This HLF-funded Brighton project by QueenSpark Books changed the face of the trans community in our city. We plastered the side of the wall of the pub with photocopies of our faces and all came out to the local community walking past. We projected huge images of our faces onto the side of a church in the busiest part of town. And we found each other, and worked together, and listened to each other’s stories

On show in the Queer the Pier exhibition (2020 - 2022) at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. Excerpt from 'Brighton Head and Freak' magazine (Issue 3, published 1968/9). Cover features a printed illustration by John Upton. Inside back cover features a poem about cottaging by Bill Butler. Ref: Royal Pavilion & Museums BH703003 Daren Kay, Community Curator: Before the internet, bookshops provided spaces where LGBTIQ+ people could meet and find out about people like themselves. One such queer friendly space was Unicorn Bookshop at 51 Gloucester Road, Brighton that was open from 1966 to 1973. It was owned by openly gay poet and writer, Bill Butler (1937-1977). A poet in his own right, Butler often published homoerotic poems in the shop’s publications such as this one, which is probably about ‘cottaging’– the practise of men looking for sex with other men in public toilets.     John Upton, who designed the cover of this issue of the 'Brighton Head and Freak' magazine, also painted the original mural on the outside of the Unicorn Bookshop.