London’s classic blue plaques are being joined by rainbows as five new rainbow-coloured plaques are unveiled.
The new plaques will be placed at sites in Greenwich, Peckham, Westminster, Ladbroke Grove and Haringey and are the latest plaques in a national scheme to identify hidden and lost LGBTQI+ heritage and celebrate the importance of the communities in our public spaces.
(c) Rainbow Plaques
Unlike Blue Plaques, which record a building where someone significant lived, the new rainbow plaques will mainly record buildings important for what happened there.
The new plaques, which will be installed in the coming months, will mark:
Beautiful Thing at the Greenwich Tavern – a celebration of the landmark 1996 coming out and coming-of-age film that was set in Thamesmead and Greenwich. The plaque will be unveiled on Sunday 23 July along with a special screening of the film at Greenwich Picturehouse.
Black Lesbian and Gay Centre, Peckham – the first centre established in Europe to provide advice and support to the community.
Jackie Forster, Westminster – honouring the life of the hugely influential journalist and activist who helped to found social group and long-running publication Sappho.
London Lighthouse, Ladbroke Grove – a pioneering centre and hospice for people with HIV and AIDS offering a respite for people marginalised or abandoned following their diagnosis.
Section 28, Haringey Civic Centre – the site for a number of protests after the council launched the first of its kind Lesbian and Gay Unit to highlight and support the rights of LGBTQI+ communities.
The five new plaques will join two existing plaques — one for Oscar Wilde at Clapham Junction Station and one for My Beautiful Laundrette on Wilcox Road, Vauxhall.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said: “London is a beacon of inclusion and diversity around the world, but we still have work to do to ensure that our public spaces fully reflect the many different communities that make up our great city.”
“As we look ahead to our capital’s Pride celebrations this weekend, I’m delighted to announce that five new rainbow plaques will be installed across our capital in honour of significant people, places and moments in LGBTQI+ history.
City Hall contributed £25,000 to the plaques through the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm’s Untold Stories funding programme, and over 100 people took part in consultation workshops alongside an advisory panel to decide the five plaques.
We really love this – we always stop to read them. Hopefully more plaques in the future – especially ones that honor our diverse community.
Talk about overkill – and I don’t just mean this email! Pride is vain, self-regarding and vapid, brought to us by the letters “late-stage capitalism”, “lazy group think” and “corporate bandwagon”.
The incessant sub-dividing of society into ever-more arcane groups (with which come those snazzily unwieldy acronyms to add to the air of specialness) reeks of solipsism and does little to “heal divisions” or whatever the orthodoxy puts it.
I don’t want a gay train. I want trains that work and whose staff are paid and trained well and whose passengers think they’re getting a good deal. Rainbow rolling stock really doesn’t help bring about any of that.
I’m just fed up of having it rammed in my face all the time to be honest. I have gay friends and I might even unknowingly have lesbian friends. Not sure what all the other letters in the acronymn mean. I just find it all a big yawn. I can see why the even more intolerant of those in our society are going to get even more wound up by rainbow trains, police cars etc etc. Give it a rest please.
“I’m just fed up of having it rammed in my face all the time to be honest.” <-- Pride month lasts a month. If it's being rammed in your face all the time, can I conclude that you hibernate for the other 11 months of the year?
Well they’ve obviously wound you up! Ian is just reporting something of interest that is happening in London. He is not “ramming it in your face”. If you’re not interested you can just scroll on!!
“Loud and Proud” — to be Gay, Black, Female,Muslim, Christian, etc. etc. etc. these days.
Whoever you are, and whatever you think, the important thing is to be TOLERANT OF, and RESPECT, your fellow human beings. Because the LGBTQ community has suffered so much abuse over the years, it is natural that they want to be able to come out and show who they are in a variety of ways, just as other groups have done and continue to do.
At least they aren’t promoting violence, or telling us all we should/must be the same as them.
Yes, it’s “in our face”, but having a rainbow on a plaque — or on a train (delightful, actually!) — isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you.
Grow up, and learn to accept the different ways we each enrich our society.
Ian, I don’t worry about your personal attributes and beliefs, nor should your readers. You provide an excellent summary of interesting activities in and around London, and that’s the point.
NOTE: Please do not show my email in this comment. This is what we’ve come to in our society; I don’t want to be publicly identified. Very sad…
The anger and sense of superiority from those who consider themselves “different” in some way is a reflection of their militant narcissism. We’re all different and we all can play oppression Olympics if we want but I choose not to – despite my long list of ticked boxes. If you can’t see you’re being played by big-boy capitalists then you’ve been blinded by the rainbow light. It’s just so dull and boring now we all have to solemnise every single variety of humanity. It’s a disease, a hobby and an industry all rolled into one.