When it comes to the protection of Black trans women, there’s a long way to go to address and repair the inequality and prejudice they face. They’re a marginalised community that encounters hate, mistreatment, and misinformation daily. This campaign aimed to address the elephant in the room – a harmful piece of misinformation that suggested a Black trans woman has the life expectancy of just 35.

The project set out of educate, celebrate, and re-write the narrative of Black trans women. By collaborating with prominent members from the trans community it pushed the campaign to its most salient and authentic place, giving the QTIPOC (Queer, Transgender and Intersex People of Colour) community a space and platform they’ve rarely been given before.

Our client, ‘UK Black Pride’ organises the world’s largest celebration for LGBTQIA+ people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American and Middle Eastern descent.

We know that gender representation in advertising regularly leaves behind the trans community - this is exacerbated for QTIPOC (Queer, Transgender and Intersex People of Colour). The brief was simple. How do we raise awareness around the experiences of the UK’s Black LGBTQI+ community, whilst shining a spotlight on some of the most harmful misinformation plaguing them. The objective was to be factual and empathetic, whilst giving this marginalised community an opportunity to speak to their struggles and the real issues they face. We wanted to create a platform which represents and legitimises their stories by challenging the most vicious misinformation that exists around transness and gender.

On average, 154 articles a month have been published about trans people since 2015 – that’s 13,000+ articles which focus on disenfranchising and vilifying the trans community. In 2023 alone, this rose to 75 articles in January alone from just one British news group, which featured overwhelmingly negative rhetoric. When it comes to misinformation, the most damaging and most shared story is that ‘Black trans women have a life expectancy of just 35’.

This pattern translates into real violence and daily implications for the trans community. Support for trans women went down 182% in 2023 and when compared to a rise in a 733% in coverage on trans people from publications such as The Daily Mail, shows a growing cultural and socio-political shift towards limiting any true representation of trans people, by trans people.

In relation to tangible social problems, when it comes to life-saving healthcare, currently trans people wait on average 5 years for their first appointment – a figure that significantly exceeds the NHS (National Health Service) waiting time guidelines for 18 weeks. These delays cost lives.

The idea was built off the piece of misinformation that ‘a trans person of colour has the life expectancy of just 35’. If true it would put Black trans women on par with people living in the 16th Century – an absurd comparison – but one that brings to life how misinformation can be harmful, predicating a self-fulfilling prophecy within the community.

The campaign took that shape of a contemporary portrait series that re-imagined prominent Black trans people as 16th Century paintings. Working with 5 members of the Black trans community we unearthed their personal stories and lived experiences, which were brought to life in a digital and real-world exhibition.

The campaign was furthered with an AR filter to be used on social media, which saw a response of 35 influencers creating their own 16th Century portraits to be shared across social media to platform the initial exhibition and campaign.

For years it’s been widely reported that Black trans women have a life expectancy of just 35. This bleak statistic first arose back in 2015 when a report compiled by the ‘Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ found the average age of a Black trans homicide victim in some parts of Latin America was between 30 and 35.

Although a very real and shocking statistic, it has since been extrapolated, taken out of context and shared thousands of times across social media, fuelling a rippling effect of fear within the entire Black trans community around the world.

The strategy was to dramatize the absurdity of this statistic with a shocking comparison against a life expectancy from 500 years ago – a time where lives were cut short from diseases like the Black Death and Cholera – with the aim for the wider audience to think twice about

The ‘16th Century Life Expectancy’ portraits launched on 30th May at world-renowned art house, Christie's, for an exclusive opening showcase called ‘Christie's Lates’ which saw visitors in their thousands. Alongside the exhibit was a panel discussion with five prominent trans and Black LGBTQI+ community members, which used the portraits as a springboard to discuss their lived experiences and the issues the community faces, such as media misinformation, housing difficulties, mental health and trans healthcare access.

An online hub, 16th-century.com acted as a virtual exhibition showcasing the portraits and delving in deeper to the sitters. Within the website, a digital tool empowered visitors to put pressure on their local MPs to force change and better improve the healthcare rights for the trans community.

The campaign was supported by a nation-wide out of home digital media and fly posters – amassing 74,629 donated media placements partnering with ClearChannel.

‘16th Century Life Expectancy’ opened the eyes of people who may have been naive to the struggles of Black trans women. The exposure from world-renowned art house Christie’s gave the campaign credibility and weight, whilst diversifying the reach and appeal of UK Black pride to allies who wouldn’t attend its pride event normally. The exhibition was picked up by other galleries who wanted to exhibit the portraits include Gallery 135, Pocko Gallery and Queer Britain.

The ’lobby your MP’ tool on the website mobilised people to act. We’ve received multiple responses from UK Members of Parliament such as Nadia Whittome, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Dame Meg Hillier and Catherine West – who are actively using the campaign to table government on the issue, having written to the Secretary of State for Health and Social care, Steve Barclay, on the campaign’s behalf.