Just inside the entrance to a Warsaw high school there’s a red plaque declaring it safe for LGBT students.
“I chose this school because I just wanted to be myself,” explains Stacey, long bangs dangling from a face covered in make-up.
The 15-year-old is transgender and moved to the Polish capital from a small village she describes as “very conservative”.
There she had to hide her identity at great cost to her mental health.
“I didn’t want to live then. Now I’m fine. I feel better”. The teenager is disarmingly frank.
The climate in which Stacey grew up hasn’t made life any easier.
LGBT people in Poland have faced years of hostile rhetoric from senior politicians. The country has repeatedly ranked near the bottom of the EU in terms of protecting LGBT rights.
But in last month’s elections, the conservative Law and Justice party, or PiS, lost its majority. If an opposition coalition takes power as expected, LGBT activists are hoping for a change in both tone and policy.
The Sniadek school is something of an oasis in Poland.
It hosts Rainbow Friday, an initiative to help young people understand diversity and feel accepted.
In one of the corridors, pupils have set up stands with photos of gay and lesbian celebrities and the stories of rights activists from around the world.
“In my previous school, one person would always shout ‘faggot’ at me. Now I’m living 200 kilometres [124 miles] from home just because this place is so tolerant,” one of Stacey’s classmates was keen to explain.
The school also stopped learning for a few hours to hear an LGBT activist talk about tolerance.
Dominik Kutz was part of the team that devised the Safe Schools programme, in which students rate their schools themselves.
“It was a really hard time for the community,” he says, referring to the two terms of the PiS government. “There was a huge backlash against LGBT rights from politicians and the [state] media.”
PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski regularly denounces the “madness” of people “declaring” themselves gay or changing their gender, and blames Western Europe for importing foreign ideas into Catholic Poland.
PiS routinely speaks of gender “ideology”, not identity.
Dominik Kutz sees a direct link between the climate created by such talk and the struggles of young LGBT people.
“We see a huge risk to the mental health of this group of students. Over 70% have had at least one suicidal thought.”
About an hour’s drive from Warsaw is the town of Skierniewice, with a cobbled central square and an abundance of women’s clothing stores.
In 2019, the local council passed a resolution “in defence of marriage and the family”, which spoke of protecting children from “depravity”.
She spoke out against “vulgar” LGBT pride marches and in favour of maintaining the ban on same-sex marriage and adoption in the face of a supposed “attack” on the Polish family.
“I feel very, very bad. It’s frightening for me. I live in the European Union. But where are the EU’s values? Tolerance? Freedom? Where?” Mateusz wants to know.
The 18-year-old, who describes himself as a “leftist, queer activist”, has lived in Skierniewice all his life.
He says he has had to pepper spray people who tried to hit him, and is scared when local football fans pass by. For him, the council’s decision was part of a growing “wave of hate”.
“I don’t want to destroy the Polish family. I want to live, to love. It is that simple. To be human”.
The Skierniewice resolution was one of dozens of similar documents adopted by councils across Poland, denounced by activists for creating so-called “LGBT-free zones”.
Since then, they’ve been campaigning hard to get such charters withdrawn.
They publicly ‘outed’ the councils by listing them in an online ‘Atlas of Hate’, and then lobbied for EU funding to be withdrawn for breaching European equality laws.
Skierniewice is one of 18 or so local authorities that haven’t yet done so.
We sent several emails and phone calls asking for an interview with the authors of the document, and visited their offices. But they have not responded.
Poland is currently in political limbo after the PiS won the most votes last month, but not enough to govern alone. All other parties have ruled out joining them, but the prime minister has been given more time to negotiate.
An opposition coalition is waiting in the wings.
“I am mildly optimistic,” says LGBT lawyer and social activist Marek Urbaniak of the chances of change if PiS leaves power.
But he warns against too high expectations.
Opposition leader Donald Tusk has promised to legalise civil partnerships, but his coalition is broad-based.
The left-wing Lewica party, which supports full marriage equality, did worse than expected in the elections.
The socially conservative Third Way did better, which is likely to give it a stronger voice in government.
In addition, PiS-friendly President Andrzej Duda will remain in office for another two years, with the power to block any legislation.
President Duda used his first veto almost a decade ago, stopping a bill that would have made it easier to get gender reassignment recognised.
This leaves transgender people in Poland in the extraordinary position of having to sue their parents to change their legal gender.
The legislation they’re using was designed for a completely different purpose.
“There are a lot of costs and you’re also dealing with depression and anxiety,” says Marek Urbaniak.
In his own case, a parent objected and it took almost four difficult years before the court finally allowed him to legally identify as a man.
Campaigners haven’t given up on improving this or the other big issues, such as same-sex marriage and adoption.
But for now they have a “rescue package” of measures that could immediately improve the lives of LGBT people.
These include an end to hate speech on television and making attacks on people because of their sexual orientation a specific hate crime.
As for Dominik Kutz, he wants to focus on young people.
“We need an anti-discrimination programme for students as well as teachers and mental health programmes for LGBT youth,” he said.
“That way this new generation will be more open and educated.”