CARRIE LYELL MEETS THE FOUNDERS OF HOUSE OF PRIDE TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THEIR AMBITIOUS PLANS FOR A QUEER CREATIVE COMMUNITY HUB

Lu (left) and Alex, founders of House Of Pride

Actors Lu Corfield and Alexandra D’Sa met in Liverpool in January 2019, on the set of Channel 5 prison drama Clink. “One day, between shots, I was telling Lu about a space that I have always wanted to create, that I was very serious about setting up,” Alex tells me when we meet in east London on a sunny Friday morning. “A creative hub catering to the queer female and non-binary community. As I was talking about this, Lu went very quiet, and I saw her smiling. As she is now.” I look over at Lu, who is indeed grinning from ear-to-ear. “It’s going to sound exaggerated and cliched, and as though we’re trying to make a sweet story,” she chimes in. “It’s not. I was listening to someone describing back the very place I had in my mind, horrifically, for about 20 years.

“I joined a youth theatre in Wales when I was 18,” she recalls. “It was the first time I ever felt home, completely. It was the first time I ever walked into a space and my shoulders went down. The hairs on my arms stood up. I made an incredible friend there, who is still one of my dearest friends today, and we started talking then about this space we wanted to create. It’s taken on different shapes and forms in my mind, as it’s brewed and cooked for two bloody decades. But I never had the confidence to get off my arse and do it. So when I heard Al describing exactly what I wanted to do, I was like, ‘We’ve got to. We’ve got to’.”