Rethinking LGBTQ+ ‘Safe Spaces’ in Policy and Practice – the polyphony

As part of the QUEERCIRCLE takeover, PJ Annand and Lucy Wood ask: what does the term ‘safe space’ really mean, and how does this play out in the public health field?

‘Safe space’ is everywhere in LGBTQ+ service language, appearing on websites, flyers, and organisational charters. It serves as a shorthand for something… good intent, perhaps? But what does it actually mean in practice? And what risks might arise when this language enters institutional and policy settings?

We looked at how the term ‘safe space’ appears in UK policy, not as a systematic investigation in the academic sense, but rather a following of curiosity, extending from our work on the Queering Shelter project exploring what ‘safe space’ means for LGBTQ+ people with experience of unsafety. We searched in the gov.uk ‘official documents’ database and sifted through 813 documents from 2019-2024 mentioning ‘LGBT’. About 30 seemed relevant, and five explicitly used the term ‘safe space’ (typically in passing). These included a government-commissioned report on LGBTQ+ homelessness that advocated for “safe spaces free from homophobia, biphobia and transphobia” in housing contexts. 

More common than ‘safe space’ in these policy documents was the language of ‘safety’, framed largely in terms of compliance when discussing LGBTQ+ issues: legal obligations towards ‘vulnerable groups’ under the Equality Act 2010, procedural diversity schemes, and references to ‘protected characteristics’. ‘Vulnerability’ was often treated as a fixed trait, with little attention to power, context, or the complexity of queer lives. 

‘Ethnicity’ and ‘LGBT status’ were often grouped together, but rarely through a truly intersectional lens. Instead of attending to how these identities interact within systems of oppression, this policy literature tended to gesture at the importance of such considerations without demonstrating how they might be meaningfully addressed. And when recommendations were made, they focused on continuing existing inclusion schemes like staff networks or Positive Action programmes, rather than offering structural or cultural change. 

PJ Annand. 2025. Created during the Taking Up Space graffiti workshop in the Leake Street Arches, London. Image courtesy of the artist.

Announcing commitments without enacting them?

It appears that in institutional contexts, providing ‘safety’ through a legal framework is considered the right way to ensure communities feel protected, by indicating there is accountability when the framework is not complied with. However, without meaningful clarity or engagement with how this works in practice      for LGBTQ communities, this risks becoming a tool for signalling inclusion and avoiding scrutiny.

Sara Ahmed argues that institutional diversity work often produces language that announces commitments without enacting them. Has the term ‘safe space’, or reference to ‘LGBT safety’ in general, similarly become a ‘non-performative gesture’ within policy – one of those “institutional speech acts that do not bring into effect what they name”? Does it imply care has been considered, without requiring anyone to demonstrate how it’s enacted? For us, the abandonment of the LGBT Action Plan by the Conservative government in May 2021, followed by recent anti-trans developments by the current Labour government, certainly seem to suggest so. These moves form part of a whole host of anti-LGBTQ action – and inaction – that has seen the UK fall to 22nd place in the European Rainbow Index, making it the second-worst country in Western Europe and Scandinavia for LGBTQ+ rights, according to ILGA-Europe.

In our view, this disconnect between word and action risks flattening the complexity of queer people’s experiences, particularly when it comes to systems like healthcare, housing, and social care. Community organisations, particularly by-and-for LGBTQ+ groups, often do the slow, careful work of building trust, negotiating harm reduction strategies, and adapting to need. But from the documents we saw, it’s not clear that policy language particularly acknowledges or supports this labour (or its own part in it).

From QUEERCIRCLE’s Queer Data Report. Image courtesy of the artist.

Safe for whom?

Part of the difficulty might lie with the terminology itself. Not to suggest that frontline groups who use ‘safe space’ aspirationally, tactically or provisionally, often with good reason, are the issue here. They are not. The term can be a useful signal in hostile environments. But it’s also a term that can be seen as overpromising. As feminist writer Jos Truitt has argued, no space is ever universally or permanently safe: safety is contingent, and what feels safe to one person may feel unsafe to another.

There is an important body of work highlighting how failing to negotiate these tensions carefully can end up compounding the problem. Specifically it warns that uncritical approaches to ‘safe spaces’ can end up prioritising some people’s sense of comfort, e.g. emotional comfort for white people, while silencing other people’s need to call in harmful behaviour, e.g. people of colour who draw necessary attention to racism, micro-aggressions or complicity with racist systems that those white people may exhibit (see Nuru and Arendt 2018, Lamont 2019, Hawks and Meadows 2023, and Wise 2004, among others). Labelling spaces as ‘safe’ risks obscuring the work it takes to navigate these tensions – or worse, implying that such work is no longer needed.

In place of ‘safe space’ as a fixed ideal, Truitt advocates for ‘accountable spaces’, ones where the focus is on how people respond to harm when it happens, not on claiming it won’t. This has been extended by Elise Ahenkorah, who similarly critiques the idea of safe spaces, safer spaces and indeed brave spaces. While we’re not advocating for the use of one particular word over another, these perspectives reflect a shift that resonates with a broader turn in queer and feminist thought toward accountability, care, and the ethics of staying with complexity, or ‘staying with the trouble’ as Donna Haraway puts it (Haraway 2010).

Queer Data Manifesto 

One resource that has been on our mind recently, given its launch earlier this year, is the Queer Data Manifesto, commissioned by QUEERCIRCLE (and which one of us worked on). We wondered if the manifesto principles might prove helpful in thinking through this shift (the same could apply for any other values-based framework – this one just happens to be close to home). Though focused on data practices, the manifesto outlines six values relating to care and accountability: attentiveness; comradeship; creative play; humility; irreverence; and tenderness. These were derived collaboratively from QUEERCIRCLE staff, partners and linked artists and, we feel, might have something to offer here too.

The principles invite reflection: What would it mean for services to be attentive to shifting power relations? How might comradeship foster shared responsibility rather than delegating ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ to a lone officer? Could creative play help institutions imagine more responsive, joyful and rewarding practices? Humility reminds us that safety can’t necessarily be guaranteed and is never finished work, while irreverence allows for questioning of norms that no longer serve. And tenderness demands that, above all, care must come first – not as sentiment, but as practice. In this light, the manifesto doesn’t give us a solution, but it does offer a way to stay with the trouble. 

Take healthcare as an example. Attentiveness might mean noticing when systems don’t work for some people, for example electronic systems that don’t accommodate gender diversity (see the Ada Lovelace Institute report on the impact of digital systems for trans people). Comradeship could involve co-designing services with LGBTQ+ people or supporting LGBTQ+ led services (for example CliniQ). Humility might require publicly acknowledging mistakes (the GMC apology to doctors who faced sanctions under historic homophobic laws might be an example of this), but importantly also changing behaviour and practice as a result (see BMJ critiques of the GMC apology, arguing that it doesn’t go far enough). Irreverence could mean challenging norms that equate safety with the silencing of dissent, pushing back against the idea that comfort is more important than growth. These aren’t radical innovations, but they signal a move from safety as label to safety as labour.

From QUEERCIRCLE’s Queer Data Report. Image courtesy of the artist

Anchoring in values, practice and accountability

As Roestone Collective highlights, “safe spaces should be understood not through static and contextual notions of ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’, but rather through the relational work of cultivating them” (Roestone Collective 2024). In this light, moving beyond the use of ‘safe space’ as a label and instead foregrounding the labour, values, and commitments that go into building such spaces is far from a semantic concern. It helps make visible the often-overlooked work involved in creating environments that are responsive, affirming, and grounded in care. This shift back from promise to practice matters. For policymakers and institutional actors, it means moving beyond rhetorical nods to safety and instead supporting those already doing this work, often with skill, care, and limited resources. While legal frameworks bolster accountability in the broad sense, without an understanding of the complex and changeable nature of safety and care practices within communities, it is not helpful. Structural and legal changes must reflect and engage with flexibility rather than create rigidity in application of safety or provide as a signalling tool. .

‘Safe space’ remains a powerful term, but without anchoring in values, practice and accountability, it risks becoming a hollow signifier, more comfort than commitment. What’s needed is not simply new labels, but renewed attention to the everyday labour of care: relational, context-specific, and often under-recognised. If institutions wish to invoke safety, they must also ask what it demands of them in terms of care and accountability – not just in rhetoric, but in structures, resourcing, policy,      responsibilities and everyday work. Reframing safety as an ongoing, collective practice – one grounded in values like attentiveness, humility, and tenderness – we feel, offers a more honest, and ultimately more hopeful, starting point.

View the whole QUEERCIRCLE takeover