Trans Day of Remembrance Memorial Sculpture – Remembering All Unknown
TDoR Vigil 2025 : 20th November 5-7pm at Crossbones Graveyard. All welcome.
Sculpture by Svar Simpson and Lola Lancaster. Commissioned By The Outside Project, installed at Crossbones Graveyard in London For Trans Day Of Remembrance 2022 (TDoR)
About Crossbones Graveyard – A former post-medieval burial ground, Crossbones Graveyard & Garden of Remembrance is believed to be the last resting place of an estimated 15,000 paupers, many of whom were sex workers and children. The garden, led by local people, is designed to respect the outcast dead who are buried beneath. It provides a sensitive, contemplative environment for all who would spend time here.
Trans-Angel was commissioned by The Outside Project as a permanent memorial sculpture to Trans-people who have been murdered by acts of transphobia against them and all ‘unknown’ who have died due to systemic oppression and suicide. The sculpture was installed in the SouthWest corner of Crossbones Park for Trans Day of remembrance on the 20th November 2022. The day was marked by a service for the 300 (recorded) Trans-people murdered since the 20th November of the previous year. There was a ritual where the attending people laid a total of 300 bamboo sticks painted in pink, white and blue (the colours of the Trans flag), around the sculpture – then a reading and poetry to acknowledge Trans-souls across times, faiths and cultures.
Trans-Angel sits in the South-West corner of the park. The sun never reaches this corner. It shines from behind the sculpture, making a striking silhouette of the spikey wings, made of cement fondu modelled on a skeletal steel armature. As the exposed steel continues to rust, the iron oxide will ‘bleed’ into the moulded cement. There are telling scars embedded in the body, and a steel tattoo embedded in the left buttock. The figure itself however appears strong and protective, at the same time calm and melancholic. Both artists who made the angel are Trans and have worked with tireless empathy towards its creation. They hope there will be future work on the adjacent column, and around the base of the plinth.
TDoR Vigil 2025
TDOR 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
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
VIGIL ENDS
TDoR Vigil Archive:
Film By Conrad Armstrong, TDoR 2024
Film By Conrad Armstrong, TDoR 2023
Speech By Trans-Angel Sculptor, Svar Simpson, TDoR 2023
Welcome everyone. Here we all are today, for Trans Day of Remembrance – which is a day that remembers those Trans and Gender-Fluid-People who have been victims of Homicide. Firstly, I’d just like to say something personal about my own remembrance awareness – I started my transition over 25 years ago, and I tell you, I have experienced many traumatic Transphobic attacks, especially in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
When I was making the Trans-Angel last year, I felt it was my responsibility to create something deep enough and powerful enough, to be worthy of the sculpture’s significance, and the job it had to do with its material existence here in Crossbones Cemetery. I learned more and more about the horror and terror inflicted upon all those people who lost their lives to violence for being Trans. I was working in my studio, in a constant state of high – very mixed – emotion: Anger, Grief, Bewilderment, but above all PRIDE… I am so proud of all those who have lost their lives in the effort to go ahead and express their Trans-Gender-ness in dreadful precarious life situations. The making of the sculpture intended to encapsulate and reflect these emotions, but also somehow transcend them to express a protective calm power. The sculpture has thrived in its first year. This Trans-Angel has certainly found their place.
Along with my assistant Lola, (who can’t be here today, but sends “big Trans-Femme love to each and every one of us”) we praised their courage and vowed to always remember their contribution to our Trans Revolution.
The Trans Revolution is happening now, it is gaining momentum, and it can no longer be silenced.
It all started in 1999 by transgender advocate and Transgender Day of Remembrance founder Gwendolyn Ann Smith, as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998.
“Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.”
I want to relay some information about this years’ murders… Since monitoring began 15 years ago, there have been nearly 5000 recorded deaths. When I started writing this reading last week, it was 320…it’s now 327 transgender peoples’ lives have been lost to anti-transgender violence since November 20th last year. The vast majority of those killed were trans women or trans-feminine people, and a high percentage of those were black. Many of the victims were young. The age group with the most victims was 19 to 25 years old. Overall, those between 19 and 40 years old made up 79% of those reported killed. Almost 73 % of those tracked happened in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the epicentre of the problem being in Brazil, where nearly one-third (31%) occurred. There were also murders in Armenia, Belgium, and Slovakia reported for the first time.
In the U.K., the high-profile murder of young 16-year-old teenager Brianna Ghey in Glasgow is included. She would have turned 17 last week. This year, the number of deaths is down from 2021’s peak of 375 murders, but up from last year’s 273.
Reading the data and name list, the violence against the victims is stark. Though almost half (46%) of victims were shot, and many were beaten, stabbed and burned afterwards. This report is compiled by Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide. It was released last Monday 13th to mark the beginning of Trans Awareness Week.
The vigil now commemorates all the transgender people lost to violence since Rita Hester’s death and has become an international annual tradition.
We continue to demand increased and accurate media coverage of transgender people in their lives and in death. There are too many names of victims we know of whose lives have been taken due to anti-transgender violence for me to read out, and its important that these crimes are often are misreported, go underreported, or are not reported at all.
I’m going to finish with a poem by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Titled “The Moon is Trans”
The moon is trans.
From this moment forward, the moon is trans.
You don’t get to write about the moon anymore unless you respect that.
You don’t get to talk to the moon anymore unless you use her correct pronouns.
You don’t get to send men to the moon anymore unless their job is
to bow down before her and apologize for the sins of the earth.
She is waiting for you, pulling at you softly,
telling you to shut the fuck up already please.
Scientists theorize the moon was once a part of the earth
that broke off when another planet struck it.
Eve came from Adam’s rib.
Etc.
Do you believe in the power of not listening
to the inside of your own head?
I believe in the power of you not listening
to the inside of your own head.
This is all upside down.
We should be talking about the ways that blood
is similar to the part of outer space between the earth and the moon
but we’re busy drawing blood instead.
The moon is often described as dead, though she is very much alive.
The moon has not known the feeling of not wanting to be dead
for any extended period of time
in all of her existence, but
she is not delicate and she is not weak.
She is constantly moving away from you the only way she can.
She never turns her face from you because of what you might do.
She will outlive everything you know.
Speech By The Outside Project LGBTIQ+ Centre Manager, Laurel Uziell, TDOR 2023
Among the many that were lost to us this year, there is at least one notable absence for those of us attending this space from The Outside Project today. Jay Gabriel, who was a regular attendee of our LGBTIQ+ Centre, passed at the end of 2022. Jay was an integral member of the Outside Project community, and the wider trans community as a whole, and his death left a mark on us all. As a trans person, and as a black trans person especially, his early death conforms to the patterns of a social order we know too well, and confirms many of the worst feelings about the world we live in. Yet, his passing was by no means inevitable, and I believe we owe it to his memory to not let this drive us into despair, but rather to commit to holding one another in a world which can seem so hostile. Nothing will make his passing fair, or even make it make sense, but we have to continue to fight to make life liveable for the future and to care for each other in the present.
Our lives as trans people may seem fragile, to be unfairly and unevenly exposed to the coldness of the world, but as a community we know that we bring a strength and beauty that can’t be crushed. I would like us to take this time to remember Jay, and all those we lost who we knew, or knew of, or didn’t know at all, but also to hold space in our hearts for those currently being killed with the most indifferent brutality in Palestine.
One of the first lessons I learned as a trans person was how my freedom, as much as my suffering, is bound up with that of others, however far away and however abstract they may seem. And one of the lessons I learned as a Jewish person was that remembering always has to be bound up with a commitment to the future. The world can be different for trans people, for Black people, for colonised people, for disabled and mad people, and as much as the richness of the lives of those we miss, this is one thing we have to remember, in our heads and in our hearts.
Speech By Serge Nicholson, LGBTIQ+ Centre Team, TDOR 2022
Welcome to TDOR at Crossbones
We choose to include, and hold in our hearts the undocumented AND the unknown
dead, losses in our gender diverse and gender non-conforming community losses of
lives cut short by homelessness, ill health, suicide, poverty, no or very poor access to trans healthcare or mental health support, those with no means of migration or movement to safe and to all the systemic failings endured and suffered by our trans and gender diverse
brothers, sisters and siblings an NB niblings.
I will reference https://tgeu.org/ TDOR information release –
Today is a significant and sad day on the global trans and gender diverse calendar, we are here to commemorate our dead. 327 trans and gender-diverse people reported murdered in the past year. On occasion of the International Trans Day of Remembrance TGEU released the 2022 update of Trans Murder Monitoring. The year 2022 saw 327 reported murders of trans and gender-diverse people between 1 October 2021 and 30 September 2022. With 222 cases, Latin America and the Caribbean remains the region that reported most of the murders.
Laying the 327 bamboo sticks representing TMM 2022 data showing 327 trans and gender-diverse people were reported murdered;
- Cases from Estonia and Switzerland were reported for the first time – both victims were migrant Black trans women;
- 95% of those murdered globally were trans women or trans feminine people;
- Half of murdered trans people whose occupation is known were sex workers;
- Of the cases with data on race and ethnicity, racialised trans people make up 65% of the reported murders;
- 36% of the trans people reported murdered in Europe were migrants;
- 68% of all the murders registered happened in Latin America and the Caribbean; 29% of the total happening in Brazil;
- 35% of the murders took place on the street and 27% in their own residence;
- Most of the victims who were murdered were between 31 and 40 years old.
The data continues to indicate a worrying global trend when it comes to the intersections of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and whorephobia, with most victims being Black and migrant trans women of colour, and trans sex workers. The high number of murder reports from Latin America and the Caribbean can be considerably attributed to the existence of established monitoring systems, and must be understood in the specific social, political, economic, and historical contexts in which they occur.
These numbers are just a small glimpse into the reality on the ground. The majority of the data came from countries with a strong network of trans and LGBTIQ organisations that conduct the monitoring. Most cases continue to go unreported and, when reported, receive very little attention.
At this Outside Project Crossbones TDOR we make a decision to not to include the reading of the individual names of the recorded dead and the harrowing details of their death by violence, we also choose to include and hold in our hearts those not named, the undocumented and the unknown, and our trans community losses of lives cut short by homelessness, ill health, poverty, no or poor access to trans healthcare, or HIV/AIDS healthcare, those with no access to means of migration or movement to safety. Those Lost to dehumanisation, discrimination, isolation and suicide, and to those damaged and lost by their experience of systemic failings suffered by our trans and gender diverse brothers, sisters and siblings and NB niblings.
TGEUORG also references the current context of the rise of a well-funded and well orchestrated anti-gender movement is creating additional barriers for trans people who are already dealing with multiple forms of discrimination. This dangerous movement gives the green light to those who target trans people. We encourage allies and partners to help us combat the dehumanisation of trans people.
Today, we are gathered here in this beautiful historic Crossbones memorial garden space today honouring our communities losses, in our honoring of our dead and our trancesters, but we also are coming together as along with our LGBIQ and cis allies, stronger together.
Crossbones may or may not be familiar to you, the final resting place for the London poor and for sex workers up to 1853, when full, with 15,000 paupers graves.
We thank and celebrate the community collaboration The Outside Project, Crossbones Garden, Bankside Open Spaces Trust and all the Team and volunteers, and the artists Svar Simpson and Lola Lancaster
Today we share a collective honour of the momentous unveiling of a piece of trans art history. The Outside Project commissioned sculpture.
But first I would like to read a poem by a transNB writer Trans Teacher then we will move to the unveiling:
May I ask to get ready to unveil after the poem is read.
Poem by Char, Trans Teacher, South West UK
Made of Clay
Shame burrows
deep under my skin
like a thorn
in the sensitive pad of a bare foot:
sharp hooked words
digging into my very essence
trying to tear it out,
to purge,
to exorcise,
but there is no demon within me;
I too am made in God’s own image:
my heart, made to love who it loves,
me, made to be who I am.
You can chip away at me
with your insults and your ignorance,
and like marble under the sculptor’s chisel,
I become more whole.
Your barbed remarks cut deep
but our pride is nestled deeper –
denser –
the singularity before the explosion
and we will burst forth
in blinding light.
You have made angels of too many of us.
We do not belong in Hell but
we do not belong in Heaven
either:
we are claiming our place on Earth
(unveiling and speeches by Svar and Lola)
We are coming to the end of our TDOR Trans Angel ceremony, you are welcome to stay on here, and to return to visit the Crossbones garden and our Trans Angel. Angels are said to offer protection and to herald both miracles and…. wrath. Both protectors and destroyers. Our Trans Angel is here now, looking out for us all, trans and gender diverse and gender non-conforming and our friends… and allies that stand with us.
As we get ready to go on our way from here. Let’s share a moment of community and connection. I would like to ask that we all take care of ourselves, our spirits, our hearts and
even our bodily selves as we leave here, watch out crossing the London roads… and to not slip in rain puddles.
Let’s all. Go safely from here today and we have an open invitation to visit our Trans Angel again and to post and share news of our Trans Angel. Or we might choose keep an image on our mobiles? Welcome to the world Trans Angel.
Speech By The Outside Project Managing Director, Carla Ecola, TDOR 2022
SAL was just 19 years old when we met. They spent the night in our shelter’s TV room. Nobody complained about not being able to watch TV on the rare occasions this happened. Here was a youngster from our community in trouble and we all knew there was no choice but to make space. They moved to the emergency hotel the next day and then when a room became free they moved back into our house. They took this bounce around the Outside Project in their stride and was thankful to everyone who helped along the way.
They were calm and happy to be around despite all they’d been through at such a young age. They were interesting and spoke to everyone with understanding, they listened with patience and had a great smile.
The day SAL left our house was a surprise. We fight cases for so long and then all of a sudden things clear and people are told they can move within hours. SAL said they would miss us all and their room but they were excited to move forward. Their backpack seemed bigger than them and I remember thinking how surprisingly strong they were in every way.
We spoke when they arrived at the YMCA. They hated the curtains. I received several pictures on WhatsApp questioning the colour, the material, and the way they were hung.. despite everything this felt like the biggest deal they had ever raised with me. We chose some new curtains together and some soft new bath towels and they were delivered using the title of Dr. I can’t remember why we thought that was funny.
SAL cared about them-self. They had bright eyes, a bright smile, long shiny dark hair, and colourful clothes. They talked carefully about them-self and others. They meditated. They were kind. People turned and smiled when they walked into a room and wanted to speak to them about their day. Their voice was like a song. They said they felt free and that they couldn’t wait to dance.
They died in January this year aged just 20 years old outside in a park – a space I know they liked to meditate.
I thank SAL for brightening the world around us all. They were loved by our house and will never be forgotten.