Reflecting on the first Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence symposium

In July, Guildhall School hosted the first symposium of the pioneering Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence (TVCE), produced in partnership with Guildhall’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team and the De-Centre for Socially Engaged Practice and Research. The TVCE, an international network of queer and trans+ researchers, is a project outcome from Dr Tōmei June Bacon’s research residency with the School.

This inaugural symposium, curated by Dr Bacon and the TVCE, comprised a day of interdisciplinary presentations by artists, scholars, activists and community members. The symposium's theme, 'Queer Acts of Hope', focused on celebrating trans+ lived experience, creativity and academic research. 

More than 160 delegates joined the symposium across both an in-person event at the School’s Milton Court building and a parallel programme online, with 45 participants presenting in a range of de-centred formats, including ‘unpanels’ and ‘fragmented papers’, meditations and workshops, music and archive creation, interactive sessions, and one-to-one interventions.

Following the symposium, we caught up with Dr Tōmei June Bacon to reflect on the success of this inaugural event and look forward to the future of the TVCE.

Tell us about the Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence (TVCE) and its inaugural symposium, Queer Acts of Hope.

The seeds of the Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence (TVCE) were sown in late 2022 when I began reaching out to trans+ colleagues across the UK, Europe, Canada and the US to ask: What would it mean to create a space that truly centres us? Not just a network, but a site of care, scholarship, resistance and dreaming. That vision took root slowly, in dialogue with community – and in 2024, I formally founded TVCE.

The inaugural symposium, Queer Acts of Hope, is the first expression of that vision in public form – a gathering of trans+ thinkers, artists, allies and advocates coming together across distance and difference to celebrate our creativity, confront our political realities, and sustain each other through shared acts of hope. It marks the beginning of what we imagine to be a reoccurring event, growing and evolving alongside the TVCE collective.

I’ve had the honour of co-leading TVCE in 2024/25 with Halo Starling, Professor Susan Hansen and Dr Roan Runge. Roan, who continues with me as we move into year two, has been invaluable in helping to programme and develop the symposium this year. Their unwavering clarity and care have helped anchor the TVCE in justice-led and community-focused values. Curating this year, we designed the in-person programme to bring together artists, researchers, performers and provocateurs whose practices open space for connection, grief, joy, resistance, friction and transformation. The event wasn’t simply about continuing the traditions of conference, it was experimental in its modes of delivery and the how the voices of those present could participate with one another. To that end, we asked presenters to attempt to disseminate their research in alternative methods that could de-centre the didactic nature that can typically dominate such events.

Crucially I wanted to ensure that our virtual programme wasn’t an after-thought to this experience. Here community and conversation for our online attendees was equally important as for those in person. TVCE member Dr Sammy Holden’s visionary approach ensured that our virtual space wasn’t just an echo of the in-person strand. Their curation and live hosting honoured our foundations with a fully distinct and equally rich offering – attentive to access, community care and the specific possibilities of remote gathering. These two strands ran in parallel: not identical, but relational, each grounded in the ethics that guide all of TVCE’s work.

At its heart, this symposium was about making space – for trans+ people and our kin; for those whose voices are often marginalised or erased; for intersectional solidarities across race, class, disability, gender and geography; and for a kind of academic and artistic gathering where care is methodology and hope is action.

This was just the beginning and as with any start we will continue to learn and grow. But it’s a beginning shaped by many hands and that’s what gave it life and vibrancy. 

Why was it important to create a space like the TVCE within Higher Education?

Too often UK Higher Education Institutions who may utilise the LGBTQ+ community as case studies when seeking accredited awards for diversity forget we are also valuable colleagues. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) team at Guildhall lead by Mohammed Ilyas understands this and is working incredibly hard to make meaningful change that fosters care and embeds progressive methodologies of inclusion. So, where we have been researched, referenced, footnoted – but rarely centred, rarely held – Mohammed and his team are making strides to ensure we have a voice and that progressive change is possible. This is why beginning at Guildhall has been very important to the journey of the TVCE. 

The Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence exists as a refusal of neglectful models across a range of intersectional concerns. It insists that trans+ people – and our allies and co-conspirators – deserve spaces where our thinking, our art making, our methodologies and our lived knowledges are not just permitted, but vital. In a time of escalating hostility, moral panic and structural erasure, we need sites of collective affirmation. And we need them to be intellectually rigorous, politically fierce, emotionally generous and unapologetically hopeful. This is also why the TVCE is uniquely interdisciplinary as there is strength in ensuring that our community is not siloed by subject or faculty.

This is especially important in academic contexts, where trans+ scholars and students are navigating not only the broader climate of anti-trans violence and censorship, but the institutional pressures of precarity, marginalisation and erasure. Creating dedicated spaces like TVCE allows us to reimagine what any given academy could be: a place of community-rooted knowledge production, a space where care is recognised as a scholarly practice, and where interdependence is understood as strength, not liability.

What we’re building isn’t just for trans+ people. It’s with our allies, our advocates and folk from our communities – those who share in the labour of making a better academic future. And it’s intersectional by design: because trans liberation is incomplete without racial justice, without disability justice, without economic justice. Our voices are not singular, and neither is our struggle. That’s why we build together.

To create a space like this is an act of resistance – but also of imagination. It says: we can do this differently. And we are testing and exploring that with genuine curiosity and openness. As I said at the symposium in my opening and closing remarks, “the hardest part is showing up” but if we all continue to do that and we encourage a diversity of voices to emerge, together we will be stronger. 

How did you approach curation and community care for Queer Acts of Hope?

We adopted a de-centred approach, embracing collaboration and shared leadership. Working closely with Guildhall School of Music & Drama’s De-Centre for Socially Engaged Practice & Research was vital, especially with the invaluable support of Sophie Hope and Sean Gregory. And our approach to access and care was embedded throughout the event, supported by Guildhall’s dedicated DEI team.

Special thanks go to Tom Tanner, whose expert production management ensured everything ran smoothly, alongside his DEI colleague Charlotte Claydon, whose contributions made the event possible and helped shape its ethos. A special thank you also needs to be made here to my colleagues Pete Wallace, Rachel Kellet, Melissa Bonnelame, Jon Mayse, Meg Jordan, Victoria Karlsson, Michał Kawecki, Rachel Young and respectively Helen Knights’ and Dylan Bate’s teams for ensuring the day ran smoothly. 

Our curation was rooted in fostering collective hope, not just within the trans+ community but alongside allies and accomplices. This collective care was the foundation on which we built the programme’s artistic and academic offerings, with the goal of sustaining and amplifying intersectional solidarities.

What feedback did you receive from participants?

The response has been deeply moving and affirming. Speakers travelled from across the UK and as far as Malaysia, Europe, US and Canada to present. Attendees – from trans+ community members to allies and advocates – expressed profound gratitude for a space that felt truly held, heard and seen.

What has been especially celebrated is how we embraced the rich possibility of trans+ identities without policing gender, creating a space that welcomed people from a myriad of backgrounds, and allowed them to attend with family and friends. This openness fostered a powerful sense of collective belonging and community care.

Many attendees also appreciated the opportunity to step into a Higher Education Institution space, but without feeling overwhelmed by academic jargon or exclusivity. Every presenter made conscious efforts to keep their work accessible and open to all, which created an environment where scholarship, art and activism could intersect in meaningful and welcoming ways.

Feedback highlighted how the symposium’s focus on hope as a radical, collective practice that still held difficult conversations rather than passive optimism, resonated deeply, offering renewed energy and resilience amidst challenging times. People valued the rich, interdisciplinary mix of voices and experiences, describing the event as a rare and vital in an HEI space where their whole selves could be present and flourish.

Many expressed eagerness to see this symposium continue as an annual event, recognising its vital role in nurturing ongoing networks of support, creative resistance and collective hope.

Overall, the warmth, enthusiasm and sense of possibility expressed by participants reaffirm that what we are building together is not only necessary – it’s transformative.

What comes next for TVCE and the symposium?

The inaugural symposium marks just the beginning of an ongoing journey. We are deeply committed to making the TVCE a living, breathing community that sustains connection, care and collective action. Our gatherings will continue annually, whether in-person, virtually or a hybrid form, expanding in scope and reach, always shaped by the evolving needs and voices of our community. Each iteration will be unique as we explore how best to unlock the critical mass potential of a rich and diverse tapestry of academic voices for a wider audience.

Beyond the symposium, we maintain vibrant online spaces designed to foster ongoing dialogue, mutual support and collaborative projects. These spaces are intentionally virtual, interdisciplinary and access-conscious, welcoming trans+ people in HEIs alongside allies, advocates and accomplices from diverse backgrounds and geographies.

Our commitment is to encourage our membership to circulate trans+ knowledge and creativity widely – beyond traditional academic or institutional gatekeeping.

Ultimately, the TVCE is about sustaining queer hope and radical care as collective practices that extend far beyond any single event – inviting all who share this vision to keep building, dreaming and resisting together.

The TVCE Monthly meetings convene from September to June and we continue to welcome expressions of interest from new members: https://tinyurl.com/transvce