Leicestershire LGBTQ+ Centre celebrates historic anniversary
Leicestershire LGBTQ+ Centre, one of Britian’s longest running organisations for the community, celebrates a historic 50th anniversary in 2026. This Autumn, the centre marks half a century of operation, and looks forwards towards a new chapter with its first patron, Katie Neeves, and a newly appointed Centre Manager, Dr Gemma Marmalade.
The organisation, preously known as 'Gayline' was orginally a helpline, run from a front room by seven volunteers with just £25, offering LGBTQ+ people somewhere to turn to when they needed advice, support or just a friendly voice at the end of the line. Over the five decades that followed its conception, the organisation has supported LGBTQ+ people, challenged discrimination and been foremost in LGBTQ+ provision both locally and nationally.
In it’s first year, 1976, Gayline answered 345 calls from LGBTQ+ people seeking connection and support. It was run entirely by volunteers and privately funded by its members, and became one of the first LGBT telephone helplines outside of London.
In 1983, Gayline made the UK’s first television public-service announcement by an LGBT organisation; calls subsequently rose dramatically, exceeding 10,000 within 12 months. The following year it became the first organisation of its kind to receive central government funding, and in 1985 they opened what the Leicestershire LGBTQ+ Centre records as the first service-led lesbian and gay centre outside of the capital city.
During its time, the organisation has led local responses to HIV and AIDS; produced work on Section 28 that was cited during House of Lords debates; pioneered a hate-crime reporting initiative with Leicestershire Police (that influenced schemes elsewhere); conducted major research into local LGBTQ+ health and social-care needs; and worked with health partners to improve LGBTQ+-inclusive care.
Today, Leciestershire LGBTQ+ Centre serves Leicester, Leciestershire and Rutland providing: counselling, specialist domestic-abuse support, social and support groups, outreach, advocacy, practical support and guidance, health and wellbeing initiatives and opportunities. What’s more, its Untold Stories project recorded more than 100 LGBTQ+ oral histories, while later initiatives included nationally recognised support for young transgender people and services for LGBTQ+ asylum seekers.
Their work only continues to grow with the Centre's latest published accounts reporting that attendance across its social and support groups more than doubled in 2024/25, from 704 to 1,731.
Speaking on both the progress and the experiences LGBTQ+ people continue to face, Katie Neeves, the Centre’s first patron said: “There shouldn’t have to be a need for LGBTQIA+ centres, but with hateful rhetoric increasing against our community, such centres are needed now, more than ever. It’s quite an achievement that Leicestershire LGBTQ+ Centre has been a beacon of hope, inclusion and empowerment for LGBTQIA+ people in Leicestershire for half a century and I couldn’t be more proud to be its Patron.”
Dr Marmalade adds: “There is something extraordinary about being entrusted with this organisation at its 50-year point. I don’t see my role as arriving to write a new story over the old one. I inherit fifty years of courage, knowledge, activism, care and extraordinary voluntary labour, and my responsibility is to understand it, protect what matters and help the people around the Centre imagine what comes next.
“The seven people who gathered around a telephone in 1976 could not have known what their act of care would become. But the principle behind it remains remarkably contemporary: when LGBTQ+ people need somewhere to turn, somebody should be there.
“The next fifty years have to be as ambitious as the first. That means listening closely to our communities, reaching people we aren’t yet reaching, developing services in response to real need, strengthening partnerships across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, and continuing to make the case for a society in which LGBTQ+ people don’t simply survive, but belong and thrive.”
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