Coran Foddering: Talking with Kathy Caton (on BBC) about GIRES, a Legacy of Kindness and the film Voices

Click hear to read the original blog post and listen to the talk

Programme originally broadcast on March 9, 2023. Full programme available on BBC Sounds for 28 days.

It’s really interesting what life brings to your door. A sequence of events conspired to bring me to GIRES, the Gender Identity Research & Education Society, in 2015. I was travelling to speak to Mark Carter on that Friday when I was invited to talk on live radio. June was with me and also talked about her experiences. Mark was wonderful; no challenge, nor was there any judgement. Just oodles of compassion and kindness coming from him and his co-presenter.

On that journey to the studio, Bernard happened to be talking about trans organisations, and specifically GIRES, to Mark, who was asking questions about being trans and the situation we face as individuals different to the many. I joined GIRES as a member sooner after, then became their website designer some while after.

In 2022, GIRES began a project that aimed to record the voices of those who were at the inception of the charity, and latterly, moving it into the future. Both Terry Reed, and Niki Reed, died in 2021 so this left Bernard to carry the flag. With the help of trans people, and allies, the charity began its own transformation, forming a new vision. And, although Bernard and Terry’s vision was about kindness, the project, A Legacy of Kindness, set about creating a better future for trans people out of the past.

In order to find new pathways, we have to know where we’ve been. With the other members of the project, I was tasked with recording some people with a video camera. We managed to build a resource of 15 videos plus many more audio recordings.

When the LGBT+ month came round again in 2023, it was decided to create a small film with the footage in that resource and screen that at the Cinema Museum on the 28th February 2023. It took me around two months to edit into the final 40 minute film. It is my hope that the film will have a life of its own, to be seen by the many, and to change perceptions, the same goal that GIRES set out to do at its inception.

Mark put me in touch with Kathy Caton on BBC Surrey & BBC Sussex who has a weekly programme dealing with LGBT+ topics. I had a wonderful opportunity to be on her show to describe something about me, a little of my philosophy, and the reasons why we produced Voices: Recording Trans History for the Future.

[Click through here to listen to] the recording of me on Kathy’s show. It is the copyright of BBC Radio Surrey. I am grateful to Kathy Caton, and Mark Carter, and the team at BBC Radio Surrey & BBC Radio Sussex.

 

Coran Foddering (right) speaking on a post-screening panel of the film VOICES, at Cinema Museum London.
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