Away from home or school, queer youth find space to hope

Queerly Quilled offers a rare third place, away from school or home, for LGBTQ2S+ youth to connect and express themselves freely. Safe spaces for queer and trans people are already scarce and diminishing. But for those too young to get into the bars and nightclubs that have historically served as LGBTQ2S+ safe havens, they are even harder to come by.

Sara Oremland, the teen engagement librarian for the North Vancouver District Public Library, which hosts Queerly Quilled, feels the need for this safe space among the club’s participants, a group she says has grown faster than the library’s other teen groups.

“When the group started getting bigger, they weren’t there for the books. They were there to be together and feel a sense of belonging,” Oremland explains. “I run multiple teen groups, and with [Queerly Quilled], you feel it a lot that there’s just a feeling of belonging and gratitude that they have something like this.”