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Funded by the Web Science Institute stimulus fund this project explores Southampton lesbian people’s sense of community in relation to increased reliance on digital spaces to support social ties and intimate practices, during and after the covid-19 pandemic. It questions how a sense of community is maintained and how the digital architecture of spaces impacts on existing ties; mapping a process of transformation of both space and community as lesbian people seek to maintain social connections through online spaces. Much has been written about gay men’s use of digital technology in facilitating community and intimacy, including during the current pandemic (Hakim, Young and Cummings, 2021; Mowlabocus, 2016) but lesbians remain underrepresented in this literature.

The project notes the hybridity of space and community (Simons, 2019), and the shifting balance of online/offline connection over time. This allows insights into the community life of members of a sexual minority in a UK city in times of social change and crisis (Ellis, 2007). The project will engage with topics of intimacy, meanings of online and offline space, social connection, romance and sex, community practices, identity, safety, health and wellbeing.

Southampton is a small city with a recently established (2016) Pride, and a very limited LGBTQ scene centred on one pub, one club, and one café. Southampton’s limited community spaces, and limited social spaces for lesbian people specifically, the impact of the pandemic on face-to-face socialising, the opportunities digital technologies offer to access social spaces disconnected from geographical location, and the proximity of Brighton and Hove, (the “gay capital of the UK”, Browne and Bakshi, 2011: 180) mean this site allows unique insight into a liminal, moving, and flexible group of people (Browne, 2008). Previous research on safety and belonging, centred on bar and club communities (for e.g Emslie, Lennox and Ireland, 2017; Pritchard, Morgan and Sedglet, 2002; Skeggs, 1999), will be reexplored in light of the mental health and wellbeing impact of closure of physical LGBTQ social spaces due to COVID-19 (Baumel et al, 2021; Ellis, 2007; McLaren, 2009). The project will scrutinise the accessibility of ‘free’ online spaces (Browne and Bakshi, 2011: O’Riordan, 2005) compared to the ‘commercial’ and community offline spaces (Binnie and Skeggs, 2004; Haslop, Hill and Schmidt, 1998) and discover whether the contested and slippery term ‘community’ (Formby, 2020) has salience to lesbian people’s understanding of online and offline space, and their individual wellbeing and connection to others.

Drawing on the project team’s expertise in Sociology and Geography, co-produced with reference to the needs and priorities of local community partners, The Art House Café, this creative qualitative study has four key aims:
1. To understand how online and offline hybridity might be built into future community, wellbeing and social provision by local community interest companies (CICs) (see external collaborator statement) and identify barriers to accessing both online and offline space for communities served by them.
2. To understand how the different architecture of online and offline social and community spaces shape the sense of safety, inclusion and intimacy lesbian people report and identify where they are underserved to inform future provision by the Art House Cafe.
3. To identify the priorities and beliefs in what is needed for lesbian community to flourish across community and commercial, online and offline space, according to those who facilitate or provide this and how this compares to the expectations and needs of lesbian people to identify areas for improvement that external partners can address.