Inaugural Trans+ History Week Launches with a Powerful UK-Wide Campaign

Today, not-for-profit publisher QueerAF, together with support from celebrity talent and ad industry partners, launches the UK’s inaugural Trans+ History Week with a powerful UK-wide advertising campaign. The first-ever Trans+ History Week, a ground breaking initiative aimed at educating and celebrating the rich history of transgender, non-binary, gender-diverse, and intersex individuals, is set to launch in the UK from 6-12th May.

During the week, millions will see the message, Trans+ people have ‘always been here, and always will be’. The initiative aims to demonstrate the powerful history of Trans+ people from the forgotten past all the way up to the marches of today, spotlighting the often overlooked and momentous history of Trans+ communities. Through a series of official content in the form of articles, podcasts and a lesson workbook created using academic research principles, Trans+ History Week provides the British public with a millennia-old history of Trans+ people and gender-diverse communities, starting as far back as Antiquity.  

This will kick off with a community event in London featuring a live podcast recording with Netflix’s Sex Education stars Felix Mufti and Anthony Lexa, to relaunch the award-winning QueerAF podcast that has now given many queer creatives some of their first paid audio commissions. Bringing to life the week’s activity, twenty emerging Trans+ creatives - who’ve been supported, given audio equipment to keep, and mentored by QueerAF across multiple commissioning schemes  - will share their stories throughout the week, spotlighting diverse narratives such as the Hijra communities of India, the first-ever Transgender conference in the UK and the portrayal of Trans+ individuals in TV and film.

The advertising campaign was created by a team of trans+ volunteers and allies led by Smarty Pants Consultancy, founded by Marty Davies with stewardship from Uncharted Studio, founded by Laura Jordan Bambach. Each ad features a QR code that takes people to the official content created for the week. The team has also been supported by the design team at Hogarth.

A series of powerful joyful photographs in collage zine aesthetic will make Trans+ history visible in large public spaces across major cities in the UK such as Manchester, Liverpool, London and Newcastle - where the campaign will feature prominently at Box Park Wembley and during a week long takeover of Westfield South Terrace.

Media has been contributed by Ocean, Open Media and Metro through Talon and Havas Media Network UK.

As part of the announcement, Trans+ History Week also marks 6th May as the official Trans+ History Day, remembering the 91st anniversary of the Nazi raid on the world's first trans clinic.

Trans+ History Week invests in Trans+ creative talent to share our gender-diverse history, highlighting the humanity of Trans+ communities across all nations, through all of time.

Marty Davies (she/they), founder of Trans+ History Week and Smarty Pants Consultancy said, “Everyone is talking about trans+ people, but few trans+ people are able to tell our own stories. That's what Trans+ History Week is here to do.

Like trans+ people, advertising in ubiquitous and can also be traced back to ancient times - in Papayrus created in 3000 BCE to be precise. That’s pretty cool. We’ve seen attacks on Trans+ people in ads over the past year as mis/dis information demonise our community. But trans+ people deserve to see themselves represented authentically in media, and that includes in our advertising. Advertising can and should be a powerful force for good. That’s why I'm especially proud to promote the first Trans+ History Week joyfully in the medium I love, advertising.”

The Trans+ History Week team includes Georgey Lee and Jamie June Hill as graphic designer and creative director.

Laura Jordan Bambach (she/her), founder of Uncharted Studio said, “This campaign has been conceived of, and created by some of the most incredible talent in the UK - trans+ creatives, designers and producers who have led every facet of the process; and supported by a wider team through Uncharted and Hogarth to help us to deliver this ambitious launch. The volunteer team has been epic, inspired and powerful.

The campaign itself is a series of powerful photographs of objects, people and moments that represent some of  the incredible stories through time of trans+ history in a collage style that references the DIY nature of zine subculture, so iconic of trans+ communication of the past.”

Clifford Chance, Verizon Business, Deloitte UK, Reddit and NQ64 have sponsored the week’s inaugural events, alongside donations provided via a crowdfunding campaign. The initiative has also been supported by some of the UK’s largest LGBTQIA+ and Trans+ organisations and media since its launch including: 

Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, UK Black Pride, LGBT+ History Month, Not A Phase, Trans Pride Manchester, London Trans+ Pride, Trans Pride Brighton, Hidayah LGBT, Just Like Us, LGBT Foundation, Trans Actual UK, DIVA, PinkNews, Queer Britain, Switchboard LGBT+, My Genderation, myGwork and Consortium.

Trans+ History Week kicks off at a main event, in London on 7th May with a live podcast recording with the stars of Netflix’s Sex Education Felix Mufti and Anthony Lexa.

Jamie Wareham (he/him), founder, QueerAF, said, “Trans+ History Week was born out of a QueerAF article that quickly became a tool for people to shut down misinformation that - as studies have long disproved - being transgender is not a ‘social contagion’. Information is everything. It helps us reach and justify conclusions. But the information ecosystem is failing all of us. We live in a saturated world of doom scrolling and constant media. Online, digital, mobile, it bombards us wherever we are. But it doesn’t reflect us, and is harming the LGBTQIA+ community, and all of our ability to do good in the world. We’ve trusted Trans+ creative talent on the content we’ve commissioned for this initiative because, though there are no silver bullets in DEI strategy, hiring and listening to the community you want to serve is as close to finding one as you’ll get.”