FOR QUEER MEN · SCOTLAND · RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT CALL OUT
Good Enough
You've carried something for a long time.
A new piece of immersive art for and with queer men over 50 in Scotland.
We’re gathering real memories from queer men to help shape it.
There are two ways to be part of this research and development project.
You can share a story with us online.
Or you can join a small group of gay, bi or trans men helping us build the physical and sonic world of the work. Both matter.
Neither requires any arts background.
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TWO WAYS TO TAKE PART
SHARE A STORY
BECOME A CREATIVE TESTER
BOTH MATTER
NO ARTS BACKGROUND REQUIRED
TWO WAYS TO TAKE PART SHARE A STORY BECOME A CREATIVE TESTER BOTH MATTER NO ARTS BACKGROUND REQUIRED
WHAT IS GOOD ENOUGH
An interactive story box.
A hidden life inside it.
A handcrafted box containing fragments of a life: objects, images, sound, text.
Two people enter the experience together. They don’t speak to each other. They don’t interact. They witness, side by side, the interior world of an older gay man and the hidden self he carried alongside his visible life, for years, sometimes for decades.
FIND OUT MORE
Good Enough: Multisensory Queer Storytelling is supported by Immersive Arts funding.
Duration
Fifteen minutes
Venues
LGBTQ+ safe spaces, community halls, library rooms etc.
Format
Two-person, side by side
Reach
Touring widely across Scotland
A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR
I've been making community arts work for twenty years. This is the project I've needed to make for most of that time.
I grew up in the North East, working class, in a world where the newspapers on the kitchen table were the ones that told me — without ever saying my name — that who I was becoming was wrong. There was no other story available. No language for it. No one around me who had one.
At school I learned to be quiet. Not because I had nothing to say because quiet was safer. You can survive a day if you make yourself small enough. I got good at it. I got very good at it.
When gay life did appear, it didn't look like mine. I was invisible to the world that rejected me, and invisible to the world that was supposed to claim me.
There is a whole generation of men who did the same thing. Who came of age under Section 28, through the AIDS crisis, through decades of being told — directly and indirectly — that who they were was not enough. Men who built extraordinary survival strategies. Who became skilled performers of a self that worked, even when that self had very little to do with who they actually were. I am one of them.
That experience has rarely been held up and looked at carefully. Particularly for men outside cities. Men who never found a community. Men who got on with it in silence, and called that strength.
Good Enough is for those queer men. It's a way of saying: what you carried was real. It had a name. And you were not alone in carrying it.
The stories of men in this community are not illustrative material. They are the foundation. The box cannot be built without you. I hope you’ll join us on our research and development of this work and share a story to shape it.”
John Darvell · Director, NOCTURN
WHERE WE ARE NOW & WHERE THIS IS GOING
This is a project in development. We need your help.
Here’s what that means for you.
Good Enough has a narrative shape, a series of emotional moments that map the journey from a hidden self to something closer to truth. We have built that architecture.
What we need now are real stories from real men that bring those moments to life.
Your story may be the one that unlocks a beat in the work.
It might be about the moment you split into two: the you that was visible, and the you that wasn’t.
It might be about the effort of performance, the thing you kept reaching for that never quite settled you, the room where you could finally stop.
Whatever it is, it’s not illustrative material. It’s the foundation.
As the next stage of development, we are also building a virtual installation, an online space where the gathered stories can be explored. If you give us permission, your contribution may become part of that too.
You may never be in the same room as the finished box. We want to be honest about that. But what you share now is part of what makes it possible, and part of what it contains.
WHO THIS IS FOR
This is for you if you’re a queer man living in Scotland, and any part of this connects.
You’re over 50 and rarely see your experience reflected in arts or theatre work.
You’re living with mobility constraints, health issues, or other barriers that often put cultural spaces out of reach.
You’re not publicly out — or not fully — and you navigate that carefully, every day.
Your experience of being queer was shaped by working-class life, or by communities where that identity had no language or no room.
You lived through the AIDS years and carry what that time left.
The public face of gay life, the visibility, the performance, the extroversion, has never quite felt like yours. Your experience of being gay has been quieter than that, more private, and no less real.
You’ve survived.
You’ve adapted.
You’ve built strategies for getting through.
And you’ve rarely been asked what that cost.
This project is particularly trying to reach the men who don’t usually see themselves in work like this.
If that’s you — we mean you.
OPPORTUNITY ONE
SHARE A STORY
WRITTEN OR VOICE NOTE
ALL MATTER
OPPORTUNITY ONE SHARE A STORY WRITTEN OR VOICE NOTE ALL MATTER
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Image Ben Qureshi, Illustrator
Share Your Story
Contribute a memory online: written or voice recording.
WHAT WE’RE ASKING FOR
A memory. An object. A moment. Something specific and true.
It might be a few sentences. It might be a paragraph. It might be something you’ve never said out loud that you’d rather speak than write.
You can send us a written contribution or a voice recording, whichever feels more natural.
There is no right kind of story.
There is no story that’s too small or too ordinary.
WHERE TO START
If you’re not sure what to share, one of these might help. You don't need to answer these directly.
They're just doors.
Before you had a word for it, your body probably did.
Can you remember the first time you adjusted yourself for a room — pulled in your voice, watched where your eyes went, changed how you sat?
If you came out, what didn't change? If you didn't, or only partly did — what does the daily work of holding the line look like, day to day? Where in your body does that work get done?
How tired were you by the end of certain days? Not regular tired. The Christmas-with-family tired. The straight-wedding tired. The work-do tired. The tired that comes from watching yourself all evening — your laugh, your hands, whether anyone could tell. Was there anywhere — a room, a person, a journey home — where you could finally stop?
Has your body told you something — through pain, tension, illness, a thing that won't shift — that you only later understood was about everything else? Where does it sit? The jaw, the shoulders, the gut, the chest, the lower back?
What did you tell yourself you'd be okay once you had? When I lose the weight. When I earn enough. When I get the title. When I meet the right man. You got one — did it actually do what it was meant to do? Or did the next thing show up?
Did you ever find yourself disproportionately furious about something small — the wrong food at a table, someone running late, the wrong tone?
Was there an ease between men — an arm round the shoulder, a hug that lasted, a hand on the back — that you watched and felt locked out of? What kind of touch wasn't on offer to you, or wasn't safe to want?
AN IMPORTANT NOTE BEFORE YOU SHARE
Some of what we’re asking about sits close to things that may have been hard to carry. That’s the nature of this project and we don’t want to hide it.
You don’t need to share anything you’re not ready for. A small memory is as valuable as a large one. A single sentence is enough. You can contribute anonymously. Your name will never be attached to anything without your explicit, separate permission.
If anything this brings up feels like too much, Switchboard is there.
Switchboard is a confidential helpline run by and for LGBTQ+ people.
0800 0119 100 | switchboard.lgbt
Free. Confidential. Available every day, 10am-10pm.
WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR STORY
Your contribution will be held securely by NOCTURN (Nocturn Creative Ltd) and used by the creative team as source material. It will not be quoted directly or attributed to you by name in any public-facing work without your explicit, separate permission.
If you give permission, your contribution may be included in the Good Enough virtual installation, or displayed physically when showing the work.
You can withdraw your contribution in full up to 31 July 2026. After that date, you can withdraw your name and any identifying information at any time, but material already woven into the creative work may not be removable. We will always tell you honestly which stage we're in.
Your data is held in line with UK GDPR. NOCTURN (Nocturn Creative Ltd) is the data controller. Full details are in the downloadable information document.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY
Closing date: 31 July 2026
Questions?
Contact the project team at goodenough@nocturncreative.co.uk. A human will reply within five working days.
OPPORTUNITY TWO
WE NEED 10 QUEER MEN
7 x 1 HOUR SESSIONS
NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED
OPPORTUNITY TWO WE NEED 10 QUEER MEN 7 x 1 HOUR SESSIONS NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED
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Image Ben Qureshi, Illustrator
Become a Creative Collaborator
Join a small online cohort to help build the movement and sound of the work.
WHAT THIS INVOLVES
Seven one-hour Zoom sessions.
Your body. Your instincts. Your time.
We're looking for a small group of queer men over 50 in Scotland to work with us across seven online sessions, as collaborators, not performers, helping us develop the physical and sonic language of Good Enough.
Each session lasts one hour on Zoom.
You'll be guided through simple movement explorations. Nothing that requires any dance experience or particular fitness.
We might ask: what does your body do when you feel unseen? How do you hold yourself when you feel, just for a moment, like enough? We'll also explore sound: what you hum, what silence feels like, what rhythms live in your body.
The movements you contribute will be transformed into a non-photorealistic AR character, built from the combined motion of everyone in the cohort. No single person's movement will be individually identifiable. What emerges is a shared figure, a composite, drawn from all of you together.
The sounds you contribute will be processed and layered with those of the other cohort members. No individual voice will be directly identifiable in the final work without your consent.
Nothing will be recorded or used in the final work without your explicit agreement.
THE SEVEN SESSIONS
Sessions run on Thursday evenings 7-8pm, split between June and July. You'll receive the full schedule before committing. Each session begins with a brief check-in and ends with a clear close and time to settle before you return to your day.
LOCATION
Scotland. A small private space to move in — a living room, bedroom, or any clear area.
CONNECTION
Reliable internet. Zoom with live captions enabled. A smartphone with a camera.
EXPERIENCE
None required. No arts, performance, or movement background necessary.
FEE
This is a volunteer role. There is no fee. You'll be credited as a creative contributor.
WHAT YOU GET FROM THIS
You'll be credited as a creative contributor in the production
Be among the first to experience the finished work at a contributors' event.
And you'll have helped make something that didn't exist before.
IF A SESSION BRINGS SOMETHING UP
We will make sure every session has a named person available, separate from the facilitation, who you can contact afterwards if anything needs holding. That contact will be shared at the start of every session.
You can leave a session at any time. You can withdraw from the group at any time. You will not be asked to explain why.
If anything this brings up feels like too much, Switchboard is there.
Switchboard is a confidential helpline run by and for LGBTQ+ people.
0800 0119 100 | switchboard.lgbt
Free. Confidential. Available every day, 10am-10pm.
JOIN OUR CREATIVE TESTERS
SESSIONS START JUNE 2026
We’ll be in touch within five working days to arrange a shortconversation, so you can ask us anything, and we can make sure this is the right fit.
Questions?
Contact the project team at goodenough@nocturncreative.co.uk. A human will reply within five working days.