Description:
Our House Body Positive valued the services offered by Open Door which was open weekday daytimes, but it was felt there was a need for a peer led service operating at weekends. The very first meeting took place in January 1991 at a Hereford Court flat on Lavender Street, and for the first six months the group met in people’s homes where a Sunday lunch would be cooked by the host, supported by other members of the group.
After six months we were able to use a social services family centre building (now demolished) in Ivory Place, off Morley Street for our Sunday lunches. This gave us use of a fully equipped commercial kitchen, and sufficient space to expand. The group was a varied mix of male, female, varied ethnicities, straight, gay, positive and untested supporters which allowed people of different backgrounds to get to know each other and to support one another. The management of the building would not allow us to use their plates, cups or cutlery, so we had our own which we took to and from the centre each Sunday. The larger space allowed us to have themed discussions or a speaker after lunch each week, and the room to invite a variety of complementary therapists to offer their services (something that I managed). As the group grew along with its ambitions, we realised that a more organised structure was needed, so one Sunday we held a group workshop to explore what this might entail alongside things like a constitution and named officers. Some of our early active members (including Steven Chartwell and David Lambourne) disagreed with this development and felt it was time to leave the group. The experience of the Sussex AIDS Centre and Helpline locally and larger national groups made some people wary of ‘creeping corporate bureaucracy’.
In early Spring 1993, we were able to lease a small suite of two rooms, kitchenette and toilets above the old fruit and vegetable market in Circus Street, and appointed Paul Overton (pictured in Circus Street) as our first salaried Chair. This allowed us to expand our services and the support we could provide, but we could no longer have Sunday lunches, so the anarchic homely nature of the group began to change. Around this time ‘Our House BP’ with its homely logo, changed its name to Brighton Body Positive. Although this was a clearer name which no longer required explanation, it came without the ownership implied in ‘Our’, or the homeliness implied in ‘House’.
In 2006 the group moved to Community Base on Queens Road, but by then it’s identity as a self-help group had completely changed to a professional organisation beholden to the demands of its funders (social services, local council, etc). Several years later around 2010 it finally closed its doors. For a couple of years, it’s archive was kept in a portacabin at the Sussex Beacon, but sadly this has since been lost.
Jim Stanford
Paul Overton at the Our House Body Positive office in Circus Street - 1993
Unpacking at the newly leased Our House Body Positive office on Circus Street
Our House Body Positive marching at London Europride 1992
