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Artist Paul Harfleet’s family had always accepted his sexuality, but it was a different story outside the home – like many young gay people, he often faced abuse. Now he’s created the Pansy Project as a way to deal with the bad memories in a positive way.

By the time he got to university in Manchester, Harfleet was so used to the name-calling that someone screaming faggot at him from a moving car hardly registered. After graduating with a first in fine art he stayed on to do an MA, living in the city centre not far from the gay village. One day, walking into town, he was abused three times – and this in one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world. “That was the thing that jolted me out of thinking it was normal,” he says. “I started to get really cross. I thought about making work about it, but I was reluctant. I had always resisted doing something overtly gay because I didn’t particularly want to be a ‘gay artist’ as I felt somehow it would limit my opportunities.”

Almost 10 years to the day, Harfleet had an idea. He returned to the locations of the abuse and planted a single pansy in the ground, like a tiny pink roadside memorial. He then re-visited the other places where he’d been called bent, batty boy and bender, or threatened with death or compared to a paedophile and planted pansies there too. So instead of the city being marked for him by these moments of abuse, it became one mapped out with flowers. The Pansy Project was born.

From the Guardian - read in full: Why I plant pansies at scenes of homophobic abuse