Collage and Badge Making

This week we headed to Mayes Gardens in New Islington for a collage workshop and to make badges.

Our facilitator, Gone Rogue, provided plenty of magazines, postcards, card, paper, scissors and glue to enable us to make artworks. It was Norman’s birthday and unfortunately he was unable to attend, so most of us made cards to cheer him up.

There’s no right way or wrong way to make collages – it’s simply a technique of art creation by assembling different items to make a new whole.

Thanks to the LGBT Foundation for loaning us the badge making machine. Here are some examples of our work:

Harvey Milk Day

Harvey Milk Day is a California state holiday observed annually on 22 May (Milk’s birthday). The day serves as a reminder of Harvey Milk and his legacy advocating for civil rights and the LGBTQ+ community.

Harvey Milk (born 22 May 1930, Woodmere, Long Island, New York – died 27 November 1978, San Francisco, California) was an American politician and visionary gay-rights activist.

In 1977 he became one of the first openly gay elected officials in US history when he won a seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. The following year Milk was assassinated, and he subsequently became a gay rights icon. One of his inspirational quotes is: “Coming out is the most political thing you can do.”

US Navy and activism

After graduating from the New York State College for Teachers in Albany (1951), Milk served in the US Navy during the Korean War and received an “other than honourable” discharge in 1955 for having engaged in sexual acts with other enlisted men.

He held several jobs before becoming a financial analyst in New York. In 1972 he moved to San Francisco, where he opened a camera store and soon gained a following as a leader in the gay community. His popularity grew when he challenged the city’s gay leadership, which he thought was too conservative in its attempts to gain greater political rights for homosexuals.

In 1973 Milk ran for a seat on the city’s Board of Supervisors but was defeated. After another unsuccessful bid in 1976, he was elected in 1977. The following year Milk and the city’s mayor, George Moscone, were shot and killed in City Hall by Dan White, a conservative former city supervisor.

At White’s murder trial, his attorneys successfully argued that his judgment had been impaired by a prolonged period of clinical depression, one symptom of which was the former health enthusiast’s consumption of junk food. The attorneys’ argument, mischaracterised as the claim that junk food had caused White’s diminished capacity, was derided as the “Twinkie defence” by the satirist Paul Krassner while reporting on the trial for the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

White’s conviction on the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter sparked an uproar in the city that was subsequently termed the “White Night Riot.” White was sentence to seven years and eight months in prison, but he ultimately was released after about five years.

Legacy

Numerous books and films were made about Milk, including the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, which earned an Academy Award; an opera, Harvey Milk (1995); and Milk (2008), a cinematic depiction of his political career that starred Sean Penn. In 2009 Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In November 2021 the US Navy launched the USNS Harvey Milk. It was the first US Navy vessel to be named for an openly gay person, and at the ship’s christening Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said, “For far too long, sailors like Lieutenant Junior Grade Milk were forced into the shadows or, worse yet, forced out of our beloved Navy.”

However, in June 2025, during Pride Month, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the ship to be renamed. In a statement explaining the move, the Pentagon referenced Hegseth’s goal of restoring “the warrior culture” in the US military.

Russell T Davies’s much-anticipated new drama “Tip Toe” finally gets air date confirmed

The air date for Russell T Davies’s much-anticipated new drama “Tip Toe” has finally been confirmed … and it’s coming much sooner than you’d think.

Starring Alan Cumming and David Morrissey as warring neighbours, “Tip Toe” heralds Davies’s return to Channel 4, following 2021’s BAFTA-nominated It’s A Sin, and his first original work since returning to helm Doctor Who as showrunner in 2023.

Now, it’s been confirmed that the five-part series will officially launch in May 2026, and will broadcast on Channel 4 and be available to stream via Channel 4 on demand.

The first two episodes of “Tip Toe” will air Sunday 31 May and Monday 1 June at 9.00pm on Channel 4, and become available to stream on the night of 31 May.

The final three episodes will follow on Sunday 7, Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 June at the same time, and became available to stream on the night of 7 June.

Precise details for “Tip Toe’s” plot are unknown at present, but we do know that it will centre on Cumming’s character Leo, a bar owner in Manchester’s gay district of Canal Street, who gets embroiled in a feud with his long-standing neighbour Clive, played by David Morrissey. The two have lived next door to each for a decade, always getting along, but then something major shifts, changing their relationship forever.

The series has been written by Davies as an exploration of the rise of homophobic rhetoric in society in the last few years, and how easy it is for people’s opinions to be radicalised on issues such as homophobia and transphobia. Given how It’s A Sin explored the intricacies of how wide-spread homophobia in British society contributed to public and private opinions of the AIDs crisis, “Tip Toe” looks to give credence to how, even in 2026, this same type of homophobia hasn’t gone away, yet simply evolved into another form.

The synopsis for “Tip Toe” reads: “Just as life should be settling down, the world around them is growing more tense. Words become weapons, opinions become radicalised, and gradually, two neighbours become deadly enemies in a tense, suburban thriller which challenges everything we consider to be safe.

The series, populated with a cast of vibrant characters and underscored with Davies’s trademark wit and deft humour, is an urgent tale that brings a spotlight to bear on the prejudices which are creeping back into our lives.”

HIV experts horrified as Trump ends CDC support for PEPFAR programmes

The Trump administration plans to end support from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) programmes in most countries starting later this year.

Global health experts say the move represents the final blow in the administration’s efforts to effectively dismantle PEPFAR, which, since its launch in 2003 under President George W Bush, is estimated to have saved tens of millions of lives by funding HIV prevention and treatment in low-income countries.

Earlier this month, the State Department released new guidance as part of the administration’s America First Global Health Strategy (AFGHS), which includes a restructuring of the CDC’s role in distributing funding for and overseeing HIV treatment and prevention programmes in countries around the world.

Prior to the restructuring, the CDC received roughly half of PEPFAR’s annual funding through the State Department, which it used to fund and help run programmes in 46 countries. But as part of the AFGHS goals to phase out US assistance and let recipient countries “own” their epidemic responses, the State Department will distribute PEPFAR funding directly to countries through bilateral financial agreements after 30 September.

Recipient countries will be required to sign a memorandum of understanding, which in some cases may require countries to grant the US access to assets like mineral resources, in exchange for five years of financial assistance.

The new plan does away with what made the programme so effective: the CDC working with recipient countries’ ministries of health and community organisations to implement and improve HIV treatment and prevention programmes. 

The administration’s plan undermines decades of global health work and trusted partnerships with ministries of health.

Effectively dismantling the CDC’s role in PEPFAR will have consequences beyond the fight against HIV/AIDS. The agency will not be on the ground to track the rise and prevent the spread of other diseases, as it did with mpox.

It will not support ending the HIV epidemic and it also compromises the national public health security.