This film was created on mobile phones by beginner filmmakers at the People’s History Museum, Manchester as part of a MobDoc LGBT Mobile Filmmaking Workshop hosted by Queer Media and Life’s a Drag.
It celebrates the lives of LGBT+ people and their supportive allies who were alive in 1967 using their own words to commemorate fifty years since the Sexual Offences Act partially decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales.
QueerMedia.org.uk
To help celebrate Manchester Pride 2017 the People’s History Museum would like to invite you to hold an event or events at the museum during the week of Monday 21 August – Monday 28 August. This is a great opportunity to use the museum’s iconic spaces to celebrate the diverse culture of LGBT+ communities. Your event would coincide with Pride celebrations and run alongside the museum’s three LGBT+ focussed exhibitions which will be on show at the time. Never Going Underground: The Fight for LGBT+ Rights explores the past, present and future of LGBT+ activism; Continuum: Framing Trans Lives in 21st Century Britain will showcase a diverse range of art by trans individuals; and Queer Noise: The History of LGBT+ Music & Club Culture in Manchester is a community exhibition focussed on how the LGBT+ Manchester music scene helped shape attitudes towards sexuality.
Spaces available:
The spaces are free to use but events must be free and open to the public. In addition, we would require that all events are set up and cleared away within the Museum’s opening hours of 10.00am-5.00pm, therefore we would suggest that events start no earlier than 11.00am and finish no later than 4.00pm. Any materials would be provided by you. The museum has a small budget available to cover artist fees for groups with limited resources. Please indicate on your proposal form if you wish to apply for this funding.
If you are interested in taking advantage of this opportunity, please can you return the Proposal Form to nevergoingunderground@phm.org.uk as soon as possible. Spaces will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
If you have any questions, please contact Catherine O’Donnell on 0161 838 9190.
On Thursday 16 June, the Never Going Underground Community Curators were taken on Paul Fairweather’s Manchester LGBT Heritage Trail. Keep an eye out for rainbow tiles on the streets of Manchester that mark significant places in the city’s LGBT history. You can find out more about the trail on the OUT! Manchester website. In this blog, Community Curator John Browne shares his notes and photos from the trail. It’s important to note, that we ran out of time to complete the whole trail, as the group were so engaged – sharing their stories and picking Paul’s (incredibly knowledgeable!) brain!
Manchester Magistrate’s Court
Paul Fairweather started the walk outside the Magistrate’s Court where many thousands of gay men had been prosecuted for consensual sex between males in public. A guilty verdict often resulted in loss of jobs, problems with family and friends, and rejection by many faith based organisations. Paul noted that many people committed suicide or had to leave their neighbourhoods because of press coverage. Paul spoke about many campaigns mounted by the LGBT+ community to reform the criminal justice system by highlighting unfair and unjust laws. He cited an example by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality to try and get the conviction of Bill Walker overturned in 1976.
Alan Turing statue, Sackville Park
Here Paul explained the work of Alan Turing who is credited with the invention of the first digital computer, as well as playing a major role in World War II, by breaking the Enigma Code that German submarines used when attacking food and armament shipments heading to the UK. The life of Turing has been portrayed in a play and more recently in The Imitation Game 2014. Turing was subject to ‘hormonal treatment’ to try and ‘cure’ his gayness. After being arrested for admitting he was gay he committed suicide.
Beacon of Hope, Sackville Park
Manchester was one of the first UK cities to have a community help line providing information about AIDS. Set up in 1984 the service went on to become George House Trust. Paul spoke about early days, including the fight the local community won over the interment of Rodger Youd. Rodger wanted to leave hospital to go home to die. There was no treatment in 1984. Detained against his will a judge ruled he could go home. He died in hospital three weeks after his call to AIDS line, too weak to move any more. As a result the whole relationship between medical professionals and the LGBT+ community changed. People demanded that they should have a major say in the method and direction of treatment. Over the years Manchester individuals and groups pioneered many novel and innovative ways to make the world a better place for people with HIV and developed mass public education on prevention and risk reduction. The beacon of hope salutes past struggles and lights the way to a brighter future.
Transgender Memorial, Sackville Park
We visited the Transgender Memorial which contains the names of trans* persons who have died due to oppression and harassment. Each year Manchester hosts Sparkle
Community fight back
Whilst taking a break from the walk Paul gave numerous examples of the way the community had fought back against police harassment in Manchester
Albert Kennedy
This tile marked the spot where Albert Kennedy fell to his death. Driven to suicide whilst in the care of Salford City Council . This entirely preventable tragedy prompted the establishment of the Albert Kennedy Trust. Over the years AKT has provided support and fostering to LGBT+ youth so they could go on to lead full and fulfilling lives.
Bloom Street Gay Centre
Paul worked at 61A Bloom Street the home of Manchester Gay Centre. A UK first funded by an urban aid grant, the centre become the heart of LGBT+ support and activism in the 1980s. The LBGT+ world is not immune to fall outs rows and splits. Bloom Street was the stage where huge battles about issue such as PIE, separatism, the inclusion of bisexuals, gender and identity politics took place. Members of the centre were key to offering a vision of the type of society we wanted to build. Inevitably ongoing tensions resulted in a split between Gay Men and Lesbians in the city.
CHE
Paul moved to Manchester to become a worker for the Campaign for Homosexual Equality. The tile is located near the now defunct Manchester office. In conversation the group learnt about the role of activists in Burnley who had taken a huge stride to establish a LGBT+ movement and use LGBT+ visibility to show we really are everywhere. Throughout the walk Paul shared examples of his extensive archive of historical leaflets, magazines and notes from the 1970s & ‘80s many of which we hope to copy and get into the PHM archive. For more wonderful detail about the part Burnley played in our liberation and the courageous Mary Winters tale, sacked from the omnibus company for wearing a Lesbian Lib badge visit http://www.lGBThiddenhistory.co.uk
Manchester Town Hall
The final stop was Manchester Town Hall. Paul reeled off list of Manchester firsts that emanated from this building:
After answering many questions Paul concluded the walk and reflected on how amazing Manchester and its people have been, taking what were radical ideas and concepts and making them everyday for LGBT+ people in the city. We know that activism has to adopt and change to deal with new challenges ‘somewhere’ in the future a new chapter for the LGBT+ heritage trail is being laid down right now.
A guest post by Lu Tolu. Lu is one of 11 community curators working with the People’s History Museum on our new exhibition on the fight for LGBT+ rights.
Before starting this project, the first and only time I visited an archive was in Malta with my grandfather, more than 10 years ago. I remember the archive as very imposing with dusty paper catalogues, and large bound volumes carted around on trolleys in spacious halls. With only that memory to go off I felt like quite an impostor when I visited the archives at the Bishopsgate Institute. Could I belong in such a space?
So I apologised profusely as I introduced myself to the archive staff; I really didn’t want them to think that I knew what I was doing. Luckily they were all extremely helpful and ready to answer all my questions. Before starting I had to fill in a straightforward two page registration form and pop my things into a locker. Then they asked me whether I was looking for anything in particular. I was dreading that question. How could I know what I was looking for until I found it? I mumbled “I’m, ehm…, interested in the Stonewall archives”. Apparently that was a sensible answer. I was therefore shown to the digital catalogues where I could refine my search for specific files or boxes. With reference numbers in hand I then submitted requests to the staff so that they could bring out the boxes for me to explore.
I took a highly random approach, selecting three boxes that seemed interesting. Once I settled down with the documents I immediately lost all fears of not belonging as I became fully engrossed in what I was reading. One box led to another and rather unexpectedly, after three and a half hours, I had explored stories around a similar theme (actions against corporations) and also came across a potential object for the exhibition. Reliable sources have informed me that not all trips to an archive are as successful as that. So I am really glad I had such an enjoyable first experience, and hope it will be repeated!
Some tips based on my experience at Bishopsgate:
Continue reading: Come back for Part 2 where Lu describes what they found out on their visit
A guest blog by Community Curator, Jenny White
I’m one of 11 volunteer Community Curators helping to create a fabulous new exhibition at People’s History Museum exploring the fight for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* people. Never Going Underground will run from February to August 2017 alongside a programme of workshops, talks and family friendly events.
We’ve been pondering these questions and more as we start planning for the exhibition. We’d love your input and ideas and we’ll be delivering a number of community workshops over the next few months to help shape the exhibition contents.
The scope of the Never Going Underground exhibition is huge, and it’s great to be involved in this project to tell this remarkable story.
LGBT+ rights have come a long way in a relatively short time. We’ve gone from Radclyffe Hall’s plea for acceptance of ‘inverts’ in her 1928 novel The Well of Loneliness, to Prince William offering a royal seal of approval to LGBT people on the cover of this month’s Attitude magazine; from lesbians denied custody of their children to full adoption rights; from police arrests for cottaging and raids on gay book stores to two policemen proposing to their partners during the 2016 London Pride parade.
The fight for LGBT+ rights has included political goals – changing laws and policies – as well as cultural goals – challenging society’s views on LGBT+ people and gaining wider community acceptance. Activism has taken many forms: from the direct action of the Gay Liberation Front and Outrage!, to the lobbying tactics of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality and Stonewall, to Boy George’s No Clause 28 single and Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company shows.
There’s also inter-LGBT+ community activism – there are issues with racism, transphobia, different approaches to what Pride events should be about.
Then there are so many issues still to be tackled: marriage equality in Northern Ireland; recognition of non-binary people; self-declaration of gender; and the 75+ countries which currently outlaw homosexuality to name but a few.
We’d love to hear any suggestions on what we should include in the exhibition. Also if you have banners, badges, papers stories relating to the fight for LGBT+ equality that you would be willing to share, then please do get in touch by emailing nevergoingunderground@phm.org.uk For twitter users our project hashtag is #NGU2017
A guest blog by placement student Kath Fox
I currently have the pleasure of working alongside the brilliant team at the People’s History Museum, which most recently involved a day of events celebrating the National Festival of LGBT History.
As part of the Festival, I ran a stall promoting the Museum’s new community-led LGBT+ project entitled Never Going Underground, taking place in 2017 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexual acts; in partnership with Manchester Lesbian and Gay Chorus, LGBT Foundation, Proud 2b Parents and The Proud Trust. Throughout the day, thoughts and feelings about past, present and future LGBT campaigns were gathered and captured from the festival attendees and much conversation was had.
Then all of a sudden, around mid –morning, a woman arrived at the Museum with a sense of urgency, keen to know where one of the talks about gender was due to take place. She seemed anxious, looked at me and said: “My son has come out as transgender”, then paused and waited for me to respond to those words which were still unfamiliar to her. I greeted the news with a big smile and replied, “How wonderful!” She looked relieved: “I need to talk to somebody about it. Can you help?”. “Of course”, I said. Within the hour, in between talks and events, Kate Hardy (LGBT Foundation’s Health and Wellbeing Officer) and the woman were busy arranging to meet.
The woman had come across the Festival online and thought she may find help there. Which is exactly what she did. Her son’s life is already better. At that moment she too became part of an entirely new LGBT+ family, and it was just as important to welcome her within an inclusive space, as it was to ensure she had the right support for her son.
Inclusion is such a powerful thing. As an LGBT+ person, to be part of an environment that includes you, respects you and positively celebrates you is something perhaps others take for granted. Being part of a Festival that achieves these things is particularly special.
Cultural spaces are as much about belonging as they are about storytelling and the People’s History Museum do it brilliantly.
People's History Museum (PHM) 