Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging, and societal transformation. Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world where everyone not only belongs but thrives? You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo, and share stories that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in. Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect, and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show.

So just your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites. And today is episode 118 with the title thriving through adversity. And I have the absolute honor and privilege to welcome Oscar Hoyle. Oscar is the CEO at Blossom LGBT CIC. They oversee 4 projects, a workplace mentoring scheme for young adults trying to get into work, an arts and heritage scheme to help young people feel engaged within their community, and a social and well-being cafe takeover, and also a business consultancy scheme. When I asked Oscar to describe their superpower and inspiration, they said that this is the amazing queer young adults that they see achieving absolutely amazing things in an incredibly scary and hostile environment. Hello, Oscar.

welcome to the show.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to to be here today and to say hello to you.

Absolutely. Absolutely fantastic. We bumped into it probably within feet of each other many times, but probably never actually had a conversation before. So this is quite exciting.

It is. And I think that's a reflection of the the small, weird, little world we have within the sort of LGBT and specifically trans inclusion space. Right?

It it it yeah. It is. Yeah. Even though I often joke to people that there is no trans directory where we all know each other, we we all kind of we're one step removed. We all know of each other through people, if not directly.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like a weird little family where everybody's an aunt that's once removed or

Yes. It's a crazy haunted property.

Yeah. Me too. Don't worry.

But, Oscar, thriving through adversity is a pretty tough and hostile environment, as you said. Tell me more.

Yeah. So when when I was kind of considering how what we could talk about, I thought it was so important that something that I'm really passionate about and that actually almost all of my career now centers around is the experiences of, you know, GEN-Z who are LGBTQIA+. And and with a quarter of LGBTQIA+ GEN-Z is going back in the closet when they enter work. It became very apparent when I started my career at Blossom that there's an issue here that people don't just hide who they are for no reason. Right? And when we talk about adversity at the moment, I see that in so many different directions for young adults at the start of their career. You know, you have a really hostile social and political climate for early stage career young adults. Yeah. Not only do you have the facts that the press is pretty hostile towards young people generally, you know, the narrative GEN-Z don't wanna work.

GEN-Z are lazy. GEN-Z quit keep quitting jobs, and we can't work out why. Then when you add on that the the same hostile attitudes towards their identities as LGBTQIA+ people, often intersectional people who maybe experience disability or a person of color. These all add up to make a really, really difficult hostile environment for the young adults before they even get into the workplace. And then we see young adults get into the workplace. And, actually, there's a really clear generational divide here where where businesses and people who are working within an organisation are aren't necessarily gelling with the younger generation. And we've seen this for a long time. We spoke with millennials.