Remembering Derek Jarman (1942 - 1994)

LGBT+ HISTORY MONTH

English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist and author, Jarman was one of the brave who unflinchingly spoke out for gay rights at a time when homosexuality was demonised. A figure in the public eye, his voice was sorely needed.   

In 1986, aged 44, Jarman received an HIV diagnosis which, at that time, came with a short life expectancy of little more than a year. This was what motivated Jarman to purchase Prospect Cottage, a small fisherman’s cabin on the shoreline of Dungeness; an area many might consider ‘barren’ with its vast strip of shingle wedged between the sea and Romney Marsh. Jarman was inspired to form a sculpture garden, coupling art and the drive to create with whatever might grow in this harsh coastal landscape. He went on to describe in his diaries how crafting this garden, both in the creation of its artwork and watching what grew, was a healing process for him, ‘a therapy and pharmacopoeia’. Jarman tended this garden for eight years before HIV health complications eventually took his life.

That drive to create and the desire to connect with what grows is the same ethos behind Room to Be.