Voices and visibility
LGBT History Month takes place every February. The theme for this year is ‘Prose, Poetry and Plays’, the three pillars which frame what we understand as literature.
Celebrating LGBT History Month is an important part of our commitment to celebrate our diverse workforce, support LGBT+ equality amongst colleagues, and establish Royal Mail as a champion of LGBT+ colleagues and the wider LGBT+ community.
Press play to find out how the LGBT+ & Friends network have been celebrating LGBT History Month, and what the group have planned for 2020.
For as long as there have been writers, there have been LGBT artists documenting their experiences. By reading such works, we can broaden our understanding of LGBT history.
Literature created by renowned LGBT writers, such as Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Tennessee Williams, Marcel Proust, Gore Vidal and T.S Eliot, to name just a handful, acts as a gateway into understanding the landscape for LGBT people of the time, with so many authors forced to conceal LGBT characters between the lines.
This practice still happens today, with the lives of LGBT writers so often sanitised and diluted for students, as if LGBT lives are inappropriate for today’s youth, despite the LGBT experience now being such a common part of modern life.
Pictured is one of four vans that Royal Mail has had wrapped in our rainbow postbox livery across the Central region. This one is based in Nottingham, while the others can be spotted in Peterborough, Sheffield and Birmingham.
Supporting LGBT+ colleagues
Making our business a place where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender colleagues can achieve their potential remains a priority.
Our LGBT+ & Friends steering group was established in 2015 with the goal of creating an accessible network for LGBT+ colleagues and supporters to come together and share their experiences.
If you’d like to join the LGBT+ & Friends closed Facebook group – the place to be for all things LGBT+ in Royal Mail – email lgbt.and.friends@royalmail.com with your pay number and the email address you use to sign into Facebook.
