Ben Walters
London, United Kingdom
Ben Walters is the founder of Badge Café, 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 Café 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 Café, 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 led 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.
