Southwark Council funds "Queer Ecology" event that explores "queerly fugitive plant bodies"
The company behind the event won a slice of the Council's £30,000 Pride fund
Southwark Council funded a “Queer Ecology” event, I can reveal to readers.
Taking place last Friday, the “ecology walk and improvisation-based movement session” offered LGBTQI+ people the chance to “pause with plants and local wildlife, uncovering the queer histories embedded in ecologies around us.”
“Whilst we practise sensing, feeling and moving as and with these queerly fugitive plant bodies, we will also consider what we might offer in return”, reads the description for Queer Ecology: noticing, feeling, moving, which was hosted by the The Siobhan Davies Dance Company.
It generously welcomed “those with intersectional and emerging queer life experiences which may situate them against normative expectations (whether this is through racialisation, disability, class and more).”
You can find all sorts of other crazy sentences on the event listing:
The Siobhan Davies Dance Company - which put on four Pride events in total, including a “Queer Takeover” - was one of 15 recipients of Southwark’s Pride fund 2026, which saw £30,000 split between each winner.
Other taxpayer-funded events included:
A Pride celebration creative workshop at Art Block for local children at the South London Gallery;
Queer Minds Trans Care Day, hosted by South East London Mind; and
Queer Speech Karaoke for young people and families and a later 18+ version for older groups, hosted by This is Arcade CIC.
Meanwhile Southwark Council recently announced it has a funding gap of around £100 MILLION:
Is it any wonder when it’s spending money on the exploration of “queerly fugitive plant bodies”?!
More:
My, my Charlotte. Just when we think we have reached peak nonsense you find this gem.
We need an Act of Parliament which defines clearly what things it is permitted for local councils to spend money on. With a provision that any ultra vires expenditure is recoverable from the councillors who authorised it.
In my drafting of the law anything of this nature would be ultra vires.