LGBTQ Equality Wedding new Inclusivity Guide is out!
Last week we purchased the @lgbtqequalityweddings Inclusivity Guide it is a must-have for anyone who in the wedding industry and beyond, an actual instruction manual on how to go deeper and make authentic and long lasting strides into true inclusion and diversity in the wedding industry.
We’ve been spending the last few days digesting it all. It’s been beyond useful. Literally point by point, with the bottom line on how a lived experienced based approach is the most authentic and perhaps only real way to change and serve those who are not being served well enough, if at all, in our industry. It is thoroughly, methodically and clearly researched and presented, written by those from a spectrum of intersections being paid for their time, skills and emotional labour to put it together, including
You just need to make a donation to an organisation that lifts up marginalised communities and the guide will be sent out to you. I’ll try and keep this brief (hah!) as as @miss_enxi said Pride Month is Happy Straight People Be Quiet month :)
But I have been thinking about the accountability element in the guide and just briefly to be transparent if useful for others and myself, my main fucks ups that jump out to acknowledge:
In 2013 I created a styled shoot which was a campaign shoot for an entire LGBTQ wedding fair - the One Love Show I was on the team for, which had very minimal involvement or input from those in the LGBTQ community. Wild huh. The shoot did not intentionally feature people with lived LGBTQ experience, we added it as a plus in the casting call but didn’t really have a major conversation about it. It felt awkward, which is because we were creating from a place that wasn’t our’s. Our photographer was from the LGBTQ community, it seemed a nice gesture, but it was not at the heart of what we were doing. Which I now know is NOT how it should have been approached or carried out. There was no representation in the team for the show, no advisors on board, a few conversations but again nothing intentionally collaborative. The lens was off. The people who’s story this was not at the centre, it was not them telling their own story. Because of this, it had the opposite effect than the intention. It became something harmful rather than positive. This is something the guide speaks about. We do now know better. You can not do better until you know better. You don’t mess up until you try. BUT imagine having the knowledge and guidance before or as you start trying! that’s what this guide is - A gift! We should all be champing at the bit to get this!
Ava and those involved in the guide do not want to judge people, or trip them up, they simply want the industry to be a safer more joyful space for those who are currently harmed and excluded by it.
Secondly, at the end of 2019 we also tried to put ourselves forward as pushing for inclusion and diversity in the wedding industry. We did this, again, with a very MINIMAL collaborative approach. If I’m honest it was tokenistic, a surface level box ticking in order to push ourselves to the fore. I didn’t think it was tokenistic at the time but now I look back and know it was. I can feel that it was. I can see I had not equipped myself with the knowledge that would have let me know, at a base level you need to be at the very least in communication with those communities you seek to represent.
And communication is a starting point, better yet, step to the side, ask, liiiiisten, back up and support what THEY are already doing. Find the existing organisations and individuals with the lived experience and collaborate, commission, bolster and lift up. It’s taken me a while to learn to relinquish my desire to be seen to be the ‘first’ to be ‘the one’ ‘front and centre’ - it doesn’t have to be MY thing and that supporting the work already done and finding and forging communities, making coalitions is the one, rather than squirrelling it away as your own.
Both of these harmful mistakes came from good intentions, obviously I thought I was doing something for good. But the WAY I went about it was not right, it was centering myself, my brand and my lens, co-opting a lived experience which meant the impact of it missed the mark. And more than that the impact became something that took from and further silenced those who had been doing the work to make space for the communities I had been oppressing. I see it now and I am sorry. I did not see it then.
This guide explains it all. This guide IS IT ALL. Not only it’s content but the WAY it’s content has been carefully crafted. A wonderful tool and gift, to move forward together, knowing better.
Go make your donation, drink it in, make notes and make plans!
Thank you Ava and everyone involved, for being the real deal, and all those who have and continue to lay the ground work to get us this far, showing us the way to do this, we are lucky to have you and we will keep pushing with you.