Assistant Curator of History, Philip Newton, discusses the forthcoming LGBT Roadshow at York Castle Museum.

In recent years museums have tried to be inclusive of their communities. Black and ethnic minorities and new immigrant communities have been engaged with by the heritage sector.

This, in the whole, has been a success and had diversified many museum audiences and helped to share histories across communities. I believe our next step is to look at another group which is often overlooked by society and where interaction is not always positive.

Looking at museum collections and displays, people of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans groups have very little representation or active involvement in the heritage sector.

At York Castle Museum LGBT history is represented twice; firstly in our 1960s gallery with a section on the 1967 Sexual Offenses Act, and secondly in our collection, which contains liberation badges from the 1980s but these are not on public display.

The difficulty is that we have no idea if any of our other objects were used, worn or loved by an LGBT individual and therefore their connection is lost to history. We do have another option – we can use some objects that represent a theme or individual in LGBT history.

This is important in order to represent the community in the public arena, showing visitors that LGBT individuals and communities are part of our shared history and are part of our modern society. In many ways the struggle for LGBT rights is everyone’s struggle.

To celebrate the national LGBT History Month York Museums Trust is hosting a collections and story roadshow called Bringing History out of the Closet. York Museums Trust is working in collaboration with York Explore to better understand local LGBT history and communities.

We would like to invite anyone who has an LGBT story or object to come along to the Castle Museum to share their history with us so we can understand York’s experience with the LGBT community, whether they are LGBT themselves or supporters.

On the day we will bring out objects from York Museums Trust’s collections to show what histories we already know of, and how we can use our objects to represent LGBT communities.

We would like to record people’s stories so we can potentially use them for future exhibitions.

I will be on hand at York Castle Museum along with Victoria Hoyle, City Archivist at York Explore, to talk about objects and record stories. We have Queenie Buffet, aka James Massie a local Drag Queen, who is involved with the LGBT community and a DJ and performer to be our guest host. 

Ultimately we would like to better represent LGBT individuals and communities in York’s heritage organisations.

Recording personal stories and objects at this roadshow will mark the start of this process for York Museums Trust and York Explore.

If you would like to be involved please come along to our roadshow event at York Castle Museum on Saturday the 7th of February at between 1pm and 4pm. If you would like to share stories and objects please bring them along.

Most importantly please don’t be shy, all objects and stories are important if they are important to you. They don’t have to be old, they don’t have to be unique, they only have to be special to you.