I’ve spent a lot of time recently writing about fear, about the world feeling darker, about the rhetoric that’s crept back into public conversation, about what it means to be LGBTQ+ right now and sit with that unease. So when I say that last night at the Queer Student Awards in Manchester felt like a genuine exhale, I mean it in the most specific way possible.

I was there to capture the highlights of the evening for the awards, smartphone in hand, moving through a room full of young queer people being celebrated for the things they’re doing in their schools, their colleges, their communities. And honestly, I wasn’t entirely prepared for how it was going to feel.

The Queer Student Awards, founded by Steve Keith, exists to recognise the contributions of LGBTQ+ students across the UK, the ones who are setting up GSAs, running awareness campaigns, supporting their peers, making noise in spaces that don’t always make it easy for them. The youngest winner on the night was 14. Fourteen. And when his name was called, he jumped up and ran to hug his mum, and I think that image is going to stay with me for a very long time.

Because here’s the thing about that… We are living through a period where young LGBTQ+ people are being told, in various ways and from various directions, that their existence is up for debate, that their identities are a problem to be managed, a conversation to be had, a policy to be reviewed. And in the middle of all of that, a 14 year old boy is standing in a room in Manchester being cheered for being exactly who he is and doing something extraordinary with it.
That tension, between the world as it is and the world as it should be, stuck with me all evening.

What struck me most was the energy in the room. These weren’t people waiting for permission to exist or to act… they were already acting, already building, already showing up for each other in ways that many adults twice their age haven’t managed. There’s something both humbling and hopeful about being in a space like that, particularly when the broader conversation around LGBTQ+ rights feels so relentless and so exhausting.

I’ve written recently about fear, about Tip Toe, about the violence that hides behind little things. And I stand by all of it. But last night reminded me that alongside the fear there is also a generation of young queer people who are not waiting for things to get better before they start making them better. They’re doing it now, in classrooms and common rooms and school corridors, often with very little support and a great deal of courage.

The highlights video is coming soon, and I can’t wait to share it. But in the meantime, if you haven’t come across the Queer Student Awards before, go and find them – what Steve and the team have built is something really important, and last night was proof of that.

Some rooms you leave feeling heavier. Last night wasn’t one of them.