The Queer Ruralities project (2023-2024) was a collaboration between researchers in gender and sexuality studies and in curation at the University of Exeter (Jana Funke, Ina Linge, Tom Trevor), the Cornubian Arts & Science Trust (CAST), a visual arts organisation based in Helston, Cornwall, and the Intercom Trust, a leading LGBTQ+ charity working to improve wellbeing and inclusion across the South West of the UK.

Supported by the AHRC-funded Creative Peninsula project and an AHRC Impact Accelerator Award, the Queer Ruralities project brought Charlotte Prodger’s film BRIDGIT to CAST from October to December 2023. The project team worked with the Intercom Trust’s youth group YAY! (Young and Yourself) Cornwall to explore the resonances of Prodger’s film to the lives of LGBTQ+ young people today. Our work with YAY! is based on a long-term collaboration with the young people and youth workers. In collaboration YAY!, we create opportunities for young people to actively engage with art in ways that suit their needs and interests.

For our first workshop at CAST in November 2023, we framed our discussion by introducing some of the cultural, literary and historical references that appear in BRIDGIT. The film makes reference, for example, to the American theorist and transgender studies scholar Sandy Stone, North-American painter Agnes Martin, and the Neolithic deity Bridgit. The young people were then invited to respond to an artistic challenge:

• How does identity change in different contexts (over time and across different spaces)?

• Create a portrait of yourself in answer to this question, but one in which you, especially your face, are not fully visible or identifiable.

The young people immediately picked up on themes from Prodger’s film that resonated with them: they focused on objects they liked and especially clothes that were meaningful to them – some even directly commented on the t-shirt with a lion print hanging on a radiator in BRIDGIT.

In a second workshop, we visited the young people in their usual meeting space in Truro to create visual self-portraits. The artistic challenge was taken up with enthusiasm and workshop participants created portraits that responded to Prodger’s work – in one of them, the fingertips on a book mirror Prodger’s fingers on the camera.

In a final workshop at CAST in February 2024, we celebrated the young people and their artwork with a pizza dinner in CAST’s beautiful café, followed by an exhibition launch, where young people were invited to display their self-portraits in a gallery space, alongside their own labels. One label read:

“I wanted to show that identity is as much what you choose to show as it is what people choose to see. I choose to show these pages, and if people are willing they may choose to see a part of me.”

Young workers reported how the young people who participated in the project were really proud of themselves and how the images provided a much-needed boost of confidence.

Arts institutions can engage communities in meaningful cultural production. By bringing YAY! to CAST and exhibiting the beautiful and challenging artwork they create, we show how culture can help to re-tell stories of place in Cornwall and Devon. One object label, for example, stared this explicitly, celebrating “Kernow lesbian pride.”

Among the important opportunities that workshops like these and organisation like the Intercom Trust provide is the opportunity to find LGBTQ+ community. Young people produced creative work together, but they also simply had a good time exploring CAST’s many hidden corners. In engaging with Prodger’s work, their self-portraits reflect a sense of pride in themselves and celebration of their community, freedom to represent themselves in exciting, creative and challenging new ways, curiosity to engage with visual art, and generosity in sharing their brilliant insights into the theme of queer ruralities.