Trust collaborates on film for trans, queer and non-binary communities

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust collaborates with Spirited to create SAFE, a short film centred on trans, queer and non-binary lives.

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and 56 Dean Street have worked with production company, Spirited, to create SAFE, a short film celebrating trans, queer and non-binary lives. The film was produced for the CIRCA Art 2025 competition.

CIRCA is a cultural platform that combines art and technology to present digital works in public spaces. This year, artists were invited to submit work to the theme Refugia, which imagines sanctuaries of care.

SAFE, directed by Keerti Gedela, Consultant Physician at 56 Dean Street, is set to the poem Safe, written by Jason Potts, a peer support worker at the Chelsea Centre for Gender Surgery (CCGS), with music by trans artist Margomool. The film explores themes of truth, safety and public service. It also features three trans and non-binary staff members from the Trust, including Zelda, Cherry, and Jason.

Filmed in public spaces around Soho and within 56 Dean Street, home to TransPlus—the first integrated gender, sexual health and HIV service commissioned by the NHS—SAFE seeks to reclaim Soho’s light. Once a beacon for exiles and queer survival, Soho is celebrated here as a space of belonging, laughter, protest and shared memory.

Keerti Gedela shares: “In a world where safety is a privilege and refuge fragile, SAFE insists on beauty, protest and collective survival. It whispers and screams at once—that trans rights are human rights, and that public culture must carry public care and safety for all. It honours trans and non-binary people as visionaries, intrinsic to our shared humanity.”

Jason Potts, Peer Support Worker for CCGS, adds: “The poem Safe is a creative outlet to reflect the ways I was able to witness community safety during a trans+ and non-binary wellbeing retreat. The joy and freedom to express authenticity in a collective space I observed moved me to find a way to share those thoughts and emotions - Safe asks why this cannot be a reality for everyone, why can it only be when we create havens, why is it only when we are together in numbers can we experience these things that so many take for granted every day.”