Causing Trouble: A Queer Up North Panel Event

What should we learn from the past (and did Queer Up North learn anything from the past?). Or should we disregard the archive and just make things anew? What would we want the 2026 version of Queer Up North to look like in an ideal world?

The discussion will also consider the notion of cultural activism; Queer Up North in the perspective of wider activism and cultural change in the 80s and 90s – the era of AIDS, a vicious homophobic backlash and Section 28 in the UK.

The panel will raise the following provocations:

Provocation 1: QUN and cultural activism of the 90s. What was it like then?

Provocation 2: How might QUN be different if we were doing it now?

Provocation 3: Let’s disregard the archive, just dive in and ‘cause trouble’?

🎟️ Book your free tickets HERE 🎟️

Meet the Panel

Cheryl Martin – Moderator

Since January 2024, Cheryl’s been lucky enough to be Artistic Director at Red Ladder Theatre in Leeds.

Cheryl was a former Associate Director, New Writing/New Work at Manchester’s Contact Theatre and had loads of fun as Guest Curator for homotopia 2018. While Co-Artistic Director of Black Gold Arts, her company was part of the Liverpool Eurovision 2023 cultural festival – and loved it!

A Manchester Evening News Theatre Award winner as both writer [musical Heart and Soul, Oldham Coliseum Theatre] and director [Iron by Rona Munro, Contact], Cheryl’s solo stage show Alaska featured in 2016’s A Nation’s Theatre, & 2019’s Summerhall Edinburgh Fringe & London’s Wellcome Festival of Minds and Bodies. Her first poetry collection Alaska was longlisted for the 2015 Polari Prize.

Winner of an Unlimited Wellcome Collection Partnership Award for her film One Woman, she directed The Walk: A Sleeping Child for 2021’s Manchester International Festival, which launched the journey of the giant puppet Little Amal. She had a wild time directing Dominoes and Dahlias (+ Oware!) for the Royal Exchange Theatre in 2022 – still touring! – and won Best Age-Friendly Outreach in the Fantastic for Families Awards 2023.

Cheryl co-directed the Manchester Pride Candlelight Vigil for several years alongside Kate O-Donnell and Nathaniel Hall. She had a blast directing children’s show Alicia’s Amazing Adventure: Finding the First Black Britons, written by and starring Alicia McKenzie [Big Imaginations 2025].

And her next Red Ladder show, Close Enough to Touch by Henry Roberts, will be touring nationally October-November 2026 and February2027.

Alyson Campbell – Panellist

Alyson Campbell is a theatre director and dramaturg whose work spans a broad range of companies and venues in Australia, the UK and the US over the last 30+ years. Works include The Trouble with Harry, Catapult, GL RY, Cake Daddy and HOMO FOMO. https://www.alyson-campbell.com/ She is co-creator and lead artist of Feral Queer Camp: https://feralqueercamp.com/

Alyson is a Professor of Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, where her research, artistic practice as a director, teaching and activism converge around gender and sexuality, particularly queer performance and dramaturgies and contemporary representations of HIV and AIDS.

Topher Campbell – Panellist

Topher Campbell is an artist, filmmaker, writer, performer and curator whose work spans film, television, theatre, broadcasting, performance, installation and site-specific practice. His work explores sexuality, masculinity, race, human rights, memory and the city, with a particular focus on Black queer life and experience.

In 2000, Topher co-founded rukus! Federation with photographer Ajamu X, creating a platform for Black LGBTQ+ artists, creativity and community. Together, they established the rukus! archive, which collects and preserves the cultural, social and artistic histories of Black LGBTQ+ people in Britain.

His recent work includes My rukus! Heart, a major installation at Tate Modern exploring Black queer life through memory and archive, and Making a rukus!, an exhibition at Somerset House celebrating Black LGBTQ+ creativity, activism, community and resistance.

Topher’s work reflects a longstanding commitment to preserving queer histories, creating space for marginalised voices and exploring how art, archives and cultural gathering can become forms of resistance and collective memory.

Robert Pacitti – Panellist

Robert Pacitti (1967) trained in fine art before creating a body of live performance internationally, shaped by counterculture, sexual politics, and social activism. In 2007, he founded the SPILL Festival of Performance to present and contextualise experimental practices which then struggled for visibility in the UK. Across 10 large SPILL Festivals, he commissioned some of the world’s leading artists, shown alongside early makers. In 2010, he established the Think Tank, a building-based resource for applied research, diverse rolling events and community action. In 2021, after three decades of constant delivery he folded Pacitti Company, passed on SPILL, and stepped away.

This event was made possible thanks to generous funding and support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Granada Foundation.

Thanks to National Lottery players.