Finding My Voice: A Final Reflection
23rd April 2026
Image: Created for me by CapCut using the text below as a prompt and asking for a six-panel cartoon in the style of The Beano.
Presenting this project to my classmates and tutors yesterday was an experience which exposed my internal feelings of vulnerability despite the fact that I have spent a good deal of my life in the spotlight. I am comfortable on stage, at a lectern, in front of a congregation. Centre stage, oddly, has felt like a place of control, a place where I hold the narrative. What I am less comfortable with is scrutiny. Being seen, really seen, by people whose opinions matter to me, is a different thing entirely and it surprised me a little that I felt uncomfortable in this exposed position.
Throughout this module and creative process, I have quoted and referred to Rev Brandan Robertson several times. He has written about the cost of wearing what he calls the “social masks” we are conditioned to perform, and the liberation that comes from putting them down. This project has, in its own small way, been an act of removing my own mask. Presenting it to the room meant being open not just about a creative idea, but about my sexuality, my theology, my shame, and my long history of not feeling good enough. After decades of carefully managing what people knew about me, that exposure did not come easily.
I find praise difficult, too. I received it here and felt the familiar discomfort of not quite knowing what to do with it. I genuinely welcomed the balance of feedback through the weeks of this module: Loren’s suggestion to begin with an introductory video; Nur’s instinct that accessibility mattered which led me to the shorter TikTok style videos and the TED-style ‘SHED Talk’. The nudges from my colleagues around subtitles, on-screen text, and the experiment with text on a ladder doubling as a pulpit. Not all of it worked. The animated text in Episode 3 did not land as I hoped. My work is long, possibly too long. There is, I suspect, something in that. When you have spent years silenced, finding your voice can come with an anxiety to use it as fully as possible, as quickly as possible. This is not the first time I have been too long-winded so clearly the message has yet to sink in.
This project has shown me, and I hope this is reflected in the work you see, is a willingness to try things, to listen, to fail productively, and to begin again. I started with a Richard and Judy sketch. I ended with Ruth and Jonathan, queer biblical characters hosting a camp theology show. That journey is the project.
I came to this course hoping to find my creative voice. I leave this module having discovered that the voice was always there. I just needed the trauma of being seen to give me the confidence to use it.
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