Our new project is our most ambitious to date and underlines our core aim when it comes to social and political issues. The ‘Disarm Hate x Poetry’ project has seen us commission 16 of the world’s leading LGBTQ poets to respond to the ‘Disarm Hate‘ documentary. The resulting album will be released digitally on 12 June, which marks five years since the Orlando massacre.

The poems will be interspersed with interview excerpts from the documentary, which feature on Ralph Stevens’ soundtrack album. We’ve worked in partnership with Rugged Entertainment in LA to create this as an official response to the documentary and are immensely proud and honoured to have been given this opportunity.

The album, entitled ‘We Will Keep On‘, will also be released on 2LP gatefold vinyl later in the summer. Both the vinyl and digital release are available to pre-order here. And thanks to some funding from Arts Council England, we’re able to split the profits between Contigo Fund in Florida and Stonewall UK. It’s vital to us that as much of this project as possible goes back into the LGBTQ community.

Our 16 poets are: Afshan D’souza Lodhi, Andrés Nicolás Ordorica, Andrew McMillan, Antonia Jade King, Buddy Wakefield, Dean Atta, Ella Otomewo, Emanuel Xavier, Joelle Taylor, Kay Ulanday Barrett, Keith Jarrett, lisa luxx, Oli Spleen, Ollie O’Neill, Patrizia Longhitano, and Reece Lyons.

We’ll be hosting some free virtual workshops with poets featured on the album. The first two are linked to a call-out for audio submissions, and the second two will be linked to a call-out for written submissions. For now, you can read more about the project in my latest The State of The Arts column.

The Orlando massacre sent shockwaves through the LGBTQ community. We wanted this album to represent a cross-section of that community and to hopefully provide a valuable contribution to the dialogue. It’s a major landmark for LGBTQ people around the globe and we’re overwhelmed by our poets’ final pieces.

A huge thank you to everybody that’s helped to make this a reality. Stay tuned for more…