Pippa Sterk

Pippa Sterk, an ambassador for British LGBT+ charity Just Like Us, writes for PinkNews about how lesbians in particular have grappled with loneliness amid lockdown.
I want to shed light on the mental health crisis among young lesbians, but as I sit down to write this, I realise: how can I adequately capture the loss I’ve felt over the past year?
How can I write about something that is still continuing to impact us, despite the vaccine-shaped light at the end of the tunnel?
Let’s begin with th...

Whilst singing has been tricky online, lockdown has given us a unique opportunity to talk more to our fellow choir members and to share our stories.
Putting the zine together has been a lovely experience! It’s been great to see how many people are eager to get involved in creating something together, and for me personally, it was nice to see some of the talent in the choir come out of the woodwork, where I was previously not aware of it – who knew that there were so many brilliant illustrator...

February is LGBTQ+ History Month in the UK! Strandlines invites contributions from all Strand-dwellers, visitors, and dreamers all year round, however, we launched a call this year for contributions to mark the History Month.
The map below was contributed by Pippa. Thank you, Pippa, for sharing your own ‘strand’ with us!
We are always open for contributions – click here to find out more.
“My name is Pippa, I’m a PhD student at KCL in the department of Education, Communication and Society. I s...

Pippa Sterk interviews director Leonie Krippendorff about her new feature
“There are a lot of coming-of-age films that deal so much with discrimination and violence, and of course, that is a truth, sadly still, but I don’t feel like we can only tell those stories” (Leonie Krippendorff)
As we are all braving a third lockdown during the dark and cold winter, a film that starts out by telling us that it is set in Berlin’s summer of 2018, which was the hottest summer on record, feels like a sligh...

It’s a Sin doesn’t offer a recognition of care work but rather an idealisation of it
Before I start this piece properly, I want to say that I very much enjoyed It’s a Sin. I loved the outfits, the soundtrack, the acting, the pace of the dialogue. I think that, as viewers, we have been lucky to be introduced to some amazing new actors and I hope that we will get to see them in many more things to come. It is an extremely well-crafted series. And it is because I loved the series so much, that I...

2007 was the summer of Mika. Life in Cartoon Motion played everywhere for months on end; you couldn’t turn a radio on without falling into the chorus of Grace Kelly. Cynics said that his music was childish, and his high-pitched singing was weird for a guy. This wasn’t real music. It was too electronic, too feminine, not about real topics that a real musician would sing about.

2007 was also the year that I started secondary school. For me, but probably for many others as well, secondary school...

One of London's best qualities is its diversity.
And one of the many communities who are welcomed in the capital is the LGBT community.
With it being LGBT History Month, February is perhaps more important than ever following the past 10 months of on and off lockdown.
LGBT+ charity Just Like Us is an LGBT young people’s charity who work with schools and young people to improve inclusivity in schools and beyond, empowering young people from the LGBT+ community.
For more news and features about ...

A virtual performance by The Pink Singers of the 80’s synthpop classic Together in Electric Dreams.

Featuring over 130 LGBT+ singers and musicians from around the world, the second lockdown video from the Pink Singers aims to bring a little bit of queer joy in these challenging times and show that even when people are ‘miles and miles away... love never ends’.

“I’ve got an email, you’ve got someone at the door.”
“This is podcast gold, right?”
“Absolutely, people love this.”
I close my eyes as I listen to the voices rising up from my laptop. For half an hour, I can pretend that I’m in a local gay bar overhearing two friends catching up. Small talk, occasionally touching large topics, but mostly friendly, non-committal chatting about holidays, films, art, music, relationships — anything and everything, straying from one theme to the other and back ag...

Pippa Sterk is disappointed by the marginalisation of the main queer storyline in Ryan Murphy’s latest release
With film after film showing us lesbian characters dying, repressed, or dangerous, the concept of a film that shows two women happily in love with each other comes as a revelation. If there is one thing that could fight off the winter blues, my guess would certainly be for a lesbian-centered, glittery, cheesy dance musical. Enter The Prom, directed by Ryan Murphy, the man behind Glee...

A visual poetry contribution, combining musical notation and dialogue.

12 London women chronicled their lives through the spring and summer of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. These diaries provide a unique, written record of an unprecedented time, capturing the many faces and the many moods of lockdown. They write with candour and clarity, allowing us to explore their worlds, sentence by sentence…

A new monthly thread looks back at classic films through a modern lens
In an interweaving of fact and fiction, The Watermelon Woman tells the story of Cheryl, a Black lesbian filmmaker from Philadelphia. She works in a video store to finance her filmmaking and, through her work in the store, she encounters a Golden Age Hollywood actress, who is only billed as ‘the Watermelon Woman’. Cheryl becomes fascinated with this actress and decides to make a documentary about her.
Re-watching The Waterm...