The UK school with more than 30 out LGBTQ students in one year group

Words: Will Stroude; Image: Twinkleberry, Netflix

For many LGBTQ people, school days can be ones to forget, but for one year group who attended secondary school in the small Gloucestershire town of Tewkesbury, those years in the classroom are ones they’ve come to look back on with increasing awe and fondness.

“It’s kind of been a process over the last decade of me realising this wasn’t normal!” laughs Daisy Ifama, director of new Netflix documentary Twinkleberry, which tells the story of possibly Britain’s gayest school year ever.

“The more I tell people, the more shocked they are, and I’m like ‘what, you didn’t grow up with a whole gay group of friends? That’s weird’.”

Filmmaker Daisy, 27, was one of an incredible 30+ out LGBTQ people who made up her school year group between 2005-2012 – an arresting and unlikely story that’s now being shared with the world after Twinkleberry was selected as one of the 10 films to receive financing from the inagural Netflix Talent Fund programme.

A small town on the border of the West Midlands and the West Country in the late noughties might not be how you’d imagine the setting for such an amazing display of LGBTQ youth visibility, but Daisy tells Attitude that once one of her classmates summoned up the courage to come out, the number quickly snowballed.

“30 is a safe number but it was definitely more than 30,” admits Daisy. “Kathleen, who’s in the film, she was the first girl in our year to come out. She laid the groundwork, and then from that point people either came out and didn’t have an issue or, like me… were just open and talking about having crushes on girls and nobody cared.”

Twinkleberry takes a mostly light-hearted look at life for those LGBTQ students during their school days, but Daisy is keen to stress that Tewkesbury itself was no gay utopia at the time.

“I mean my mum was great, she didn’t care and educated some of her less progressive friends, but not everybody’s parents were accepting: lots of people got kicked out [of home],” she reveals.

Twinkleberry director Daisy Ifama (Image: Getty Images, Dave Benett)

“We knew that the outside world wasn’t that accepting. We learnt when we could be safe and when we were a little less safe.”

The key was that with a swelling number of out LGBTQ students, most of whom socialised together in the same friendship group, there was safety in numbers.

“There’s a really amazing moment that sadly we couldn’t put in the film where Kathleen faced some homophobic abuse an like everyone was screaming at this boy, like ‘What is your problem, shut up, leave her and her girlfriend alone’,”  smiles Daisy. “It was just a really incredible moment.” 

One particularly powerful moment in Twinkleberry sees some of Daisy’s LGBTQ classmates – now in their mid-twenties – recite a letter they wrote to Tewkesbury MP Laurence Robertson in 2012 imploring the Conservative politician to support marriage equality, and the refusal letter they received from him shortly thereafter.

Daisy Ifama (centre) with classmates Owen, Cath, Harvey and Kathleen (Image: Getty Images, Dave Benett)

“Oh yeah, he’s getting a copy [of Twinkleberry]!” exclaims Daisy mischievously, before adding: “I’d say [to him] ‘your views do not reflect the wider views of Tewkesbury, like at all. Update your views’.

“His voting record is awful, it hasn’t changed for the last ten years, so I’d say look at the world around you. Why would you want people to push down their identities and not live their life to the fullest?”

Twinkleberry, which was released to Netflix’s YouTube channel on Sunday (20 February), could just be the start of a wider exploration of the story for up-and-coming director Daisy.

“I want a musical, that’s what I want!” she grins. “I would love that. I think it’s [also] a really great foundation for a scripted series or even revisting the documentary in ten years, and another ten years, and kind of seeing how queer history in the UK has changed in that time.”

Daisy during her time at school in Tewkesbury (Image: Twinkleberry)

Whether the movie musical comes one day or not, at the heart of Twinkleberry‘s uplifting subject matter is a serious lesson in how a welcoming environment for young LGBTQ people can enable them to flourish in each other’s company.

While the documentary shows a classroom as it should be, the reality that many LGBTQ youth continue to suffer largely in silence at school, often unaware of those around them who might be experiencing the same feelings: Twinkleberry offers a glimpse at what the world can and should look like for our queer youth.

“Words like ‘safe space’ and ‘community’ have lost of a bit of their meaning, but this is what it looks like when you’re supported and people understand you and people back you,” comments Daisy.

“I guess the main thing I want people to take [from Twinkleberry] is just the power of community.”

Twinkleberry is one of the 10 short films showing now as part of the Netflix Talent Fund programme.