Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea: Ben Campkin.

about

Outburst joins the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF) for this very special event as part of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, a series of all-island conversations with IAF and cultural partners.

Ben Campkin is an urbanist who has written extensively on LGBTQIA+ spaces, especially in relation to urban change. His 2023 book Queer Premises: LGBTQ+ Venues in London Since the 1980s (Bloomsbury) offers fascinating evidence for how London’s diverse LGBTQ+ populations have embedded themselves into space, systems and resources and how bars, cafés, nightclubs, pubs, community centres have been imagined, created and sustained, what challenges they face and why they close down. 

At a time when gentrification, rising costs, virtual migration and cultural fragmentation are impacting heavily on the shape of our cities, this timely conversation poses vital questions on the impacts and importance of queer spaces for urban centres and communities alike. 

Ben Campkin is Professor of Urbanism and Urban History at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and Vice-Dean Public and City Engagement for The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. In addition to Queer Premises: LGBTQ+ Venues in London Since the 1980s he is also the author of Remaking London: Decline and Regeneration in Urban Culture (I.B. Tauris, 2013). He was UK principal investigator on the EU-funded project Night Spaces: Migration, Culture and Integration in Europe (2019–23) and is currently completing a project on night work in London in collaboration with the GLA and UCL Social Data Institute.