The application for funding was submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) in January 2011 with the aims:
- To record and compile the memories of older members of the LGBTQ+ communities
- To create a permanent static and virtual archive of LGBT life within the city of Plymouth
- To research the history of LGBTQ+ life within the city
- To recruit and train members of the LGBTQ+ community to act as oral historians
- To prepare and produce an exhibition of LGBTQ+ Plymouth based on the project activity. This exhibition had been agreed (at this time) by the Plymouth City Council for January/February 2012 and would be hosted by the City Museum and Gallery
The Heritage Lottery Fund confirmed they would fund the project in March 2011 and the project was approved to begin on 17 March 2011 and work began in earnest in collection of oral history interviews following a training session on 25 June at PWDRO facilitated by Tony Davey, their community engagement officer.
Over the next nine months, until the exhibition opening, volunteers participated in one or more of the following working groups:
- Oral history interviewing
- Archival research
- Exhibition planning
- Website design
- A photography competition to engage individuals from outside the volunteer base.
This was really where all the “hard work” took place but the scariest aspect . . . which was actually the most exciting . . . was would people come forward to talk about aspects of their past that maybe they haven’t done before?
We ran some press with local Historian, Chris Robinson and attended some local history events and gradually people came forward. Lots of people who were initially a little reluctant, who might agree and ask to remain anonymous but over the process came to be more proud of who they were, proud of their story and, by the time we reached the exhibtion people, many people where proud to stand next to their exhibits, their artefacts and be proud of who they were.
People like Ted and Don, who we’ll focus on in the next blog . . .
