Support group Sadie’s Butterflies is doing amazing work to create acceptance, community, and safety for LGBTQ+ people in Swansea. Its organiser, Donna Curnock, told us why its work is so essential.
Every Wednesday morning, upstairs in Coast Café in Swansea Marina, a wide range of people meet for tea and a chat. There are professionals, retired people, refugees, students – the list goes on. What links them is that they are members or allies of the LGBTQ+ community.
For a community that still experiences intolerable hate and exclusion, these coffee mornings, held by the Sadie’s Butterflies community group, are a haven of positivity and acceptance.
Contrary to what the group’s name might suggest, it is not run by Sadie, but by a woman named Donna Curnock. She took over the group—then called Tawe Butterflies—a few years ago after its founder, Sadie, retired. Sadie founded the group 19 years ago, originally with a transgender focus, but Donna has since broadened this to embrace the whole LGBTQ+ community.
“The group was originally called Tawe Butterflies,” says Donna. “Sadie started it because she realised there was no safe place for this community to gather, so she opened up her home.
“About five and a half years ago, Sadie, who’s now in her 70s, wanted to take a step back, so she asked me if I would carry on with the group. I was happy to step up because I didn’t want to see all the amazing things she had done go by the wayside, as it’s still very much needed within the whole community. I renamed it Sadie’s Butterflies to honour her legacy.”
Donna, a former international radio DJ from Canada, first got involved in the group because her husband Dave is a transgender man. They met online 14 years ago and Donna, who had always dated men, did not initially know that Dave was transgender.
“He came out to me, which took a lot of courage,” she says. “It’s because of him that I ended up doing this, but I’ve always dealt with people: I taught preschool for 18 years, and I worked with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Because of Dave, I’ve seen the struggles of people in this community, and when Sadie asked me to take over, I just jumped in with both feet.”
Beyond running the tea and chat mornings in partnership with Rhys Thomas and his team from Swansea Council, her work involves organising curry night fundraisers, Halloween parties, summer parties, awareness chats, movie screenings, and much more besides.
She runs a monthly social group at Glais Rugby Club and is at the Collaboration Station at the National Waterfront Museum every Thursday, where she runs a hate crime drop-in session in collaboration with the Police’s hate crime team.
“People can come in, discuss their issues, and find solutions,” she says. “This community have put a lot of faith and trust in me, which I take very seriously.”