If you’ve got a mic, pass it.
LOUD WOMEN has always been about more than putting brilliant bands on stages. We want to use the platform we have to amplify voices that need to be heard, raise awareness of important issues and stand alongside organisations doing vital work.
That’s why we’re incredibly proud to be partnering with Rainbow Migration for LOUD WOMEN Fest London this Saturday.
Rainbow Migration supports LGBTQI+ people seeking asylum and navigating the UK immigration system, providing legal advice alongside practical and emotional support, while campaigning for a fairer system.
They’ll be joining us at Rich Mix on Saturday, where you can meet the team, find out more about their work and learn how you can support it.
LGBTQI+ women navigating the asylum system
Ahead of the Fest, Rainbow Migration have created a series of slides highlighting three particular experiences faced by LGBTQI+ women seeking asylum in the UK.
Being disbelieved by decision-makers
Asylum decision-makers can base their assessment of somebody’s sexual orientation on a fixed idea of when and how a person should have understood their sexuality.
That simply doesn’t reflect everybody’s life.
Some women come to understand or express a same-sex orientation later in life. Those who have previously had relationships with men, been married or had children can find their sexuality questioned or disbelieved because their experience doesn’t fit somebody else’s expectations of what an LGBTQI+ life is supposed to look like.
Harm faced by trans women seeking asylum
Rainbow Migration also highlights the particular difficulties faced by trans women.
The asylum system can prioritise medical and psychological evidence as proof of somebody’s trans identity instead of listening to their lived experience.
At the same time, trans women seeking asylum can struggle to access gender-affirming healthcare and mental health support, while unsuitable asylum accommodation can expose them to further transphobia.
Nobody fleeing persecution should encounter another hostile environment when they ask for safety.
A triple sense of exclusion
There is another problem that is much harder to see: isolation.
Rainbow Migration describes a “triple sense of exclusion” that LGBTQI+ women seeking asylum can experience — excluded from their home countries, excluded from migrant communities in the UK, and often hidden or marginalised within queer spaces too.
That can leave people who have already been forced to leave their homes without communities in which they feel fully understood or safe.
One bisexual woman from Pakistan supported by Rainbow Migration describes the fear experienced by women like her as layered: fear of violence, judgement and being forgotten.
But the message at the heart of her testimony is a powerful one: being LGBTQI+ is not something anybody should ever have to justify, apologise for or prove according to somebody else’s expectations.
Come and meet Rainbow Migration at LOUD WOMEN Fest
Rainbow Migration will have a stall at LOUD WOMEN Fest London on Saturday, so please go and say hello, find out more about what they do and support their work.
The partnership is part of something that matters deeply to us. LOUD WOMEN might have been built around music, but creating a louder and fairer world cannot stop at the edge of the stage.
Sometimes the best use of a microphone is passing it to somebody else.
LOUD WOMEN Fest London 2026
Saturday 5 September 2026
Rich Mix, Bethnal Green, London
19 artists from seven countries
Two stages
All ages
Doors 12.30pm | first band 1pm
Bill Ricky + Bullshit Boy + Diva Cup + FOLKULAKA + French Toast + Hagar the Womb + I, Doris + Lady Lazarus + Lilith Left the Garden + Maria Uzor + MADELINE + Muddy Summers & the Dirty Fieldwhores + Second Idol + SheBeat + Shiv and the Carvers + Skint Knees + The NaNaz + THWACK! + WREX
Get your LOUD WOMEN Fest London tickets
Music matters. So does what we do with the microphone.
