Clear Channel UK partners with the University of the West of England’s New Wave collective to amplify LGBTQIA+ voices

Exploring various themes from across the LGBTQIA+ community, including the changing language around loneliness across age groups and queer love, students collaborated to create 2D works of art that incorporate their artistic flare. The artwork will be displayed around the city of Bristol until the end of the year, creating a public art gallery for passersby to enjoy while on the go.  

As one of the UK’s leading Out of Home media and infrastructure companies, we’re a very physical part of the communities we serve. This means not only acting as a Platform for Brands but as a Platform for Good, working with organisations to support powerful campaigns, that promote causes that matter. We see this as a privilege and hope that by amplifying these voices we help create a more understanding world. 

Continue reading below to discover more about what these students hope to convey in their own words. 

AWARENESS OF LONELINESS  

By Aria Scaramagli & Simone Marconi   

Through a visual representation of abstract matters, such as feelings and emotions tied to loneliness and its side effects, the artwork speaks to the viewers with an intrinsic language that evokes a precise state of mind. Using a dichromatic pattern of lines together with full and empty spaces, recalling a sense of nostalgia and hope, attempting to communicate with the passers-by sending an unexplicit message to the community: Loneliness is all around us. 

Due to the juvenile nature of the city, the issue does not seem relevant or diffused, but by  digging deeper into the data, we can discover there are 48,523 elderly individuals living alone in Bristol. Inspiring the onlookers to pause and reflect on the artwork, they highlight that not all that glitters is gold; loneliness, as the artwork, is not intelligible at first glance but is profound and recurrent over the long term. 

Lines and shapes recall urban nettings and immaterial borders. Almost like a neuronal network, the design links the most pungent marks with the softer ones, portraying the struggle that solitude entails, and simulating awareness and conversations around it.

QUEER JOY 

By Abbie Rayner 

I chose to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community with this piece. The LGBTQIA+ community provides me and so many others with the safety that we deserve, and yet LGBTQIA+ individuals continue to be marginalised and discriminated against within the UK and across the world. Much progress has been made but there is so much more to be done, and I hope that this portrait existing in a public setting will help to destigmatise what it means to be LGBTQIA+.”

WE ARE HERE 

By Rhian Lister, Angelina Morris, Molly Wilson & Sasha Fowler 

We focussed our project on the community in Bristol. Taking visual snippets from the local mark-making and graffiti that we see around us every day, the vibrancy of our city, whilst also depicting our own identities and the array of individuality that exists within Bristol. Inspired by the Welsh phrase “Yma O Hyd”, which translates to “We Are Here”.