There have always been LGBTQ+ people and communities in Kingston upon Thames, but Kingston LGBTQ+ Forum is the child of a series of organisations that evolved from the 1970s through to the present day.
In 1977 the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (“CHE”) set up a chapter in Kingston known as CHE Kingston or CHEK. Previously, there was a Surbiton CHE group, but our collective memory doesn’t stretch that far back. CHE Kingston was a campaigning and social group that used to meet in a pub in Norbiton. Membership rose to around 300 people. They held some women-only events. The highlight of the CHE Kingston year was the annual boat trip on the Thames known as CHEKABOARD.
In 1983 CHE Kingston merged with CHE Richmond & Putney to form the Kingston & Richmond Area Gay Society (“KRAGS”). KRAGS was mainly a social group but still held formal meetings at Friends House, back when it was on Eden Street in Kingston.
After KRAGS closed in 2001 some of its former members got together to create Kingston LGBT Forum: intended as a place for LGBT people (as we used to say back then) to come together with the Metropolitan Police to discuss hate crime. We weren’t the only Forum: many other London boroughs were creating LGBT Forums too. Wandsworth, Lewisham and Camden still run very active LGBT Forums, as do other London boroughs.
We didn’t make much progress with the police and so, in the early 2010s, we cut our ties and moved our meetings out of the police station. We found new places to meet, starting with The Noble Centre in New Malden, followed by Kingston University’s Penrhyn Road campus, occasionally a local pub, then Kingston Quaker Centre where we still run some of our activities today.
While we were busy with our campaigns and occasional socials, a local women’s group known as the Surbiton Girls were holding social events for gay and lesbian women in Surbiton. When the Surbiton Girls stopped meeting in the late 2010s, some of their members joined us at the Forum.
Kingston LGBT Forum eventually became less focussed on campaigning and more interested in the health and wellbeing of local LGBTQ+ people. We adopted our mission: to make life better for LGBTQ+ people in Kingston. Our activities became more social and varied, and included coffee mornings, yoga, fitness bootcamps, miniature film festivals, pub nights, group support sessions and more.
In 2019, we became registered as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, and now, while we’re still officially ‘Kingston LGBT Forum’ according to our constitution, we promote ourselves as ‘Kingston LGBTQ+ Forum’ to reflect the greater diversity of those who use our services and take part in our activities. We’re governed by a small group of trustees and our activities and events are organised by volunteers.
Each year, over 300 different people take part in our activities and events, and last year alone we ran 128 separate events for local LGBTQ+ people.
Find out what we’re doing this week.
Visit our Meetup group: www.meetup.com/KingstonLGBTForum
Visit our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pg/kingstonlgbtforum
If you would like to contribute any information or photographs relating to the Forum history, we’d love to hear from you! Please get in touch via our Contact page.