October 2026 news
Hello Journey members,
We hope this finds you well? Here’s the latest update about all things Journey!
On the look-back, the last few Pride events of the year have taken place with Basingstoke and Southampton both supported by South West Railway and Derby supported by Alstom – many thanks to both organisations for kindly extending the invite to Journey members to join them, we hope everyone had a wonderful time.
On 17th September 2026 we were back at KPMG in London’s Canary Wharf for yet another of the popular series of collaboration events between KPMG’s Breathe, the Department for Transport, and Journey. For this event, entitled: ‘Where Do I Belong? A Journey Through Queerness, Heritage & the Care System’, we were also joined by KPMG’s Afro-Caribbean Network (ACN) and KPMG’s Families Network as we heard from the inspirational Matthew Page as he guided us through his unique and powerful journey of self-discovery, exploring the rich intersections of his queer identity and cultural heritage. Matthew's personal story, including his appearance on BBC's DNA Family Secrets, offers a compelling lens through which to understand the complexities of identity, belonging, and self-discovery within the fostering and adoption system. You can read the blog here.
On 1st October we were at the National Transport Awards, the third time that Journey had been shortlisted alongside Alstom for the world’s first pride parade on rails at the Greatest Gathering in Derby last year. Sadly, we weren’t successful on this occasion, but it was still incredible to even make the shortlist at a pan-transport sector awards ceremony so soon after being established – congratulations to Transport for Wales for winning in the Best Practice in Diversity, Inclusivity and Accessibility category and of course to all the winners in the other categories.
Looking ahead there are several fantastic events to share with you. Firstly, on Thursday 15th October Arup’s Connect Out network kindly invite us to an in-person event at their London Charlotte Street offices entitled The Invisible Effort: Identity, Belonging and Energy at Work. This event will feature the inspiring Asifa Lahore who many of you may remember from our South Asian Heritage Month event last year. For more details and to sign up please follow this link.
The following Tuesday 20th October TfL’s OUTbound network invite you to a webinar In Conversation with Simi: Exploring the Intersectionality of Queerness and Disability – here we will hear from Simi Roach: an actor, writer, spoken word artist and disability justice activist who will explore their intersectionality as a Jamaican-British nonbinary disabled person, as well as performing some of their spoken word pieces. For more details and to access the Teams link, please see here.
On Tuesday 17th November we will mark Trans Awareness week with a webinar reflecting on a very challenging 12 months for the trans and nonbinary community, through a transport lens. We will explore feedback from our survey conducted in the face of the EHRC Code of Practice which gave rise to our open letter to the industry and identify best practice from our organisations and signposting resources. For more details and to access the Teams link please see here. We would be very interested to feature the lived experience of trans and nonbinary colleagues in the industry on the call but appreciate that it is a very challenging period potentially impacting your resilience and wellbeing. If you’re happy to share on the call please let us know, or alternatively written reflections (anonymous if you prefer) would be gratefully received. We already have incredible detailed feedback from the survey which will be drawn upon.
Saturday 21st November is the annual Red Run 5k or 10k in Victoria Park in East London. This is a sponsored fun run (or walk, wheel, or sashay) raising money for HIV/AIDS charities in advance of World AIDS Day on 1st December. KPMG are organising participation, if you would like to join them please email Henry.Christian@kpmg.co.uk for more details please see our website here. On the subject of World AIDS Day, for the third year we are organising collections at major railway stations. So far TfL and DfT will be collecting at London Waterloo on 26th November and KPMG at Canary Wharf on 1st December – we have permits for London Bridge on 30th November and Charing Cross on 1st December, if your organisation would like to organise one of these two, or if you want to join us at Waterloo or Canary Wharf, please get in touch. We are exploring some non-London locations with LNER too, more to follow.
Is it too soon to be talking about Christmas? Well… save the date… we’ve pencilled in Wednesday 16th December for a London festive social, returning to The Rising SE1 for their drag pub quiz. Always great fun. If any of your networks have events coming up that you’re happy to share, festive or otherwise, please let us know and we can promote with Journey members and wider LGBTQ+ networks in transport.
And finally, we’re really pleased to share that we have now submitted our application to become a Community Interest Organisation (CIO), so hopefully will achieve this status in early 2027 and will be in a position to fundraise to sustain the website, events, participation at prides and so forth. Watch this space!
Take care and see you at an event soon!
The Journey Team
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