One club, for the whole of you.
The Black Boy Joy Club is a place for Black LGBTQI+ adults in London to reflect, share joy, find support, and just be. We're built around a simple idea: you shouldn't have to leave any part of yourself at the door.
Every piece belongs.
BBJC is a wellbeing club for Black LGBTQI+ adults in London — thirties and forties at its heart, the whole adult range welcome. Wellbeing in the round: kitchen tables, walks, talkbacks, and theatre nights, our signature. A Community Interest Company, founded and directed by Mark Banfield — member-led, guided by a board.
How the work makes the change.
Black queer adults in London are already making joy — cooking for each other, filling theatre rows, checking in, turning up. What's been missing was never the will to gather; it's somewhere for that to live regularly — a way of holding space for us. Too many spaces ask us to bring one part of ourselves and leave the rest at the door. BBJC exists to give the whole of us one warm, standing place to be well together.
So we don't run services people have to qualify for. We build a club people belong to.
- Because the bar to involvement is low and the welcome is high — people come.
- Because the programme is in the round — food, movement, culture, conversation, one-to-one support — everyone finds the door that fits them.
- Because we practise reciprocity, not transaction — people stay, and start holding the space for each other and us.
The change. Belonging, practised regularly, is what does the work. People tell us they sleep better, feel less alone, carry their health more confidently, and move from the edge of things into the middle of a community they help run — a club that outlasts any single programme because it belongs to its members.
This page is a working draft, written to describe the club as it stands. Mark's own words on how BBJC began — and where he wants it to go — will sit alongside this once we've had the conversation.