“One of the big ideas that we talked about was how to feel like we belong in spaces that often pretend as if we don’t exist. We had a really interesting conversation about the history of LGBTQIA+ people in South Asian cultures as there is a lot of evidence that pre-colonialism we were present and taking part in society. We agreed that we must celebrate this history and continue to find ways to talk about and share it.“

"Language is a communication tool and we spent a lot of time talking about what it meant not being able to use our heritage languages to speak to certain family members. For some of us, our grandparents only speak in a language that we cannot speak fluently and this means that there will always be things that we can’t say to them. ”

"This month we were thinking about our future older selves. What would they look like, where would they be living and who would they have around them? Where would our lives be positioned in relation to our biological and chosen families?”

"Let’s try an experiment - imagine yourself in 10 years time… What do you hope your life looks like then? Who do you want to be around you, what do you want to be doing and what do you think you’ll feel like? Now imagine yourself another 10 years older and repeat the same process."

"We imagined what it must feel like to become older and feel disconnected from our own history and wondered if we should try and give older generations more time to tell us about themselves. They probably want to be included as much as we do but may not be able to articulate this."

"This was our first celebration event. We wanted to make a space where we could invite LGBTQIA+ folks from the whole of the UK to be with each other, hear each other’s stories and to celebrate the best parts of what it means to be LGBTQIA+ and South Asian."

"As the group continued the word 'shame' started to creep into the conversation. Some of us talked about the difficulty of being LGBTQIA+ in our family circles and how sometimes we used our success in education or work as a shield against some of the negative criticism that might have been directed towards us."

"We LGBTQIA+ people need to think about safety more than your average person. It is still acceptable for lots of people in lots of parts of the world not only to disagree with our identities but to also use this disagreement as an excuse to use violence against us. "

"People talked about how their family structure, including which parents they were raised by and what their siblings were like, influenced the choices they made as adults. Some of us have had inspirational and supportive parents, and others found less space for them to explore a path that was different from what their families expected. "

"We opened the group conversation with a chat about the ways we have approached relationships in the past and how difficult it can be to find someone who we get on with and who treats us how we would like to be treated. We also talked about how dating on apps has made some things easier and some things much harder, and how we can work out ways to get around app culture. "

"It’s a normal thing for parents to want to protect their children from the harm that they imagine exists out in the world, but when does this protection turn into restriction or control? "

"In the group, most of us thought that we took our relationship values from our families. We saw what relationships were valued in our familly communities and were sometimes specifically told by our elders what we should and should not look for in a partner."