrella. And even people who who don't hold a a religious belief
Joanne Lockwood: are able to coexist with people who hold those beliefs. The difference, I think,
Joanne Lockwood: when we talk about people who are in the queer community,
Joanne Lockwood: gay, bi, lesbian, or
Joanne Lockwood: people who are trans, is that's around a person's, like, personal experience,
Joanne Lockwood: lived experience. And it's someone weaponizing
Joanne Lockwood: their belief to deny someone's right to exist as a human
Joanne Lockwood: being. I'm not I'm not attacking your
Joanne Lockwood: god as such. I'm attacking they're attacking me as an
Joanne Lockwood: individual and saying I'm wrong to exist. And that I'm abhorrent.
Joanne Lockwood: I I don't meet society's norms. Therefore, I shouldn't be allowed to
Joanne Lockwood: exist. That's the challenge. It's the weaponization of that
Joanne Lockwood: belief that the workplace is gonna be gotta be really mindful about.
Oscar Hoyle: Absolutely. And and I think this is where we come back to workplaces having
Oscar Hoyle: a line, which is, you know, where can somebody hold a belief,
Oscar Hoyle: and where can somebody express and and directly
Oscar Hoyle: discriminate because of that belief. You know? Actually, I I
Oscar Hoyle: used it as an example a minute ago, probably maybe not the best
Oscar Hoyle: one. But when we look at having a gender critical staff network
Oscar Hoyle: within the civil service, again, very different
Oscar Hoyle: between a group of people that have a shared belief meeting
Oscar Hoyle: to share that belief versus advocating for the reversal
Oscar Hoyle: of rights or workplace
Oscar Hoyle: access to systems and processes. They're very different
Oscar Hoyle: things, and I don't know how that one operates, so I couldn't speak on that.
Oscar Hoyle: But I think this is where I'm coming from is that, yes. I mean, I
Oscar Hoyle: I I wouldn't personally want to be in that sort of space, but I
Oscar Hoyle: can see how you it can be done in
Oscar Hoyle: a way that doesn't necessarily harm everybody.
Oscar Hoyle: But it's so difficult when you have 2 groups where one just
Oscar Hoyle: straight up doesn't believe that one has a right to exist.
Oscar Hoyle: That's very, very difficult. And, I'm I'm
Oscar Hoyle: playing the the, the politically neutral tight rope here.
Oscar Hoyle: So you can put it out. No. I that's and I I we're
Joanne Lockwood: not we're not trying to get into mudslinging here at all. No. That's not what
Joanne Lockwood: we're trying to do. We're just trying to raise awareness. And because, you know, you
Joanne Lockwood: talk about the the civil service network, and we
Joanne Lockwood: also see that mapped out in society with some high profile charities
Joanne Lockwood: or organisations who are now charities also
Joanne Lockwood: being their sole purpose is to oppose the existence of
Joanne Lockwood: trans people. Absolutely. It's a weaponization again. It's not a passive thing.
Joanne Lockwood: This is a weaponization of eradication. Yeah. And
Oscar Hoyle: but I I I almost feel like all of that being said, a lot of
Oscar Hoyle: what my work involves and a lot of what I do
Oscar Hoyle: is actually about empowering people to thrive despite you know, to
Oscar Hoyle: bring it back to the theme of this podcast is through
Oscar Hoyle: through Blossom LGBT, at least, we we
Oscar Hoyle: very rarely directly pick up
Oscar Hoyle: or respond to, you know, anti LGBTQIA+
Oscar Hoyle: content, behavior, press briefings, whatever it might
Oscar Hoyle: be because we're far more preoccupied
Oscar Hoyle: in celebrating what we can do. Because I always think that
Oscar Hoyle: what what better way to kind of
Oscar Hoyle: remove the hatred, the negativity, the
Oscar Hoyle: hostile opinions and voices that just, you
Oscar Hoyle: know, celebrating what we can do and
Oscar Hoyle: saying, yeah. Okay. You stay in your corner. You you
Oscar Hoyle: have your opinions complete you, whatever whatever you wanna do. But
Oscar Hoyle: we're out here going to spread love. We're going to spread positivity.
Oscar Hoyle: We're going to uplift each other. And we're gonna thrive together.
Oscar Hoyle: And I think that's what I really want to make sure that I
Oscar Hoyle: channel my energy into is uplifting
Oscar Hoyle: positivity and boosting each other. And I think, you know, for a long
Oscar Hoyle: time within my work, I I was I did the
Oscar Hoyle: opposite. I felt like I had to directly combat transphobia and I
Oscar Hoyle: think a lot of people do. But actually, I've kind of got to the
Oscar Hoyle: point now where I'm thinking, what's the point? People can have an opinion. Fine.
Oscar Hoyle: But I'm gonna make sure that they can have their opinion. But trans and non
Oscar Hoyle: binary young adults can still thrive despite their opinion.
Oscar Hoyle: And it's a journey that I'm on that I definitely don't have an answer how
Oscar Hoyle: I'm gonna do that a 100%, but I think we're making really nice sort
Oscar Hoyle: of waves in that space. Yeah. I think I think that's so right.
Joanne Lockwood: It's, there's a line in an
Joanne Lockwood: animated film called total Hotel Transylvania
Joanne Lockwood: 3. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but there's a line at the
Oscar Hoyle: end. First one. Yeah. Well, there's a line at the end of this one where
Joanne Lockwood: someone's one of the characters says, "you've gotta be greater than the haters". Yeah. And
Joanne Lockwood: I always hold that to heart that, you know, when there's hate around you, when
Joanne Lockwood: there's people who are against you, around you, it's about being able to lift your
Joanne Lockwood: head up high, smile, and be able to move on. But that
Joanne Lockwood: takes a huge amount of resilience and personal strength to
Joanne Lockwood: better plinker that out and block it out and rise above the hate. And
Joanne Lockwood: I can imagine a lot of the people you're helping here, because
Joanne Lockwood: they've grown up with social media. They've grown up this online content. They've grown
Joanne Lockwood: up reacting to comments on social media. It's hard
Joanne Lockwood: to to deescalate them, isn't it? Oh, absolutely.
Oscar Hoyle: It really is. But I think that's why when you said about
Oscar Hoyle: the 4 projects that we have at Blossom, you know, we have the workplace
Oscar Hoyle: mentoring and all the employability stuff nicely over here, and then we have the
Oscar Hoyle: arts and heritage, and we have a social cast. Actually,
Oscar Hoyle: those free projects won't work without the
Oscar Hoyle: other because what we see and what we're doing
Oscar Hoyle: is focused on building those peer to
Oscar Hoyle: peer support networks Jo that when things do get difficult,
Oscar Hoyle: actually, you have a group of people around you
Oscar Hoyle: that are here to listen, that, you know, you have a supported
Oscar Hoyle: support network and trusted people who you can say,
Oscar Hoyle: oh, I had it really tough today, you know, for whatever might have happened,
Oscar Hoyle: happened. And you have a group of people that say, okay.
Oscar Hoyle: Fine. That's really tough, and I'm really sorry. Let's talk about it. Let's get
Oscar Hoyle: a coffee, and then let's
Oscar Hoyle: do something together that actually gets us out of that
Oscar Hoyle: mindset. And I think that that's where
Oscar Hoyle: why we're trying so hard to make sure that I suppose that the word is
Oscar Hoyle: is our workplace support is holistic. It's that it's not just
Oscar Hoyle: mentoring to get someone into a workplace. It's building resilient support
Oscar Hoyle: networks. It's building, you know, confidence in your ability to be
Oscar Hoyle: outspoken through art workshops. Sits, building
Oscar Hoyle: your connection to the community so that you can see that whilst things aren't great
Oscar Hoyle: at the moment, this isn't the first time that the LGBTQIA+ community has
Oscar Hoyle: been under attack. And I think all of these together builds
Oscar Hoyle: a strong person or a stronger person that can also be
Oscar Hoyle: sensitive, that can also display weakness, that can also ask for help,
Oscar Hoyle: but can find ways to cope with how
Oscar Hoyle: difficult things are. And I think that's what GEN-Z
Oscar Hoyle: really need is that interpersonal connection that
Oscar Hoyle: social media isn't offering that we're trying so hard to
Oscar Hoyle: build through this work. I suppose the arts and the work you do there must
Joanne Lockwood: be really important because we we we're often bombarded with cisheternormative
Joanne Lockwood: visions of art, of media, whatever it may
Joanne Lockwood: be. And I I remember a few years ago, I was when I was I
Joanne Lockwood: was a trustee of Sparkle, the National Transgender Agency for a while up
Joanne Lockwood: in Manchester. And one of the one of the Sparkle weekends, what we did was
Joanne Lockwood: we, we got some queer art experts,
Joanne Lockwood: and and we did gallery tours reimagining
Joanne Lockwood: arts through a queer lens or a queer eye. And
Joanne Lockwood: it was really, really insightful for me to hear things being reimagined
Joanne Lockwood: through a queer lens, not the narrative you we see.
Joanne Lockwood: And, yeah, we we we know we we see the
Joanne Lockwood: the straight view of the world all the time, the the the
Joanne Lockwood: cis view of the world all the time. But so the work you do with
Joanne Lockwood: the art, is that is that encouraging people so you encourage people to express their
Joanne Lockwood: their identity, their queerness, their neurodiversity, whatever it may be, through
Joanne Lockwood: art? Yeah. It's a really nice
Oscar Hoyle: combination where, you know, myself, and
Oscar Hoyle: Shivani Dave, who's my project manager there, and spent a lot of time in the
Oscar Hoyle: Bishopsgate Institute looking through their archives to, you know, look
Oscar Hoyle: at pieces of our heritage that are so important
Oscar Hoyle: to us, and we bring some of that
Oscar Hoyle: knowledge to it so that we have sort of a more holistic kind of a
Oscar Hoyle: a more wider understanding of the culture and the context that we were in at
Oscar Hoyle: the time. But we also look at how
Oscar Hoyle: criminalization, negative social attitudes have played a
Oscar Hoyle: massive part in hindering what could be really
Oscar Hoyle: important queer pieces. So you look at The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Hoyle: by Oscar Wilde. The whole play is
Oscar Hoyle: a massive sort of play on
Oscar Hoyle: on bisexuality or or potentially having a
Oscar Hoyle: wife to cover up homosexuality. And he talks
Oscar Hoyle: about having I can't remember the names, but, you know,
Oscar Hoyle: being 1 person in the city and 1 person in the country, and
Oscar Hoyle: and I I used the made up word to describe that. And
Oscar Hoyle: this is all kind of the sort of thing that we're exploring with our young
Oscar Hoyle: adults in one sense. But then we're also exploring
Oscar Hoyle: things like how art and protest have gone hand to hand
Oscar Hoyle: and how we've often used our, you know, all the way back to the fur
Oscar Hoyle: well, before, but an example is the first pride flag was a
Oscar Hoyle: collage of fabrics and encouraging them
Oscar Hoyle: to explore, you know, what what does your protest look like? What's your protest
Oscar Hoyle: are as well? So it's it's a nice combination of kind
Oscar Hoyle: of, you know, querying existing art
Oscar Hoyle: that should have been queer to begin with, but also recreating new art in a
Oscar Hoyle: way that expresses needs and experiences.
Joanne Lockwood: The graffiti is is a classic example of street art
Joanne Lockwood: that, expresses passion
Joanne Lockwood: and, if you like, activism of pushing back, fighting back against the
Joanne Lockwood: establishment. And, there's some beautiful street art around
Joanne Lockwood: the east end of London, Brick Lane, all those sort of places. And even around
Joanne Lockwood: Walkaloony, in most places in London and other cities, you see
Joanne Lockwood: some great examples of of it's not
Joanne Lockwood: even so graffiti can be angry. This is art. This is this
Joanne Lockwood: is not angry. This is just expression. And I think it's absolutely fantastic
Joanne Lockwood: that local councils are almost encouraging the
Joanne Lockwood: street art to develop in a controlled way, obviously, because you want it everywhere,
Joanne Lockwood: but, yeah, in a way where people can appreciate and see and
Joanne Lockwood: hear people and what they're trying to express to the world.
Oscar Hoyle: Absolutely. And I I think art has always been such an
Oscar Hoyle: integral way of our storytelling as as a
Oscar Hoyle: society and and as a community. I think that
Oscar Hoyle: you look at any sort of era in
Oscar Hoyle: human existence, art has existed in some
Oscar Hoyle: form, and it's often been a way for people to express their
Oscar Hoyle: experiences, emotions, or feelings. And I think that
Oscar Hoyle: actually, art plays such a a huge part
Oscar Hoyle: in our ability to kind of
Oscar Hoyle: emotionally regulate, to communicate, collaborate, that
Oscar Hoyle: we really need to make sure that we do place a focus on it. And
Oscar Hoyle: whilst it might not feel like I'm directly talking work here, it's a
Oscar Hoyle: fantastic coping skill. Yeah. And I'm also drawn to the fact you you you
Joanne Lockwood: have this, cafe takeover. And I think, again, that that safe
Joanne Lockwood: space, the ability to be able to drop in somewhere. Mhmm. And know this is
Joanne Lockwood: my space. It's it's for me. You know, we talk about belonging.
Joanne Lockwood: And whenever I talk about belonging, I always I also go back to the
Joanne Lockwood: the seventies or eighties sitcoms, a brand called Cheers. I don't know if you ever
Joanne Lockwood: ever seen it or heard it, but it's it's a it's a bar where everyone
Joanne Lockwood: knows your name. I think it's set in Canada, and there's some very famous people,
Joanne Lockwood: Ted Dancers and Kirsty Alley, were in the early days. And it that's
Joanne Lockwood: all my was my idea of belonging in that bar, that cafe,
Joanne Lockwood: that place. You know when you walk to a cafe and sit in a chair
Joanne Lockwood: drinking your coffee with your friends, you know that's your place. You
Joanne Lockwood: really know it. But you go to another cafe and you know, hang on a
Joanne Lockwood: minute, this isn't my it doesn't it's not my I can't I don't feel relaxed
Joanne Lockwood: here. So being a drop in somewhere is really important, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? Absolutely. I mean, I have people when
Oscar Hoyle: we set the cuff takeover up, we thought that people would maybe, like, pop in
Oscar Hoyle: for a quick cover and then leave. So not been the case. People
Oscar Hoyle: arrive before we actually open the door. And
Oscar Hoyle: I feel like some nights, I have to shove them out the door at the
Oscar Hoyle: end of it because the space is so important to them. And I've had people
Oscar Hoyle: turn up who actually, the space is the only
Oscar Hoyle: time of the week where they're their authentic self. They they turn
Oscar Hoyle: up wearing sort of one clothes. They disappear into the bathroom,
Oscar Hoyle: come out a completely different person. I think,
Oscar Hoyle: actually, just providing that space
Oscar Hoyle: is almost I don't wanna say the most important thing that we do, but
Oscar Hoyle: to the people that use that space, it probably is.
Oscar Hoyle: And I think I have a constant battle because what I'm
Oscar Hoyle: doing as somebody who's leading a nonprofit is needing
Oscar Hoyle: to justify something that is completely unmeasurable
Oscar Hoyle: to a funder to create something that's measurable. You know, we've tried all
Oscar Hoyle: different interrogations of this space. We've said it's a a
Oscar Hoyle: well-being space where we'll work work on people's well-being. And they're like, okay. What
Oscar Hoyle: well-being activities are you doing every week? And, you know, how is yoga
Oscar Hoyle: helping this person? And it just completely destroyed the
Oscar Hoyle: space. And we often
Oscar Hoyle: miss these spaces. You know, we're seeing LGBT
Oscar Hoyle: venues closed down across the country. So I think we're kind of
Oscar Hoyle: like the opposite of that. We're we're a space that's only growing, that
Oscar Hoyle: is is still struggling to find its way to carry
Oscar Hoyle: on. And that's one of my, I
Oscar Hoyle: suppose, biggest issues right now as the CEO, funnily enough, is
Oscar Hoyle: that we have a our mentoring scheme is running
Oscar Hoyle: so well, so smoothly. It has a really clear purpose. Our arts and heritage are
Oscar Hoyle: the same. Just providing a space
Oscar Hoyle: is the most important thing to a lot of these people, but it's the
Oscar Hoyle: hardest thing to do as a nonprofit, which I find
Oscar Hoyle: fascinating and frustrating at the same
Oscar Hoyle: time. Yeah. I mean, I I cast my mind back
Joanne Lockwood: probably 10 years in a bit where I was
Joanne Lockwood: just trying to explore who I was. And those spaces are incredibly
Joanne Lockwood: important, especially in the early days where you're you're that confident. You're
Joanne Lockwood: worried about being discriminated against. You have developed your new robust and resilient. If you
Joanne Lockwood: like, you're still nervous and about stick and feeling stigmatized.
Joanne Lockwood: So having a having a queer bar
Joanne Lockwood: or a a a district, you know, of Kemptown in Brighton, or you got
Joanne Lockwood: SoHo areas in in London as it was. But I used to go to the,
Joanne Lockwood: it was the Triangle in, in Bournemouth where the Flirt Cafe
Joanne Lockwood: is. It's it's the kind of LGBT triangle right in the middle of Bournemouth. So
Joanne Lockwood: I used to go to the Flirt Flat Cafe quite a lot. And I remember
Joanne Lockwood: every time I walked in there, it was like just the clouds
Joanne Lockwood: lifted just walking in. I've had a sense of relax, and it wasn't overtly
Joanne Lockwood: queer. It was just well known for being a really open and inclusive
Joanne Lockwood: space. Mhmm. And you see the same way you yeah. The flag outside the
Joanne Lockwood: building or sticker on the window. You you know, if I walk in here,
Joanne Lockwood: I am gonna be accepted. There'll be people in there. If something
Joanne Lockwood: happens, they've got my back. The the the owner, the bar
Joanne Lockwood: staff will keep an eye on me and make sure I'm okay. So you
Joanne Lockwood: have that feeling that when you walk in there, as if you're going into just
Joanne Lockwood: the average coster or the average Starbucks, you you you
Joanne Lockwood: you're pretty sure you're gonna be okay, but you just don't know if anyone's gonna
Joanne Lockwood: look out for you. It's like kicks off. And that's the difference, isn't it?
Oscar Hoyle: Oh, absolutely. And and it's the little things like the microaggressions just
Oscar Hoyle: not being present. You know, like, to use your example
Oscar Hoyle: going into Costa, I don't think a a barista has ever used they
Oscar Hoyle: then pronouns to describe me, not that I would necessarily expect them to just
Oscar Hoyle: by looking at me in that fleeting moment. You know, I'm very lucky to have
Oscar Hoyle: the privilege of of being, you know, a side
Oscar Hoyle: male at birth and and still passing that way, Although I would prefer
Oscar Hoyle: not to. That's that's a whole other whole other topic for a whole other
Oscar Hoyle: podcast. But, you know, it's that
Oscar Hoyle: little thing that in our space, you ask for a coffee,
Oscar Hoyle: and they're gonna say, sure. Absolutely. Oh, look. You've got a pronoun
Oscar Hoyle: sticker on, so I'm gonna use those pronouns. Jo, you know, I'm not gonna tell
Oscar Hoyle: you, oh, yeah. The ladies are just behind that door or, you
Oscar Hoyle: know, or just little things like checking in to see, oh, you're still using
Oscar Hoyle: that name because I know that you've changed your name a few times in the
Oscar Hoyle: last few sessions. So what should we do? And I think what we've done in
Oscar Hoyle: this space is created that mutual sense of respect
Oscar Hoyle: where the people that are coming to the group know how
Oscar Hoyle: important the group is to them Jo they make sure that
Oscar Hoyle: they treat everybody else in that way too. And I think
Oscar Hoyle: that is often mirrored in a lot of LGBT spaces.
Oscar Hoyle: The difference for us is that we've made sure from day 1, the space is
Oscar Hoyle: really intersectional. So, you know, we have a zero tolerance
Oscar Hoyle: approach to racism. All of our staff undergo race equity training.
Oscar Hoyle: We make sure that the venue is a 100% accessible, and that
Oscar Hoyle: has made a massive difference to that sort of sense of belonging in these
Oscar Hoyle: spaces too. And we can flip that straight into the workplace as
Joanne Lockwood: well. It's the same Absolutely. Isn't it? In the workplace. Yeah. Absolutely. You
Oscar Hoyle: know, I I I I feel like we often act as if this work
Oscar Hoyle: workplaces are a microcosm where everything has to be very different in a
Oscar Hoyle: workplace. Everything has to be formal and process driven, and and to an extent,
Oscar Hoyle: absolutely. But, actually, what people need in a workplace, they
Oscar Hoyle: also need a home. They also need in their social life. They also need in
Oscar Hoyle: their professional life. I think that, you know, this sense of belonging,
Oscar Hoyle: this sense of equity where they receive what they need,
Oscar Hoyle: all is reflected across every aspect
Oscar Hoyle: of life. And I just think that perhaps for too long, we've seen
Oscar Hoyle: workplaces being a place where you come, you sit in front of a desk, you
Oscar Hoyle: do your job 9 to 5, nothing else. And if it
Oscar Hoyle: that's that's the difference now is that people are waking up to the fact
Oscar Hoyle: that they need to expect in a workplace the same things that they would expect
Oscar Hoyle: in a personal life. Excellent. Oscar, this has been an amazing conversation.
Joanne Lockwood: We've been yacking on for an hour now and and a bit bit beforehand.
Joanne Lockwood: How do people get hold of you? This this has been this has been brilliant.
Joanne Lockwood: How how could people get hold of you, and what could they do to help
Joanne Lockwood: you? Yeah. So, our website is blossomedotlgbt,
Oscar Hoyle: and I think that there's 2 elements to it. Right?
Oscar Hoyle: If people wanna really support us, it's about actually buying
Oscar Hoyle: things from us. So Blossom LGBT is a nonprofit. It's a legally
Oscar Hoyle: registered nonprofit, but we're a social enterprise. And what we do is
Oscar Hoyle: we take the words, the opinions, the voices of the
Oscar Hoyle: LGBTQIA+ gen zeds that we work with, and we
Oscar Hoyle: translate that into guidance for businesses. We in turn sell
Oscar Hoyle: consultancy and upskilling schemes ranging from
Oscar Hoyle: training, cons bespoke consultancy, project fulfillment,
Oscar Hoyle: and a 100% of the funds that we get from that go back into funding
Oscar Hoyle: our work with, with the young adults. So from a
Oscar Hoyle: business perspective, you know, that's a really important way to
Oscar Hoyle: support us. But from a more personal perspective,
Oscar Hoyle: supporting our mission can be as little as sharing what we do. It
Oscar Hoyle: can be joining our campaign. Our new campaign launching very soon
Oscar Hoyle: is called Blossom in the Workplace, where we're encouraging people to sort
Oscar Hoyle: of share their stories, their tips, their advice for GEN-Z is
Oscar Hoyle: joining in, and that would be amazing. And
Oscar Hoyle: also just reach out. Say hello. You know, we never know where conversations can take
Oscar Hoyle: us. I I'm not one of those people that say thinks to myself, you know,
Oscar Hoyle: if you're not gonna give me £500 to book a training session, I don't want
Oscar Hoyle: anything to do with you. I wanna talk to people. I wanna learn and
Oscar Hoyle: talk to others, whether you could join our mentoring scheme as a
Oscar Hoyle: mentor. There's so many opportunities to get involved. So I just reach out,
Oscar Hoyle: blossoms.lgbt. We're on pretty much every social
Oscar Hoyle: media except Twitter because we left that, or directly contact me on
Oscar Hoyle: LinkedIn. It's Oscar Hoyle on LinkedIn. Fabulous. I'll put all of those details
Joanne Lockwood: in the show notes, and, I'm really passionate
Joanne Lockwood: about what you do because it's so valuable. I know that young people are currently
Joanne Lockwood: taking the brunt of a lot of this this societal
Joanne Lockwood: pressure at the moment, let's say, around gender identity or do you
Joanne Lockwood: neurodivergence, whatever it may be. There's a lot of misunderstanding,
Joanne Lockwood: myths, and lack of support and lack of resources,
Joanne Lockwood: and they're feeling under under pressure. And I the work you're doing is extremely
Joanne Lockwood: important to, to give them the resilience and the hope and the
Joanne Lockwood: opportunity to succeed for who they are. So it's a lot.
Oscar Hoyle: Absolutely. And thank you, Jo. You know, just sharing your platform with
Oscar Hoyle: me is amazing, And but also the voices that you amplify
Oscar Hoyle: across your work is just so important. So thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: Thank you. As we bring this conversation to a close,
Joanne Lockwood: I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener,
Joanne Lockwood: for lending your ear and heart to the cause of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord.
Joanne Lockwood: Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and become part
Joanne Lockwood: of our ever growing community, driving real change.
Joanne Lockwood: Share this journey with friends, family, and colleagues. Let's amplify
Joanne Lockwood: the voices that matter. Got thoughts,
Joanne Lockwood: stories, or a vision to share? I'm all ears.
Joanne Lockwood: Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: And let's make your voice heard. Until next time. This
Joanne Lockwood: is Joanne Lockwood signing off for the promise to return
Joanne Lockwood: with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire,
Joanne Lockwood: and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world
Joanne Lockwood: one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.