About the project:

 

One of the important recommendations in the LGBT Veterans Independent Review by Lord Etherton was that there should be a Government funded public memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum, to all LGBT people who have served and continue to serve in the military. The Government has agreed to fund a Memorial and has allocated a grant to Fighting With Pride for this purpose.

Critical elements of the project are that the Memorial should reflect the views of the LGBT serving and veteran community and that the memorial will provide an appropriate environment for remembrance, build community pride and raise broader awareness of the LGBT Armed Forces community and their experiences. The Memorial will also aim to improve the health and wellbeing of LGBT Veterans, serving personnel and their families, through active recognition and inclusion of the LGBT Armed Forces community.

 

Partners:

The design of the memorial will be done in collaboration by a wide variety of organisations, including those which have the support and respect of veterans who served under and suffered from, the Ban (R17 and R18 of the review report). We are proud to be working with the following on the LGBT Armed Forces Community Memorial:

Royal British Legion, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, National Memorial Arboretum, Office for Veterans Affairs, Ministry of Defence, Stonewall, LGBT Foundation, Women’s Royal Army Corps Association, Help for Heroes, SaluteHer, Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force, SSAFA.

Honorary Art Advisors: Lucy Ash.

 

Collating input:

Fighting With Pride have now started to engage with the LGBT Armed Forces Community to gather ideas to help design an appropriate memorial. A Steering Group has been established, comprising of individuals from organisations and charities with deep knowledge of memorialisation, together with Veterans and serving personnel.

Regional meetings are planned in Portsmouth, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Blackpool in September to facilitate community involvement and there will also be virtual Townhalls to ensure maximum participation. The plan is to have options from the community consultation, refined by the Steering Group and passed to the Fighting With Pride Board of Trustees in November to enable a design decision to be taken. This will be followed by a transparent tender phase and site preparation, construction with a view to an unveiling ceremony in Summer/Autumn 2025.

 

Memorial Team:

Roly Woods has been appointed by the Fighting With Pride Board of Trustees to lead this important project as Memorial Officer, very ably assisted by his Deputy, Kevin Bazeley. You can find out more about the Memorial Team here.

The LGBT Armed Forces Community – January 2025 Update 

On Friday 10th January 2025, the FWP Memorial team came together with a panel of judges onboard HMS WELLINGTON in London, to interview the 5 shortlisted design contenders, select a winning design and announce the result at an awards ceremony that followed. The LGBT+ Armed Forces Community Memorial will celebrate lives lived and commemorate lives lost and follows extensive consultation with the LGBT+ Armed Forces community. The final selection was the culmination of a process of consultation with veterans and serving members resulting in a design brief which was widely advertised to the arts community and resulted in 38 high quality submissions, itself a huge achievement. The judges faced difficult decisions as the number of candidates was whittled down to the 5 shortlisted artists who were each given an opportunity to present their idea to the Judging Panel and say why their design was the one.
 
The designs were all unique, with incredible effort and thought put into them by their artists, but there could be only one winner. After much deliberation, which at times proved quite emotional to both the judging panel and the interviewees, the winner was chosen –  “An Opened Letter” by an artist collective called The Abraxas Academy.  This was announced by FWP’s Patron, Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Gregory KBE, CB, DL, in a “Golden Envelope” moment at the evening award ceremony on board.  The Abraxas Academy comprises Charlotte Howarth, Nina Bilbey, James Spedding and Sue Aperghis.
“An Opened Letter”, is a crumpled, 2.5m tall free-standing letter in forged bronze, on a 4m-diameter York Stone base, and uses a combination of words taken from evidence collected from veterans who were impacted by the LGBT ban and also from currently serving personnel. The structure will be styled to create a contrast between life under the ban before it was lifted on 12th January 2000, with a dark inner surface, and a bright shiny golden exterior surface reflecting the inclusive service of today (from the dark days of the ban to the brighter days of today).
 
Abraxas Academy writes:
The written word and page are a symbol of the struggle and fight for the LGBTQ+ contribution to the Nation’s armed forces.
 
The letter is a combination of words taken from evidence collected from personnel who have experienced exclusion, discrimination and in some cases have died as a direct result of exposure of their true selves. Evidence responsible for ending many careers, and in some instances prosecution, written in the accused own words. Tragically, in some cases the words of endearment expressed by a loved one.
 
You can walk around the letter, be drawn to it from a distance and engage by being inside its darker surface, read the words both negative and positive, from inside, shadowed and hidden, or chose to come out of the page and reflect on the bright reflective surface of the future.
 
Nina Bilbey, lead artist at Abraxas Academy said
 
“This is extremely personal for our members, some of whom have been affected by the armed forces exclusion of LGBTQ+ identities, and some simply affected by lived queer experience. All our members make a living in the arts by designing and delivering beautiful sculpture, made and inspired by the act of collaboration.”
 
“We hope this memorial will help ease some of the distrust and pain suffered by individuals, past and present, and be of inspiration to future generations who will witness this work and be reminded of the healing power of reconciliation and the public acknowledgement of historic discrimination.”
 
Ed Hall, Chair of Fighting With Pride, said:
“The trustees are delighted that we have such a strong winner for the LGBT+ armed forces community memorial. It’s been incredibly important to all of us at Fighting With Pride that we held a rigorous creative process to find the right design that will provide a place of peace and reflection for the LGBT+ armed forces family. I’d like to thank everyone who submitted designs, and the LGBT+ serving and veterans’ community who have helped shape the selection.
 
“It’s a mark of how far we’ve come as a society that the competition for this prestigious commission has been so fiercely contested by some amazing creative minds. We received 38 exceptionally high standard designs for the panel of judges to choose from and we now have an outstanding design as the worthy winner.”
We now enter the delivery phase and are already working closely with the members of Abraxas Academy to ensure that the memorial is delivered on time, on budget and to the high standard that this memorial deserves. We will continue to update with progress and details of the dedication ceremony which we are planning for late October if everything sticks to the project plan. We intend to invite as many LGBT+ veterans and serving personnel as possible to attend, together with their allies.

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Office of Veterans Affairs

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