Leeds International Film Festival: Leeds Beckett University PE teacher helped with Blue Jean film about Section 28

With the Local Government Act 1988, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government prohibited the "promotion of homosexuality" in settings such as schools.

It was not repealed in England and Wales until 2003 so had a direct impact on Sarah, who is now a Principal Lecturer in Physical Education at Leeds Beckett University’s Carnegie School of Sport, but in the early 1990s set out on her teacher training course in Exeter.

“We were living under this hideous, homophobic law that prohibited the promotion of homosexuality, which of course nobody knew what that meant at the time,” she says.

“But what it really resulted in was us living in absolute fear, with just lots of anxiety and doubt all the time. You couldn't really be yourself. You couldn't make friends in the staff room, you couldn't open up to people, you certainly couldn't get to know kids in the way you wanted to. And you couldn't be a role model ever.

“So, we kind of put up with it at the time even though we hated it. I spent three years in America and spent time in Key West (in Florida) and I was out and proud and living my best life until I started teaching, and came back here. It was like going back into the Dark Ages.”

Her experiences have now informed a new film, Blue Jean, which is being screened at the Leeds International Film Festival this week. Sarah is set to introduce the film on Friday at the Howard Assembly Room, where it will be shown from 8pm.

The film explores the turmoil of a gay PE teacher Jean, played by stars Rosy McEwen, in Tyneside as ‘Section 28’ was introduced.

The law stated that such settings should not "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship".

Sarah advised on scripts, costumes and authenticity as filmmakers drew on her own story, which had been captured in research by Professor Andrew Sparkes.

During the early nineties, Sarah was part of a research project when she was training to be a teacher at Exeter University. As a mature student, Sarah had lived in London, attended Gay Pride and was out since she was 18.

When she joined the teacher training course, she met Dr Sparkes, who is now a Professor at Carnegie School of Sport in Leeds.

He interviewed Sarah about her experiences of becoming a PE teacher in that era and, in the years that followed, published several papers using Sarah’s life history.

Sarah, now 59, says: “There was certainly nothing positive about being gay at that time. There were no role models anywhere in film, TV or any media. There was nothing out there, so the research was ground-breaking.

Dr Sparkes then encouraged Sarah to continue the research.

“I then found five women of different ages and interviewed them and then published something out of my own MPhil (Master of Philosophy) research called The Circles of Silence,” says Sarah.

In 2018, writer-director Georgia Oakley started work on a screenplay about the life of a lesbian PE teacher, set in Newcastle in the 1980s.

The filmmakers got in touch with Sarah and made several visits to Leeds.

While it is not biographical, Sarah - along with Professor Catherine Lee from Anglia Ruskin University - advised on scripts, met with costume designers and provided photographs to help make the film as authentic as possible.

Funding from the BFI and the BBC allowed shooting to start in February 2022. It has since premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award.

Sarah was invited to the set during the filming, and a producer took her to one side and showed her a scene they had shot in the staff room as a politician in the House of Commons was “extolling the virtues of Section 28,” says Sarah.

“It had the effect of transporting me back to what it was like.”

She adds: “PE is a physical subject but going into the changing rooms was a nightmare for me. I’d just go in and out and didn’t want to be there in case anyone thought I was looking at them. That’s what we were living with, but you got on with it, because your passion was teaching kids and sport and PE.

“It was never going to put me off, but it made me manage myself in a very different way. I think I did it without realising the impact it had on me at the time.”

While Sarah has supportive colleagues now, “you never really know what people are thinking in the wings,” she says.

“I think for those of us that went through this, you end up with this kind of legacy of internalised homophobia, where there's always that kind of self-checking mechanism going on and that’s been really hard to get rid of and, I won’t lie, I've had a lot of therapy to combat the gremlins, really.”

Sarah met with Rosy McEwen before filming started and they had a long Skype call at the start of the year, She praises her “extraordinary” performance and after watching the staff room scene, she had to hug the actress, she says, which was like “hugging my younger, former self”.

Blue Jean screened at LIFF last night and is repeated tomorrow at 3.15pm at Vue, with the final showing at the Howard Assembly Room on Friday. Book tickets at https://www.leedsfilm.com. It will appear in cinemas on general release at a later date.​​​​​​​