It’s not always easy to find space to relax, get creative and feel connected to yourself and others.
Badge Cafe offers three ways to do this:
• Make badges to feel good
• Get bespoke workshops that do good
• Buy original designs to look good
We believe…
you can be happy in the moment
everyone is creative
collaboration is joyful
…and recognising and enabling these things makes the world a better place.
Badge Cafe is rooted in care, fun, creativity, collaboration and hope.
We see badgemaking as a refuge, a playground, a laboratory and a launchpad – a place where self-care, social connection, analogue crafting, artistic exploration and progressive civics meet.
It’s based in re-use, finding beauty and use in discarded, donated and found materials.
It all began…
by chance at Duckie, London’s pioneering queer nightlife honkytonk.
One week, Dr Ben Walters helped out by operating an old badgemaking machine, collecting old books and magazines as design fodder.
People were surprised, engaged, delighted, connected. And it made Ben feel great.
It was love at first badge.
Making badges makes better worlds
Ben also had the background to know why this might matter.
He holds a PhD in queer fun (no, really) and has published academic research about the power of homemade mutant hope machines – grassroots forms and processes that help create better worlds one step at a time. Ben knew a “hope machine” when he saw one and realised how much potential lay in badgemaking.
“Badge Cafe” became a weekly fixture at Duckie, then as artist in residence at independent gallery studio1.1 too. Soon, it was in demand at festivals, museums, archives, cultural networking events and private parties – as an icebreaker or sideshow, a fun drop-in activity for all ages and an absorbing way of engaging with problems and connecting with different groups and publics.
Ben is supported by Arts Council England and Badge Cafe has worked with Amsterdam Public Library (OBA), Archivo Arkhé (Madrid), Art Fund, Art Play London, Barbican, BFI Flare, Bishopsgate Institute, Black Thrive, Blossom LGBT, Brooklyn Community Pride Center, British Academy, Busy Beaver Button Museum (Chicago), CAMP Margate, Camden Inspire, Central School of Speech and Drama, Central Saint Martins, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Club Together, Create E16, Create London, Croydon Pride, Duckie, Fetish Week London, Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest, Galop, Gay Times, The Glory, Goldsmith’s University of London, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Hannah Dickins, Historic Royal Palaces, Imperial College London, Interesting Conference, Kew Gardens, King’s College London, Lot’sa (Chicago), Love Affair Basement, Maastricht University, Micro Rainbow, Museum of the Home, Museum of Homelessness, National Theatre, The Night Club, Norwood Junk Action, The Outside Project, Perverse Collections, Pride in London, Queen Mary University of London, Queer Heritage and Collections Network, Queer House Party, Queeriosities, QUEER-TIVITY, Raze Collective, Rich Mix, Riot Party, Social Prescribing Conference, Soho Poly, Southbank Centre, Stove Network (Dumfries), studio1.1, University of the Arts, University of Cambridge, University College London, University of East Anglia Black Humanities Project, University of St Andrews, University of West London, University of Westminster, Wallace Collection, Watermans Arts Centre, The White House Dagenham and more.
We’d love to work with you too.
Begin the conversation via our Contact page or email hello@badgecafe.
About Dr Ben Walters
As “Dr Duckie”, Ben’s academic research on queer fun and homemade mutant hope machines has been shared through peer-reviewed publications, international conferences, lectures and workshops for Routledge, Bloomsbury, UCL Press, Queen Mary University of London, Goldsmiths, Central School of Speech and Drama, University of Brighton, AHRC-funded projects Performance Matters and Staging Decadence, Live Art Development Agency, Folkestone Fringe, HIV Prevention England, Night Spaces: Migration, Culture and Integration in Europe, Utopian Studies Society (Europe) and others.
This research was based on years of collaboration with pioneering queer performance collective Duckie, embedded in community-facing projects working with people living with homeless, addiction and mental health challenges, older people without many friends or family and young LGBTQ+ performers.
Ben was cabaret editor of Time Out London and producer-presenter of live events including The Prime of Ms David Hoyle (Chelsea Theatre), Dr Duckie’s Magazine (Royal Vauxhall Tavern) and BURN: Moving Images by Cabaret Artists (BFI Flare, MIX NYC). He has campaigned to protect queer spaces, including writing the 10,000-word application that made the Royal Vauxhall Tavern the country’s first LGBTQ+ listed building. As a critic, he has worked for the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Scotsman, Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, Sight & Sound, Film Quarterly, Hollywood Reporter, BBC Radio, BFI Southbank, Barbican Centre, Battersea Arts Centre, Rambert, Southbank Centre, Tate, Wellcome and others, and blogs at NotTelevision.net.
He’s also made documentaries, written books and programmed seasons for the British Film Institute, and holds degrees from Cambridge University, Columbia University, Birkbeck and Queen Mary University of London.
Success! We’ll add you to our email list, and you should hear from us soon. You will need to confirm your subscription by clicking on a link in the email we send, so that we know you’re a real person.
OUR PARTNERS
It’s not always easy to find space to relax, get creative and feel connected to yourself and others.
Badge Cafe offers three ways to do this:
• Make badges to feel good
• Get bespoke workshops that do good
• Buy original designs to look good
We believe…
you can be happy in the moment
everyone is creative
collaboration is joyful
…and recognising and enabling these things makes the world a better place.
Badge Cafe is rooted in care, fun, creativity, collaboration and hope.
We see badgemaking as a refuge, a playground, a laboratory and a launchpad – a place where self-care, social connection, analogue crafting, artistic exploration and progressive civics meet.
It’s based in re-use, finding beauty and use in discarded, donated and found materials.
It all began…
by chance at Duckie, London’s pioneering queer nightlife honkytonk.
One week, Dr Ben Walters helped out by operating an old badgemaking machine, collecting old books and magazines as design fodder.
People were surprised, engaged, delighted, connected. And it made Ben feel great.
It was love at first badge.
Making badges makes better worlds
Ben also had the background to know why this might matter.
He holds a PhD in queer fun (no, really) and has published academic research about the power of homemade mutant hope machines – grassroots forms and processes that help create better worlds one step at a time. Ben knew a “hope machine” when he saw one and realised how much potential lay in badgemaking.
“Badge Cafe” became a weekly fixture at Duckie, then as artist in residence at independent gallery studio1.1 too. Soon, it was in demand at festivals, museums, archives, cultural networking events and private parties – as an icebreaker or sideshow, a fun drop-in activity for all ages and an absorbing way of engaging with problems and connecting with different groups and publics.
Ben is supported by Arts Council England and Badge Cafe has worked with Amsterdam Public Library (OBA), Archivo Arkhé (Madrid), Art Fund, Art Play London, Barbican, BFI Flare, Bishopsgate Institute, Black Thrive, Blossom LGBT, Brooklyn Community Pride Center, British Academy, Busy Beaver Button Museum (Chicago), CAMP Margate, Camden Inspire, Central School of Speech and Drama, Central Saint Martins, Cheltenham Literature Festival, Club Together, Create E16, Create London, Croydon Pride, Duckie, Fetish Week London, Fringe! Queer Film & Arts Fest, Galop, Gay Times, The Glory, Goldsmith’s University of London, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Hannah Dickins, Historic Royal Palaces, Imperial College London, Interesting Conference, Kew Gardens, King’s College London, Lot’sa (Chicago), Love Affair Basement, Maastricht University, Micro Rainbow, Museum of the Home, Museum of Homelessness, National Theatre, The Night Club, Norwood Junk Action, The Outside Project, Perverse Collections, Pride in London, Queen Mary University of London, Queer Heritage and Collections Network, Queer House Party, Queeriosities, QUEER-TIVITY, Raze Collective, Rich Mix, Riot Party, Social Prescribing Conference, Soho Poly, Southbank Centre, Stove Network (Dumfries), studio1.1, University of the Arts, University of Cambridge, University College London, University of East Anglia Black Humanities Project, University of St Andrews, University of West London, University of Westminster, Wallace Collection, Watermans Arts Centre, The White House Dagenham and more.
We’d love to work with you too.
Begin the conversation via our Contact page or email hello@badgecafe.
About Dr Ben Walters
As “Dr Duckie”, Ben’s academic research on queer fun and homemade mutant hope machines has been shared through peer-reviewed publications, international conferences, lectures and workshops for Routledge, Bloomsbury, UCL Press, Queen Mary University of London, Goldsmiths, Central School of Speech and Drama, University of Brighton, AHRC-funded projects Performance Matters and Staging Decadence, Live Art Development Agency, Folkestone Fringe, HIV Prevention England, Night Spaces: Migration, Culture and Integration in Europe, Utopian Studies Society (Europe) and others.
This research was based on years of collaboration with pioneering queer performance collective Duckie, embedded in community-facing projects working with people living with homeless, addiction and mental health challenges, older people without many friends or family and young LGBTQ+ performers.
Ben was cabaret editor of Time Out London and producer-presenter of live events including The Prime of Ms David Hoyle (Chelsea Theatre), Dr Duckie’s Magazine (Royal Vauxhall Tavern) and BURN: Moving Images by Cabaret Artists (BFI Flare, MIX NYC). He has campaigned to protect queer spaces, including writing the 10,000-word application that made the Royal Vauxhall Tavern the country’s first LGBTQ+ listed building. As a critic, he has worked for the Guardian, Observer, Independent, Scotsman, Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph, Sight & Sound, Film Quarterly, Hollywood Reporter, BBC Radio, BFI Southbank, Barbican Centre, Battersea Arts Centre, Rambert, Southbank Centre, Tate, Wellcome and others, and blogs at NotTelevision.net.
He’s also made documentaries, written books and programmed seasons for the British Film Institute, and holds degrees from Cambridge University, Columbia University, Birkbeck and Queen Mary University of London.
Success! We’ll add you to our email list, and you should hear from us soon. You will need to confirm your subscription by clicking on a link in the email we send, so that we know you’re a real person.
OUR PARTNERS