00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name's Theo Hewson-Betz and today I'm very excited to say
00:04that we're going to be going to one of the best, most friendly places here in Manchester
00:07and that is the Social Refuge, just above the Northern Quarter. You can see it behind me here.
00:12We're going to go in and we're going to learn a little bit about the story of the place,
00:15which not only is a brilliant cafe filled with awesome coffee and cakes, but also an amazing
00:21queer bookshop. I loved reading. I really enjoyed queer literature, although I struggled to find it.
00:26I went to a big bookshop in Manchester, the biggest in the north in fact, and I asked if they could
00:34point me into the direction of the LGBTQ plus section and they told me they didn't have a
00:38section. But I know there's places like Gaze the Word down in London that's a bookshop that's been
00:42there for nearly 40 years. They've been there and kind of really holding up the queer community as
00:48far as literacy is concerned. So I thought maybe this needs to happen in the north. So we started
00:53online and then soon progressed to a little shop down on Tibb Street and that we started with about
00:581400 books and we just so, you know, quickly outgrew that space. We're there for about two and a half
01:04years and we needed to get even bigger. The name says it all. So what people don't necessarily know
01:09is the venue that we're in now used to be a woman's refuge. It used to be a safe space for women
01:14many, many years ago and it hasn't been for a while. When I was envisioning what it was I wanted to
01:19create. I wanted to create a safe space for LGBTQ plus people, somewhere that we could come, just
01:25relax, have coffees, chill out, be ourselves, not have to put this facade up. And while I love the
01:31village, it has a very alcohol focus, big and loud focus. I wanted something that was the absolute
01:37opposite, something, somewhere relaxed, something where you could go with friends, somewhere you
01:41could find community, whether that be within the books, whether that be whilst having a coffee.
01:45And we found Heart and Graft, which is a Manchester-based roaster. They've been incredible
01:50because they've handheld us at the beginning of that journey all the way through. So no,
01:54having someone that was local, that had the same passion that we did was, it was just incredible
01:57finding that. I think we listened to what people were asking for and then we tried to deliver that.
02:02So we hope that the community would come and support us back as long as we kind of did what
02:06they needed. We wanted to do something that the village wasn't tapping into. So the village is
02:11incredible at doing things like drag performances and, you know, very loud things. We wanted to do
02:16the opposite. So we have a drag band here. We don't have drag queens here. Why? Because if you
02:21want that, go to the village. We do poetry nights, we do book launches, we do open mic nights. And so
02:27far, the turnouts have been exceptional, which means people want these events. They're just finding it
02:31hard to find them. I would say, regardless of whether you're queer or whether you're just finding,
02:36wanting to find somewhere that's part of a community, we've got everything going on here,
02:41come down, meet the folks and just kind of enjoy the space. So there you have it, a safe space for
02:45all and the perfect place to spend an afternoon relaxing, drinking brilliant coffee and having
02:50pretty indulgent chocolate cakes. Please come down and give it a try. Thank you very much to
02:55Matthew for talking to me and we'll see you again soon on Manchester World.
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