Attitude editor heads chemsex talk at Soho Theatre

Attitude editor Matthew Todd will head up one of three public forums coming to the Soho Theatre in November, dealing with issues affecting London’s LGBT community including chemsex and gentrification of queer spaces.

As a special offer for Attitude readers, you can grab £3 tickets to each of the respective talks by using the code ATTPLAT3 when you book from sohotheatre.com or call the box office on 020 7478 0100. The three talks:

Matthew Todd and guests: The Rise of Chemsex – 5:45pm Thursday November 12.

Sex, drugs and disco, have been as much a part of LGBT culture as the annual Pride events. But what was once perhaps harmless fun on the dance floor, is arguably pulling the community apart now. Fuelled by online apps, crystal meth, GHB and mephedrone are becoming ubiquitous in gay London. As LGBT venues close and many men choose ‘chill out’ home parties, Attitude editor Matthew Todd and guests discuss exactly what is going on out there, what does it mean for HIV rates and what can be done about it?

Joining Matthew in an explosive discussion will be William Fairman and Max Gogarty directors of the new feature length documentary ‘CHEMSEX’; David Stuart, Substance Use Lead at 56 Dean Street and Pat Cash, organiser of the popular ‘Let’s Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs’ events.

Dan Glass’ De-Gentrification Happy Hour – with Sarah Schulman and guests – 5:45pm Friday November 13.

For one night only, Dan Glass, an organiser in London’s queer resistance movement, attempts to de-gentrify our minds with an anarchic celebration and lively panel discussion from the coal face of London’s LGBT community.

Joining Dan and Sarah will be representatives from Save Soho, The Joiners Arms, Madame Jo Jo’s, The Black Cap, Royal Vauxhall Tavern and special guests. Together they will attempt to flip the lid on the property developers gentrifying London’s queer spaces and explore the future for LGBT venues in the capital so that London remains open and accessible to people from all backgrounds, not just a rich elite.

Penny Arcade and Sarah Schulman: Gentrification of the Mind – 5:45pm Wednesday November 11. 

Penny Arcade and Sarah Schulman both tackle gentrification head on, no more so than in Arcade’s award-winning new show Longing Lasts Longer, and Schulman’s seminal book Gentrification of the Mind (Witness to a Lost Imagination) within which she recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement of New York vanished almost overnight to be replaced with gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism.

For the first time ever Arcade and Schulman partake in an onstage conversation filling it with vivid memories of the AIDS years (1981-1996) and the downtown NYC arts movement of that time. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Arcade and Schulman bear witness to the loss of a generation’s imagination and the consequences of that loss.

The conversation will be filmed for a future global transmission through Penny Arcade and Steve Zehentner’s New York video oral history project, The Lower East Side Biography Project.