23 OCTOBER - 27 NOVEMBER 2023

Funding projects to preserve marginalised queer histories

AMPLIFYING

LGBTQ+ VOICES

CROWDFUNDING

THESE PROJECTS HAVE BEEN FUNDED THROUGH ART HAPPENS, ART FUND’S CROWD-FUNDING PLATFORM

Queer people’s lives have too often been erased or mis-represented, and this is especially true for more marginalised LGBTQ+ communities. In October 2023 we launched a month-long crowdfunding campaign to raise money to develop two projects dedicated to amplifying personal perspectives from those communities, by giving them resources to tell their stories in their own way.

Community Residencies Our residency series invites individuals from communities who are often underrepresented in Museums to reinterpret our collection through their personal experiences and identify gaps and missing stories. They address these in a manner of their choosing, developing creative skills via bespoke workshops and work towards an outcome that can be shared with the public. The participants decide the form their outcome will take - it could be a zine, an event, an installation - and a version or copy is preserved in the Queer Britain collection.

In early 2024, our first residency will host young people who are part of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community, in collaboration with Shaan Knan, Travellers Pride and Mermaids UK.

Accessible Audio Guides Our audio guide and story archiving project supports the preservation of community histories and personal narratives, and improves access of Blind and Partially Sighted people to our exhibitions and collection.

With the funding raised, the audio guides will be created with community members in 2024. They will include audio descriptions of the contents of our exhibitions and collection, enriched with the memories, stories and reflections of participants.

To realise these two projects, we set a funding target of £26,000. Over the campaign month we surpassed this by 112%. Thanks to 267 backers we raised a final total of £28,927.50. This not only allows us to complete the original projects but to begin further planning to prevent other marginalised history from being lost. We would like to send a huge thank you to everyone who helped us create and promote our crowdfund and all those who donated to make this valuable work possible.