Queer Voices
a creative community workshop series - movement, voice, writing, music
with Guy Harries (composer, psychotherapist, co-founder of Queer Spaces)
in collaboration with: Westminster LGBT+ Forum, Queer Spaces and the University of East London
Your voice, your movement, your words, shared and shaped with others into something new. Queer Voices is a series of four workshops, building week by week towards a short "queer opera" film made collectively by the group.
Each session draws on movement, voice work, creative writing and music-making. No performing experience is needed, and nothing is expected of you beyond a willingness to explore, play and try things out alongside the group. You'll take part in shaping a piece from its first ideas through to a short opera film, working alongside others from the LGBTQ+ community and allies who are curious about the same thing: what a group can make when it makes something collectively, and lets queerness guide how.
The emphasis throughout is on the process rather than a polished result, though what the group creates will be filmed and shared publicly, with a possible launch event to follow.
This is a series, so please only sign up if you can commit to at least three sessions. Open to all levels and backgrounds, for a group of 15–20 participants.
About the organisers
Guy Harries is a London-based composer, therapist and senior lecturer at the University of East London. His creative work spans electronic music, cross-disciplinary performance and opera, with a particular focus on community-devised and politically engaged practice. His recent operas SINGULAR (2022) and QueerLove (2024), produced for Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival, centre LGBTQ+ lives and stories and are created collaboratively with queer artists. He has run community opera devising workshops across London and convened the Opera and Politics symposium series at Trinity Laban Conservatoire.
Alongside his arts practice, Guy works as an integrative psychotherapist specialising in LGBTQ+ and creative clients. He holds a PhD in Music from the University of London and a postgraduate diploma in Counselling from the University of Westminster. He is a registered member of the BACP.
Westminster LGBT+ Forum: https://www.westminsterlgbtforum.co.uk/
University of East London: https://www.uel.ac.uk/
Queer Spaces - https://www.queerspaces.co.uk/