LGBT History Month: Somewhere For Us
Hello. I’m Kathryn Pierce and I’m the Founder/Director of Somewhere (Somewhere EDI CIC), proudly based in the Cairngorms National Park. We launched in Edinburgh in 2018 as a community interest company, supporting the LGBTQ+ community across Scotland and beyond. Our organisation increases LGBTQ+ visibility in cultural and enterprise spaces, enabling LGBTQ+ people to live and work authentically. We relocated to the Park in Spring 2022.
Content warning: this article contains discussions of homophobia and references homophobic violence and prejudice. Details for relevant support and further resources on issues raised in this piece can be found at the end of this article.
Our story
Somewhere’s story dates back to 2014 and a hate crime committed on a tram in the centre of Manchester, where I lived for 17 years before heading north to Scotland. I was co-Chair of Manchester’s LGBTQ+ choir at the time, and, following our creative campaign in response to the hate crime, I felt inspired to design a new kind of positive and creativity-focused LGBTQ+ social business. Twenty-five years after having graduated the first time, I returned to university to get an Enterprise Masters, during which time I designed the idea for Somewhere.
After graduating in 2017, and having piloted aspects of Somewhere in Manchester, I brought the idea to Scotland, where I wanted to start a new life, and to try and make a difference to the lives of LGBTQ+ people, and especially those more marginalised in rural and isolated areas of the country. Since then, with the support and dedication of my co-Directors Thomas Anderson-Thatcher and Jules Stapleton Barnes, we’re proud to say that Somewhere is part of many people’s lives in Scotland, and each year we are able to reach and connect with more LGBTQ+ people, their families, friends and allies.
Our organisation is the only one of its kind in the UK, and we do lots of exciting things:
We love arts and culture
We publish “Somewhere: For Us”, a quarterly 98-page print and digital magazine celebrating LGBTQ+ culture and enterprise, which we launched during the COVID lockdown. We’re publishing our TENTH issue this week – we’re so happy to have made it to double figures! We also produce the Somewhere: For Us podcast and episode five will release at the end of March. As a strategic partner to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, each August our “Somewhere: For Us Fringe Guide” celebrates the LGBTQ+ performers, stories and narratives at the world’s largest festival.
We love enterprise and research
We also launched our Rainbow Enterprise Network in 2020. The REN is a connective platform for LGBTQ+ businesses of all sizes, and a great way for larger ally organisations to support LGBTQ+ enterprise, including us, as a Somewhere: For Us magazine subscription is built into the membership offering. Alongside our early work at the Fringe, one of the first projects we founded was the Somewhere MBA LGBTQ+ Scholarship and Mentoring Programme with the University of Edinburgh Business School, which is now in its fourth year. We are also the Organisational Partner in a PhD focusing on LGBTQ+ entrepreneurship in Scotland, which is set to complete in 2024.
We love to work with others
We love projects big and small, and we engage with groups, organisations and businesses of all kinds: from schools and charities, to universities and well-known brands. From Beano Studios and the RNLI, to Grantown Grammar School and LGBT Youth Scotland, our creative partnerships always bring us and others a lot of joy.
We support the community
20% of all our membership income goes straight into two community funds we have created through the organisation: the Somewhere Arts & Culture Fund and the Somewhere Enterprise & Research Fund. Distributed throughout the year, through us, it means our members can support their own community – helping LGBTQ+ businesses, projects, community events and Prides across Scotland.
Would you like to be involved? How to support us
We are a micro social enterprise with a small team and a big output. If you or your business would like to support us, and engage with the LGBTQ+ community across Scotland, there are lots of ways to get involved. Send us your feature ideas and creative portfolios, become a member of the magazine, advertise with us, ask your school to have the magazine in your library, buy a copy from a local stockist, join our business network, or just get in touch with a project idea. We look forward to hearing from you.
In the meantime, my wife Stef and I (and Mara the dog) are loving living in Grantown. Having made the Cairngorms our home, we’re already enjoying being part of the community, and being able to link in with local businesses through Somewhere. We hope to be able to add our bit of rainbow sparkle to Park life for many years to come.
Find out more about us:
www.somewhereedi.org (organisation)
www.somewhereforus.org (magazine)
@Somewhere_For Us on Twitter and Instagram
@Somewhere_REN on Twitter
Email: [email protected]
To access LGBT community services and support, visit LGBT Health and Wellbeing. LGBT Youth Scotland is Scotland’s national charity for LGBTI young people, working with 13–25 year olds across the country and delivering the LGBT Charter programme to schools, organisations and businesses.