Ben Walters
London, United Kingdom
Ben Walters is the founder of Badge Cafe, a travelling creative project using badge-making as a playful tool for community connection, activism, and hope. Rooted in his PhD research on queer fun and DIY "hope machines," Badge Cafe has appeared at festivals, museums, archives, universities, and cultural events across the UK and internationally, supported by Arts Council England.
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​Alongside Badge Cafe, Ben’s visual art practice explores collage as a form of queer world-building — layering found materials to create alternative narratives and spaces of possibility.
Previously, Ben spent years collaborating with queer performance collective Duckie on community projects and was cabaret editor at Time Out London. He has also written for The Guardian, Observer, Sight & Sound, and BBC Radio, and was part of the campaign to make the Royal Vauxhall Tavern the UK’s first listed LGBTQ+ venue. Ben holds degrees from Cambridge, Columbia, Birkbeck, and Queen Mary University of London.
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Ben's work has been shown as part of the exhibitions Archiving Desires (Rich Mix, London, 2024), Of Queerness… (Lot'sa, Chicago, 2024), Out from the Centre (Mimosa House, London, 2025) and The Well Hung Art Exhibition (Atlantis Bookshop, London, 2025).
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Learn more about Ben’s new collage work in his Peeking Through the Layers interview here.
