Saerlaith started with Sanctuary Queer Arts as a member of the National Queer Young Company before being invited to become the Project Assisant. Saerlaith has worked with Sanctuary in developing the company's mental health and wellbeing package.

1. Who are you?

I’m Saerlaith, my pronouns are she/they, I’m from Dublin and now live in Glasgow. I am a theatre- and performance-maker, an organiser, producer, facilitator, DJ, and occasional photographer. I have worn a lot of different hats, but currently work with Trans Harm Reduction, a Glasgow and Dublin based harm reduction organisation for self-medicating trans people, work as a software developer, and and do freelance theatre work of many different kinds.

I believe in accessible spaces for all, always. I believe in always asking who is not at the table and why. I want to always be working to help create the material conditions for trans joy.

2. How did you get here?

I always knew I wanted to make art but wasn’t sure how until teenage exposure to the weirder side of live work made me realise there was a medium that made sense for how I thought. I made my first show for the Dublin Fringe Festival when I was 17 and then made a couple more shows before realising I was trans and had to re-think a lot of things. I created the Trans Live Art Salon as a residency programme at Live Collision International Festival in 2016 as a way to create opportunities for trans people on Irish stages which were sorely lacking our presence. 

This then became an arts platform that ran for a little over two years, and included another residency and two programmes of work at LCIF, a programme at Quarter Block Party in Cork and an award-winning multi-disciplinary chill space and mini-festival of trans artists within Dublin Fringe Festival, called the Fully Automated Luxury Gender Oasis in 2018.

After Trans Live Art Salon finished, I moved to Glasgow to join the ever-growing property-crisis-exiled Irish trans immigrant population and have been trying to create and grow and make change in a more slow and sustainable way than I have before

3. What does the concept of sanctuary mean to you?

I think about communities where I feel safe to grow and change and experiment with myself. I think about communities where I can have clear boundaries and try new ones without fear of repercussions, but where interconnectedness is still present. I think about the longing in my heart for so long every time I would hear or sing the line in the Paul Baribeau song, “If I Knew” that goes “feeling totally bummed out / spend a week at a friend’s house / got too much to / try to figure out” and the joy and relief I feel knowing there are friends I could spend a sad week with now.

I think about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3_7mXVRL0M

4. What does your sanctuary look like?

I think about the chill space we ran where trans people came every day and we had a club night where I was the only one dancing and everyone sat making badges with each other or reading trans erotica quietly with their friends on bean bags under soft lighting. I think about my friend who instantly goes over to chat to any quiet and shy looking person in a room to make them more comfortable but doesn’t even notice this is a thing they do. I think about wordlessly crying in a friend’s arms or cuddling with them in a bed after a party.

I guess it feels like something you strive for and you invoke and you practice. You create temporary autonomous zones of mutual care and support and forgiveness and empathy, and spend your life trying to make them less and less temporary, learning each time from the time before.