Trans Day of Remembrance 2025
This year we took a participatory approach, involving those who attended Trans Angel workshops and the TDoR vigil to share the reading of speeches and poetry in more of a circle at the Trans Angel, without an audience / panel setting. We shared music that was played at the funerals of members of our crew and the closing reflection was the voice of our friend Jamie Wildman performing in ‘Carnation for a Song’ a musical LGBTIQ+ Elders community project at the Young Vic in 2019. Below is a transcript of the vigil.
Music: ‘Look at me’ Tom Rasmussen
PART 1 – NEAL
Introduction to Trans Day of Remembrance
Hi, I’m Neal, Board of Directors at STAR Support.
Trans Day of Remembrance, marked each year on 20 November, is a global observance honouring the memory of trans people whose lives were taken through acts of violence. It began in 1999 following the murder of Rita Hester, and has since grown into an annual act of reflection and collective mourning. This year our global community come together today to mourn the 281 Trans+ people who have been killed this year, the majority of whom were trans women of colour, and one third of whom were sex workers. Trans Day of Remembrance offers a space to remember them and to recognise the continued need for protection, visibility, and solidarity.
PART 2 – DANI AND SALMA
Introduction to Crossbones Garden of Remembrance
We are here today at Crossbones Garden of Remembrance, a space that holds the memories of thousands who lived and died on the margins of society. For centuries, this ground was known as a burial place for those considered ‘outcasts’. Among them were the Winchester Geese women who worked in the licensed brothels of the Liberty of the Clink, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. Although their work was permitted, they were denied burial in consecrated ground.
Crossbones became the place where many of them were laid to rest, along with children, the poor, and others excluded from formal burial rites. When the site was rediscovered during archaeological works in the 1990s, the community came together to reclaim it as a space of dignity and remembrance it is today. It now stands as a public garden honouring those whose lives were outcast and marginalised.
PART 3 – CARLA
The Trans Angel – Remembering Our Trans+ Family
Hi, I’m Carla, the co-founder of The Outside Project and STAR Support.
In 2022, The Outside Project commissioned the Trans Angel sculpture within the Crossbones Graveyard. Created by artists Svar Simpson and Lola Lancaster the sculpture is constructed from cement fondu over a steel and scaffolded armature. We love how indestructible it is – an eternal memorial to all trans people globally who have died as a result of transphobic and systemic violence, our friends and queer family and all those unknown to us. We commissioned the Trans Angel to make space for our outsider community following the suicide of SAL, a young person we lived with at The Outside Project shelter during the COVID pandemic.
We remember our friend and founding member of our crew, the much loved Billy Quiet who also died by suicide in 2021. Since the Trans Angel installation we have lost LGBTIQ+ Centre member Jay Gabriel and last December, Outside Project and Star Support cofounder Maari Nastari, both also to suicide.
There’s nothing any of us could do to know the suffering they experienced in their lives, or to know the suffering any of us experience when we’re alone and we have to forgive ourselves and each other for that. The suffering of our community is not our fault.
We say stand up fight back, to fight for the living – but how can we do this?
By making life as beautiful for yourself and each other as it can possibly be. By being kind to ourselves – resting, being proud of who we are and of our dreams for the future. Fighting like hell for the living starts with loving ourselves. That love you have for yourself will radiate out into your friends, queer family, our elders and youth who see you – this will help them to feel love for themselves too – and it will turn the world into our allies.
When Maari died, several people shared this poem with me, written by Maya Angelou for her friend and activist James Baldwin. As we read this poem we invite you all to come up and light candles and write the names of those you would like us to think of on the lanterns –
PART 4 – COMMUNITY READING:
Reading of Maya Angelou’s Poem "When Great Trees Fall"
KYRA
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
NAZIR
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
CHAVALA
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of
dark, cold caves.
MATTHEW
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be better.
For they existed.
PART 5 – KUBILAY
Remembering All Unknown Refugees
Hi I’m Kubilay, I’m the Lead Worker at The Outside Projects LGBTIQ+ Centre – a space that is not just accessible to refugees but has been created to centre their needs and their dreams. In our work at the centre and in our crisis housing, the majority of people have come to us from experiences of persecution and violence. We see our community’s incredible courage and survival – rebuilding lives from nothing, finding pride and a future where it seemed there was none.
Today we make space to remember those who never reached safety. The countless refugees who lost their lives seeking what every human being deserves: a place to live without fear, to love openly, and to belong. Those who were lost on dangerous journeys, trapped by borders, or turned away from safety. We won’t know their names, but we know that their lives mattered and they are part of our shared human story at this time in history. My heart goes out to my Trans sisters and brothers in my home country, Turkey, who are fighting every day just to exist. And to those who don’t have the privilege like I did. I hope one day we don’t have to leave our beautiful homelands just to be ourselves.
As we remember them today, we are reminded that their deaths are not inevitable. They are the result of choices, of systems and policies that make safety intentionally hard to reach. Let our remembrance be more than mourning. Let it be a promise that we will not look away, that we will continue to build spaces that are welcoming and compassionate, that we will continue to fight for the living until no one has to risk their life to reach safety or to live in their truth.
Thankyou.
PART 6 – CARLA
Closing Reflection
For our closing reflection I want to share the words of Jamie Wildman. A trans elder who meant a lot to so many people here in London. Who came out as non-binary at 69 years old. A true transestor that I feel love and strength from every day.
This will be followed by ‘you’ll never walk alone’ which is actually a Liverpool Football Fan anthem but also Billie Quiets anthem – so do sing along if you know the words. You are all very welcome to take space here, share your own words and poetry, the graveyard will be open until 7pm.
JAMIE
Carnation For A Song Recording (play from 54:09)
Music:
You’ll never walk alone – Gerry & the pacemakers
Look at me – Tom Rasmussen
Somewhere Over the Rainbow – Judy Garland
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> VIGIL ENDS <
