HISTORY OF LGBT HEALTH AND WELL-BEING EDINBURGH by Tom Leonard

 

EXCERPT FROM LAVENDER RISING: AN INTERSECTIONAL HISTORY OF THE QUEER STRUGGLE

6.8 Health and Well-Being.The LGBT Centre for Health and Well-Being set up shop in 2003 in a luxurious three-storey building with an eye watering New Town rent, at 9 Howe St., Edinburgh and financed by five years of lottery funding (Greenwood, 2022).

Eagle Allan attended a week-long induction course at the centre during July 2006. One of several similar courses organised by the Chief Executive, the intention was to train volunteers to give advice to ‘clients’ i.e. other members of the LGBT Community. I wondered at the time why ‘clients’ didn’t instead talk to their friends and why people would want to be clients rather than volunteers. I will refer to the Chief Executive as ‘Mitch McCull’.

Other activities at the centre included a bisexual discussion group, monthly meetings of the Prime Time group for over 50s, led by the effervescent John Thompson, a much respected lay preacher at OSP, and regular meetings of the highly successful T-Time group for transpeople. The centre was however largely empty for lengthy periods, and when I (Tom) heard McCull’s voice rattling Civil Service-style down a first floor telephone, I wondered whether anybody was listening at the other end.

McCull was highly prescriptive during his teaching of the induction course, and he cut off most questions without proper reply. The most frequently asked question was ‘Why are gay people so nasty to each other?’ but Mitch gave that one extremely short shrift.

A camp, middle aged man, better suited to the chic first floor of Café Habana, asked, “Aren’t we being too politically correct about all of this?” and McCull swiftly changed the subject.

Eagle Allan visited the centre two more times, once to give McCull a copy of an LGBT version of the Creation Accounts that Allan and Tom had written, and the second time to see whether Mitch approved of the LGBT version, only for the Chief Executive to once again cut Allan off with scant response.

Allan soon learnt that there were no, or very few, clients for the volunteers to advise. McCull had spun his wheels by ‘training’ several dozen volunteers while the response from the LGBT Community was close to zero in terms of clients.

Nevertheless, Prime Time decided to honour ‘Mitch McCull’ with a reception, and John Thompson cooked a delicious cake. The Prime Time members, a talkative mixture of the geriatric and the uniquely eccentric, waited a full hour for Mitch to appear. Finally, Mitch poked his head around the door, preened himself, smiled curtly, and said, “I needed to spend more time training volunteers.”And then he was away up the stairs again.

The LGBT Centre for Health and Well-Being closed around the end of 2007 when the lottery funding ran out, and Mitch McCull vanished to a totally different sort of position on a different sort of space.

When short-term funding came through in October 2008, the lonely, incoming Chief Executive Maruska Greenwood was able to appoint a small staff and re-open the centre (Greenwood, 2022). Maruska was hard-working with a strong track record, and well-supported by her partner, the community activist Kate Fearnley. The couple had worked as activists for SHRG and helped to organize the first Lark in the Park in 1988 (see section 5.2)

The outlook for the LGBT centre was a bit bleak owing to the national 2008 financial crisis, but Maruska was to head the centre for 14 years. When the first multi-year funding came through it was from NHS Lothian. Advice on AIDS/HIV was instead provided by Gay Men’s Health on Union St. and HIV Scotland on York Place.

The now resurrected organization built on the previous success of the T-Time trans group with the supportive space ME & T Monthly, but suffered from the dearth of community-facing work, the lack of track record, the very low public profile under the ‘McCull’ administration, and the lack of focus in the community as to which projects might be worth working on.

Maruska’s early focus on older LGBT people was driven by her many years of working in the dementia field. Other staff were instrumental in developing initiatives around arts, physical activity, LGBT parenting, and on focussing with Maruska on improving mental and emotional health. The people in the centre were soon to develop a local reputation for providing excellent advice (e.g. Louise W., personal communication)

Some pilot initiatives and important areas of work could not be sustained, such as exploratory work on drug and alcohol issues, and a pilot project supporting LGBT people with learning difficulties. But Maruska and her colleagues worked hard to re-establish an LGBT centre in Glasgow, following its demise in 2009, again with considerable success.

In 2020, the Edinburgh Centre moved into much more suitable and less grandiose premises at 4 Duncan Place, Leith. Then Mark Kelvin was appointed the new Chief Executive of the centre upon Maruska’s retirement in 2022. Mark had dedicated much of his career to mitigating the impact of health inequalities. The collection of children’s books at Duncan Place is superb.

To the delight of Edinburgh’s queer community, Maruska Greenwood was awarded an OBE in the 2023 New Years Honours List, a tremendous, lasting achievement. The OBE recognised the importance of the centre’s work tackling LGBT health inequalities, including its work on older people, mental health, trans issues and more recently asylum seekers and refugee refugees.

Maruska Greenwood (2022)Retiring Chief Executive’s journey with LGBT Health and Well-being (LGBT Health&Wellbeing) https://www.lgbthealth.org.uk/news/lgbt-health-history-ceo/ Accessed 23 February 2023