What we believe, and how we behave.
Five things we hold to. Behind each one sits a formal policy — but the values are what we say to each other, in our own words, when nobody's reading the small print.
We start with welcome.
Anyone who wants to be here, is. The bar to first contact is low. We don't ask people to prove themselves before we let them in.
We do reciprocity, not transaction.
What we give each other isn't traded. It's offered, received, and remembered. The club has been built by people turning up for each other — that's the culture we're protecting.
We hold the table.
The programme is in the round — kitchen-table conversations, theatre nights, walks, readings, talkbacks. We meet people where they are. We don't lecture.
We honour the dual.
Being Black and being LGBTQI+ in London is not two stories. It's one. We refuse the split — and we make space for the whole.
We grow members, not numbers.
We'd rather be small and known to each other than large and abstract. We measure ourselves on the depth of the relationships, not the count of attendees.
The formal policies.
These are the documents that turn the values above into commitments — the ones we follow, the ones funders ask about, the ones members can hold us to. The policies in place are available on request.