LGBT issues can be permanently on display
and use the internet to establish virtual LGBT
tours of their museum through their objects.
Archive builders are beginning to think
how they might discover the riches
they have if they were to look for
them through an LGBT lens.
This February, after the success of
last year’s National History Festival
in Manchester, we began to discover
just what we have been missing and
recognised how much we owe to dedicated
researchers who unearth our history. We had
wonderful presentations of papers; talks; and
theatre productions, which of course is just a
wonderful way to learn about our past.
This year we will be in 6 hubs where we
have 200 presentations, 50 academic papers,
a shortened version of the Very Victorian
Scandal the original and amazing piece that
documents the same sex ball in Manchester
in the 1880s and its subsequent raid.
We dubbed it ‘UK’s Stonewall’.
This year we will also premier
2 new plays based on original
and local research on trans
and lesbian themes,
The Amazing Mr
Stokes and Devils
in Human Shape
part funded by the arts
council. There will be presenters
and participants from North America, Japan
and central and Eastern Europe amongst
others. The list of institutions now involved
in the festival and in the month generally is
impressive.
We are working on recording some of the
events both visually and orally and there
have been podcasts already from Stuart Milk,
the nephew of Harvey Milk and Sue Sanders
promoting what will be the biggest national
LGBT history festival. Stuart is so excited to
be part of this event for the second time as he
says,
“There is nothing like this in
America. We need to learn from
the UK LGBT History Month”
.
We have much to celebrate. Each hub will
also have a schools and family strand to
enable parents, carers, teachers, educators and
librarians know the many free resources that
enables them to .
We at Schools OUT UK are now helping to
make LGBT people in all our diversity visible
and safe and educating out prejudice.
So look around the website and get your diaries
out and make sure you book yourself in to this
wonderful chance to learn about who we all are
now there is a wealth of information!
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