#institution: Bishopsgate Institute

[vintagesapphics]

Dykes with attitude: Read my lips from the August 1992 issue of Gay Times

[auntymurda]

late 90s 01/02 on our backs magazine covers from bishopsgate institute archives. | originally posted by onyour.knees on instagram.

[queerliblib]

hey, this looks awesome and you’re doing really good work!! wish we had something like this in the uk :)

thank you so much!!!! <3

while there may not be something exactly like us there are some other queer library/library adjacent projects in the UK ex.

book 28: "a small LGBTIQ+ library based inside London's LGBTIQ+ community centre and homeless shelter, The Outside Project"

the Queer Zine Library: "a UK based dyi mobile library celebrating radical LGBTQIA+ self publishing"

UK LGBT Archive: began as the LGBT History Project before changing names, it’s an ever updating wiki with links to other resources

The Bishopsgate Institute: an independent special collections library/archive, holds collections relating to the social and cultural history of London. Apparently has recently developed to become Britain's largest LGBTQIA+ archive

Small Trans Library: has branches in Wales, Ireland, & Scotland

[kazuma-asogi-blog]

Someone sent a Vinegar Valentine to Lord van Zieks in the morning post. How terribly insulting. I wonder who it might have been.

(Image from the Mike Henbrey Collection at Bishopsgate Institute, via Spitalfields Life)

[misscammiedawn]

Story Time - Bedlam and Asylums

Today's story time has us discuss the roots of our obsession with psychology.

CW: This post discusses mental illness, medical abuse, suicide, child neglect and dark topics.

(Story Time is a tag we use to tell stories about our past and perspectives particularly focused on our relationship to gender and mental health)

Text version of the above audio in readmore:

Bedlam.

Bedlam is a word that has become synonymous with mental illness, confusion, panic, uproar and yes... insanity.

It's become the title of numerous pieces of media intent on depicting stigmatizing caricatures of the mentally ill. Both monolith and shorthand for the horror ideal of nightmarish sanitariums where those unfit for society were tossed away and tormented.

I am not fond of the term. I am not fond of the ideas it conjures up.

The word has tumbled down the centuries, transforming and collecting echoes of truth and mythology as the years faded by. Originally it was not a word but a name. Bethlem Royal Hospital. The first mental care facility in the United Kingdom, established in 1247.

Stories of the hospital and its inhumane treatment of patients has been well documented. I'll link a particularly good article on it in the text.

The place had been a tourist trap and by the 1700s tens of thousands of people were paying to look around and marvel at those unfortunate enough to be in the dubious care of the facility. This allowed for stories to spread. Locals to begin whispering about what they had seen. What they assumed. Othering those within and creating this widening gap between "the sane" and "the insane".

The facility has actually moved about a number of times in its existence. The original locations both being near the Bishopsgate area. It was in 1815 when it moved to Southwark. To a building which is now housed by The Imperial War Museum.

To this day the Imperial War Museum site has become associated with the history of the hospital. The grounds of the site are named Bedlam Park and the museum was the site of the 750th year anniversary "celebration" which was host to a protest action where the Psychiatric Survivors Movement performing a sit in at the museum attempting to highlight the brutal history of this hospital that was being "celebrated"

Describing the "Reclaim Bedlam" movement in a biography, Oxford writes:

In 1997 Shaughnessy launched his first major campaign, Reclaim Bedlam. The Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust had organized a series of events celebrating the 750th anniversary of its forerunner, the Bethlem, the world's oldest psychiatric hospital. The institution had a gruesome history. Like visitors to a zoo, people once paid to gawp at its chained inmates; while treatments, including blood-letting, purging, and the revolving swing door—which rotated patients up to 100 times a minute—were more like punishment until well into the nineteenth century. Shaughnessy, who had been a patient at the Maudsley Hospital, argued that commemorating 'the people who have died and the sadness they've lived in' was more fitting than any 'celebration' (Evening Standard magazine, 17 March 2000). Reclaim Bedlam picketed the trust's official event and protested against the financial cuts it was imposing on its mental health services. His campaign attracted the support of hundreds of patients across the country, and was the subject of a BBC 2 documentary, From the Edge.

So... why am I mentioning this in my "Story Time" tag? Story Time is supposed to be me discussing memories unique to the odd mishmash of identities and experiences that make up this 40ish year old trans woman with dissociative identity disorder and an unyielding obsession with psychology.

Well...

It's that unyielding obsession with psychology... and the fact that of all the childhood memories that we have, the Reclaim Bedlam event is one of them.

Bedlam Park and The Imperial War Museum were near where we grew up. We would walk through the park on our way to school and we would walk past it on our dad's nightly visits to the pub.

Though London as a city would become a sprawling and endless mass of concrete canyons and glass towers that went on forever, there was a time in our youth where the boundaries felt quite small and limited. It may even be accurate to say we grew up in Lambeth rather than London.

I cannot recall being the small child in these stories. It comes up in therapy every now and again. Our therapist trying to get us to associate in with the stories of our father's son. We share his memories but they never feel like they're ours and they lack grounding. We neither recall how things felt or when they happened. But we recall events.

So many nights of our life were spent at the pub. Bored out of our mind, hungry and exhausted. The pub that our dad went to did lock-ins. Stayed open beyond the 11pm last orders. Sometimes we were lucky enough to get a Coke or two. Never food though.

So imagine in the early hours of the morning, a drunk man walking his kid the half mile home. If the chippy was open then we'd sometimes get a bite but the chip shop was bound by legal operating hours so that wasn't always an option.

Then we come by the park. Radiating moonlight and gated up as London Parks tend to be after a certain hour. Our dad would begin talking about the history of that "haunted" building. Memory does not allow me to tell any specific stories but it was his way of bonding with us. Trying to terrify us with the story of axe murderers and the like lurking in the park we walked through every day.

Even now, knowing as I know and feeling as we do about our father, I cannot help but feel the emotion attached to these memories as oddly positive. Context tells us that we were neglected for hours, that he was drunk to an irresponsible degree, that we were too young to be awake that late, that there is no charm in terrifying a child and a thousand and one other understandings that make me hate this memory and yet in isolation, it remains a happy memory.

As I said. It's hard to associate in with those memories.

But the fascination grew from there and the associations had been drawn. Perhaps we would have cotninued thinking of the site as this folklore version likely whispered down the streets from the tourist era of the 1800s where the locals peaked into the hospital as it was ran and began telling their children of what they saw and those children would tell their children.

A generational game of telephone leading to our young ears.

But then the sit ins happened.

It was nearby where we lived and it was a media spectacle. We paid attention and we listened. 13 or so at the time.

Now, the 90s were a time when the mental healthcare field was expanding out into a commodity, especially in the USA. TV shows and movies were highlighting these "shrinks" with a sneer, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation were working their hardest to cover for abusers and the conversation about mental illness was starting to become more commonplace.

We do not remember the climate much from experience but we know this Reclaim Bedlam event caught our attention. That little seed which would grow into a lifelong obsession had already been planted and here there was a line drawn between the sensationalized topics we heard about on television and the lived reality.

What had started as a haunted building that teased our imagination, had became a historical site of legend that happened to mingle with our reality and now with this movement it became a platform to destigmatize mental illness and learn about the real conditions and the real people who had suffered medical abuse at the hands of these facilities.

Though we remember very few things about the event and movement, we do remember it brought the works of Louis Wain onto our radar. Wain was a prolific artist local to the South London area and a patient treated at Bethlem after a group of friends, including H. G. Wells, raised money to have him housed at the hospital.

He drew this after moving in to Bethlem.

I think that was the moment that the nuance started really hitting in for our younger self. That it was not black and white. Madhouse or Hospital. Abuse or Care.

That was part of the destigmatization that Shaughnessy fought for. To make it so madness was not this esoteric other thing that happened to people. These were huge ideas to grapple with at the time, especially in how young we were, but it applied humanity, empathy and understanding to a topic that had already colonized our imagination.

I doubt it would have remained with us had that have been the end of it, but it wasn't.

Our father hated mental health as a concept. He was often contemptuous of the field and that people bought into it. Though we were raised by our father, our older brother was raised by our mother (who had failed to gain custody of us due to what the courts deemed her "deviant lesbian lifestyle") and at 15 he was diagnosed with dyslexia.

Dad thought that it was "coddling" to have him seen by a psychologist and that the dyslexia diagnosis gave him an excuse to give up on schooling. He would rage that his ex-wife had no right to attach labels to "[his] boy"; a boy who walked out on us in his teen years, a boy that he mythologized and devalued so often that I sometimes wonder if our dad and I have a dissociative disorder in common.

We had our own brushes with psychologists and social workers in our teens. We'd learned how to lie to them. It seemed prudent. Dad warned they'd take us away to live in a home if we said the wrong things. He was convinced our mother was trying to punish him for winning custody by getting social services involved, painting him out to be a bad father, painting him to be the villain.

His paranoia infected our home. The fact mum got our brother help became reason to suspect her involvement, though for my money I'd wager it was our home room teacher at school. Maybe she'll become a subject for another story time down the line...

One of the worst sins you could commit in his world was to accuse him of being a bad father. For what it's worth I really do think it was important to him to be a good dad and we sometimes feel guilty that we became the third of his children to stop speaking to him.

...felt too much like we were condemning him to the realization that he was not...

To get back to the topic, though... our dad is, was and remains mentally ill. We never learned his letters, but we were witness as his disdain for the mental healthcare field continued to solidify as he became a statistic within it.

Content warning for discussion of suicide and medical abuse.

Our dad has been held in lockdown at mental care facilities at least three times that we remember.

I... don't care to discuss the specifics that lead to each stay.

Suffice to say they're hard memories for us to discuss. Our father had attempted to take his own life multiple times and we were powerless to do anything but watch.

I recall that the first time everyone was there. The campus of St. Thomas' lockdown ward was flooded with family. I bitterly note the only memories I can recall swaths of family at the same place involved someone in a hospital bed. One time that person was me.

The other times, I am confident I was the only visitor.

The first time it felt like an embarrassment. "Haha, I was pulled off of Westminster Bridge, I wasn't really going to jump"

The other times weren't cries for help. They were failed attempts. He went from stomach pumps to the ward. Likely before he woke up. We don't remember. We don't want to remember.

Everyone else turned away by then. We were all the other had. The third(?) time was even after he had kicked us out and we were living on our own. He moved in with us afterwards. Stayed until we left England.

I remember so many of the little things about those visits. Buzzing him out so we could sit on a bench and I could smuggle him in cigarettes. The color of the sky and the lack of leaves on the tree. The sounds of Big Ben across the river. The hollow glaze in his eyes from the medication he was taking. The thick spools of drool dribbling the corner of his mouth.

I thought back to those things I'd read about Bedlam. The nuance between "Care" and "Abuse".

I remember him breaking down into tears and sobbing out that "no one comes to visit me."

I remember thinking "Guess I'm 'no one' in your book."

I remember him soberly confessing about how he was assaulted as a child. How he was terrified of someone doing that to me. How he wanted to strangle my brother when he hurt me because it reminded him of his brother hurting him.

I was in my mid-teens at the time and I remember lucidly thinking for the first time that my father was mentally ill. Up until then I had just taken his testimony as fact but there was just a point during the visit where I stopped thinking of him as unjustly locked up "with the crazies" as my woefully stigmatizing perspective thought of it, but he was part of a vulnerable population of people who were sick and needed care.

In one fell swoop I realized that his rage at mental healthcare was denial and rejection of something that he struggled with and likely had his entire life, in silence and isolation, hating himself for showing any signs of this which he perceived as weakness.

I still remember realizing how sad that was. To suffer so deeply and blame and hate yourself so thoroughly for that suffering that you deny that it is even happening.

I know we thought it clearly when we finally accepted our own dissociative disorder, two decades later.

To this day we do not have it in us to hate our father. We see too much of ourselves in him. He's not a good man. Though we do not remember him ever hurting us we do remember him cracking our brother's skull on a bathroom sink and pinning him to a fridge by his throat. We know his marriage ended when he got our 16 year old babysitter pregnant. We know he lost his photography job when he was caught drink driving. We know he pulled us out of school for a month during a drunk binge after his relationship with said babysitter ended; nearly ruining our academic chances for life. We have a voice recording of him arguing that "white lives matter".

He's not a good man... but we do empathize with him all the same. He instilled in us a fear of substance abuse and a fear of being institutionalized.

To this day we freeze up when we remember the smell. The sour yellow of nicotine stained wallpaper. Painted bars flaking against frosted windows or the words of a European lady who struck up conversation with us during a visit who told us how she didn't murder her husband. I don't know if she was teasing us or not, we were just a scared child and memory distorts.

We're afraid of being like him.

I remember how much that fear drove us back then. We wanted so desperately to be seen as sane, as normal, as grounded... obviously, if you're listening to this recording then you know we have loosened up on that strangehold over how we are perceived.

But... god... the lengths we go to in order not to follow our father's footsteps.

Every now and again I like to sit back and think objectively about our life. About our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Like our father our life is lit by the fire of burned bridges... and I think of his paranoia. I think of his disdain and rejection and wonder how clear my own lens is.

I don't know if it's possible to have an objective view of the self. To know for sure how well you perceive your inner and outer reality. But what I do remember is a 13 year old boy obsessed with psychology finding the nuance between the us and them, the sane and the insane, the healthy and the unhealthy and that gives me strength and hope.

Because it's not an on/off switch or a binary. It's just a measure of experiences and beliefs and when you look at it like that then the fear goes away because I'm just a person, same as anyone else and yet I'm also the only one in the world shaped by history and perspective to see the world as I do.

Unique and individual but not alone.

...and that's a comforting thought.

[erasure-picnic]

This is a promotional photo from 1986, taken by Paul Cox. If you look closely, you can see that both Andy and Vince are wearing badges. Vince's badge is hard to read, but if you zoom in, you can see a triangle pattern and some (blurry) text. What does it say? Where is it from? If you want to know more, read on.

Looking at it more closely, I remembered a line I’d read from an article in Gay Pied Hebdo, a French gay magazine. Journalist Didier Lestrade wrote that Vince was wearing "un incroyable badge de Gay Pride'86" ("an incredible Gay Pride '86 badge"). Could it be that one?

I did some digging and came upon the website for Bishopsgate Institute, an independent cultural institute and archive in London. This site has lots of digitized resources on London's Gay Pride events from the 70s to the 90s, including images of the official badges for each year’s Pride–which is where I found the badge for Pride ‘86. When I rotated the pic of Vince’s badge, it was a match. (There’s a bit of extra text on the one Vince is wearing–his reads “Lesbian & Gay Pride ‘86”.) I’ve also found other photographs from that photoshoot that show the badge in full colour.

Now, how did Vince get hold of that badge? Once again, Bishopsgate revealed the answer: on July 3, Erasure performed at Pride ‘86 as part of the "Carnival Countdown".

By playing at Pride events, and by wearing this badge publicly, Vince was showing his support for the gay movement in a visible way–and he was doing so from the beginning. It was a commendable move for a straight musician, especially in the face of an increasingly homophobic political climate. He was also facing pressures from agents not to involve his new band too heavily in gay politics. But he felt that it was important to stand in solidarity with his bandmate, who’d educated him on the gay scene. And he continued to do so throughout his career.

This image may not seem remarkable at first glance, but it’s actually a testament to Erasure’s activism and Vince’s allyship. Dig a little deeper, and you might find something neat behind the image.

Sources:

Bishopsgate Institute website (images of Pride ‘86 buttons and programme clippings). “Erasure”. No. 1 Magazine, Nov. 29, 1986. Retrieved from the Flickr page of Michael Kane. “Erasure Come of Age”. Record Mirror, Nov. 29, 1986. Retrieved from the Flickr page of Michael Kane. “Erasure: La Messe Gay”. Didier Lestrade, Gay Pied Hebdo, Nov. 29, 1986. Erasure press photos, 1986, taken by Paul Cox. Retrieved from the website Lansure's Music Paraphernalia. Erasure Gig fansite. “The Boy Can’t Help It: Erasure Cleans the Slate.” Adam Block, The Advocate, July 22, 1986.

[astriiformes]

University and community archives both are doing so much important work in curating and preserving queer history! And even the academic collections are generally still open to the public, whether that looks like you coming into the reading room at a local university to look at their materials or emailing the librarians to ask for photos or scans of them.

Also, like, even if they're affiliated with institutions, queer archives at universities and museums are generally still curated and cared for by queer folks. I work in a queer history archive at my university, and all of us who regularly work with the collections are queer, the curator is even another trans person, and we have strong connections with other queer people and organizations in the surrounding community.

Academic and cultural institutions like historical societies, libraries, and universities have facilities built to preserve archival materials -- everything from books and zines to pins, banners, t-shirts, and etc -- and people trained in curation and conservation. And often we want to connect with the local community so we can house and preserve their stories and materials for a long time!

All the archives that have been added to this post are great, but here's a few more to look at if you're interested in finding a queer archive near you -- or one further away with materials that interest you. Australia: The Australian Queer Archives

Bosnia & Herzegovina: Kvir Arhiv

Canada: The ArQuives (formerly the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives)

Archives Gaies du Québec

The Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria

France: Conservatoire des Archives et des Mémoires LGBTQI, Le Académie Gay & Lesbienne

Germany: Das Lila Archiv

Bibliothek & Archiv at the Schwules Museum

Spinnboden Archiv (focused on lesbian history)

Bibliothek & Archive at Centrum Schwule Geschichte

Forum Queeres Archiv München (focused on queer history in Bavaria and Munich)

The Netherlands: LGBT Heritage Collection at the Internationaal Homo/Lesbisch Informatiecentrum en Archief

Norway: Skeivt Arkiv at the University of Bergen

South Africa: GALA Queer Archive

Switzerland: Verein Schwulenarchiv Schweiz (focused on the history of gay men in Switzerland)

The United Kingdom: LGBTQ Collections at the Glasgow Women's Library

LGBTQIA+ Archives at the Bishopsgate Institute

The Hall-Carpenter Archives at the London School of Economics and Political Science

The LGBTQ Histories Collection at the British Library

Queer Heritage South/Queer in Brighton

LGBTQ+ Collections at the National Museums, Liverpool

The United States: The Human Sexuality Collection at Cornell University

The Stone Wall Center at the University of Michigan Amherst

The Gay & Lesbian Collections and AIDS/HIV Collection at the New York Public Libraries

OutLoud Collection at StoryCorps (an oral history project)

The LGBT History Project at Dickinson College and the LGBT Center of Central Pennsylvania

The Rainbow History Project (focusing on queer history in Washington D.C. and the surrounding area)

The Invisible History Project (focusing on queer history in Alabama and the American South)

LGBTQ+ Collections at the University of South Florida

The Stonewall National Museum Archives & Library

The Saint Louis LGBT History Project

LGBTQ Religious Archives Network

The Gerber/Hart Library and Archive (focusing on Midwestern queer history and culture)

The Kinsey Institute Collections at Indiana University

The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies at the University of Minnesota

The National Transgender Library and Archive Collection at the University of Michigan

The Gay and Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California

The Lambda Archives of San Diego

The James C. Hormel Center at the San Francisco Public Library

Also -- I know what's happening today is incredibly scary, but there are so many archives all over the world documenting our history, and so many people devoting their lives to preserving everything from groundbreaking political manifestos to kitschy ephemera. And supporting queer archives is more important than ever. My first day of work in the collections, the curator handed me a charred book that had been rescued from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft book burnings, and nothing has ever driven home more that the work of archivists is both critical and powerful, especially in this day and age. Support queer archivists and queer archives, save materials and find one to house your own collections no matter how random they might seem, and go out and learn about our history!

We need a digital archive of LGBTQ+ works of art, science, and every other conceivable work we can share between each other because we are beyond the genocide warning level in most countries in the west and they're already trying to purge us from libraries.

[alexknight5]

Understanding a Photograph

History of Pride UK

1972 London Pride (Peter Tatchell)

In 1972, London had its first pride parade, inspired by the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York. The Stonewall riots started a huge spark in protests around the world, and moved the fight for rights for the gay community into the public eye. This pride parade kicked off pride parades around the UK and led to the parades we have today. It was organised by the Gay Liberation Front, the first LGBT human rights movement of the UK. London pride was organised ‘to combat the invisibility and denigration of the queer community’ (Peter Tatchell, 2019). This pride helped to push LGBT+ rights into the view of the British public. It was attended by around 700 people (Peter Tatchell, 2019) with many people not attending due to fears of being arrested.

London Pride: 1980’s (Bishopsgate Institute)

Throughout the 1980’s, gay pride began to grow, with the attendance in 1983 being around 2000 (LGBT Archive, 2023), the biggest pride parade yet. The 80s was a difficult period for the LGBTQ community, with the spread of the HIV virus, and Section 28 being enforced. The spread of the HIV virus led to some gay rights being pushed backwards. In 1983, gay men were stopped from giving blood (NCS, 2024). In 1988, Section 28 was introduced. This law prevented local councils and authorities from promoting or supporting the LGBTQ community. Section 28 wasn’t repealed until 2003 (NCS, 2024). Despite these negative impacts to the community, there were some positive improvements. In 1989, Eastenders showed the first same sex kiss on a UK primetime soap opera, and Sir Ian McKellen came out on BBC Radio 3 (NCS, 2024).

London Pride: 1990s (Bishopsgate Institute)

Through the 90s, pride became more consistent and bigger. In 1992, London hosted the first Europride, with over 100,000 people attending. (EPOA, 2022). Pride continued to grow throughout the 90s, with ‘people coming from across the country’ (Rose Staveley-Wadham, 2022)

 

Bibliography

- Tatchell,P (2019), 1972 London Pride, Available at https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/memories-of-britains-first-lgbt-pride-in-1972/ (Accessed 09/03/24)

- LGBT Archive (2023), London Pride Year by Year, Available at: https://lgbthistoryuk.org/wiki/London_Pride (Accessed 20/03/24)

- NCS (2024), LGBTQ+ History by the Decades, Available at https://wearencs.com/blog/lgbtq-history-decades-1980s (Accessed 01/04/24)

- EPOA (2022), Celebrating 30 Years of Europride this June, Available at https://www.epoa.eu/celebrating-30-years-of-europride-this-june/ (Accessed 01/04/24)

- Rose Staveley-Wadham (2022), Celebrating The First 20 Years of Pride in The United Kingdom, Available at https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2022/06/01/first-20-years-of-pride-in-the-united-kingdom/ (Accessed 01/04/24)

Image List

- Tatchell,P (2019), 1972 London Pride, Available at https://www.petertatchellfoundation.org/memories-of-britains-first-lgbt-pride-in-1972/ (Accessed 09/03/24)

- Bishopsgate Institute, London Pride: 1980s, Available at https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/london-pride-1980s (Accessed 09/03/24)

- Bishopsgate Institute, London Pride: 1990s, Available at https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/collections/london-pride-1990s (Accessed 09/03/24)

- Guest, K (2016), 2008 Gay Pride Parade, Regents Street, Available at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/therainbowlist/the-independent-on-sunday-rainbow-list-sixteen-years-on-the-pioneering-work-continues-a6937916.html (Accessed 09/03/24)

- Sky News (2023), London Pride Parade 2023, Available at https://news.sky.com/story/london-pride-parade-2023-time-and-date-exact-route-and-where-to-watch-it-12907404 (Accessed 09/03/24)

[starrkissd]

I finished my first zine!! I don't have a proper photocopy yet as the teacher who runs my schools zine club (yes we have a zine club it's brand new and totally cool) is going to photocopy it and put it in the school library!! it's on Radiohead and the order I think is good for beginners to listen to their albums (in my own opinion and experiences) and I'm SO proud of it!!!

working on a zine for free trans + queer resources online so any ideas would be cool! I've already got Theo's transgender library, Sherwood forest zine library, the Bishopsgate institute archives, and youtube, but any more ideas would be great!!

ALSO ALSO since she is sadly leaving after Christmas she asked ME to take over as leader of zine club!!!! I'm so honoured and happy and I can't wait!!!!

[aortatheatre]

A Man's Man

Aorta Theatre's Rob Hale, Kim Dambaek and Paul Burgess are collaborating to devise a new solo show with the working title of A Man's Man.

"And to begin .......We will be reunited with ourselves and all we have lost. Bring your fear, bring your loss, bring your dirty secrets and know that summer, winter, spring and autumn will be welcome - perhaps in that order. There might be some shocks and surprises and a dance or two. There will be no need for an answer - only the lifting of ourselves to a full acceptance and celebration, knowing that what is behind us, lets us love in the present. There will be wise horses, fake cowboys and real Native Americans as well as a cat burglar and the beauty of boys and men dressed something like women. We may weep or we may merely nod our head in recognition and all will be welcome, whoever and however we are." 

Rob was a member of both queer radical drag theatre collective Bloolips in the 1980's and Gay Sweatshop Theatre during the period 1984-1994.

This new work of creative non fiction will explore historical attempts to subvert and redefine masculinity through stories centred on his relationship with his Dad growing up in a South Wales coal mining town and charting a both joyous and painful journey of theatre activism and sexual politics through the emerging so called "AIDS Crisis' in the 1980s and beyond.

Colliding sexual compulsion with sexual liberation, whilst exposing narratives of resistance and shame, we seek to challenge the audience to enter a world of contradictions and questions concerning love and loss in the queer community of the 80's and 90's and its relevance for our understanding of gender today. There will be radical drag, a cowboy moon and a tree that changes sex. 

Mining the Bloolips archive from the Bishopsgate Institute. These are images from the tour and London performances of Yum Yum in 1983. (Rob - Sweet Pea - top left).

[electrojazzmin]

Half Moon

Hollywell Street, London - Bishopsgate Institute, London

[process-productionryanmurphy]

Research

The topic I am looking at for my studio practice based work could relate to a few of the theory lectures e.g. feminism and psychoanalysis. Leading from this i have been looking at Meg-John Baker, Jessica Benjamin, Otto Kernberg and Timo Airaksinen so far. Timo Airaksinen is also the author of 'A Philosophical and Rhetorical Theory of BDSM' which is published in 'The Journal of Mind and Behavior' which i intend to continue reading for critical practice and to support my studio work. I would like to visit the UK Leather and Fetish Archives (Bishopsgate Institute) as it has a large collective of imagery and documentation surrounding the topics i have listed above. Bob Flanagan produced a documentary film called 'Sick: The life and death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist' which I intend to watch as it documents the life him and his wife, their 24/7 D/s dynamic, his health and his death. This would be an interesting insight into the correlation between BDSM, art and mental health. There are also various interviews with the artists/riggers centering around their practice and what it means to them, finding supporting research could prove more difficult as there are slightly fewer papers written on these very specific sections.

[letsgethaunted]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Let's Get Haunted (@letsgethaunted)

Episode 127: Spring-Heeled Jack (The First Victorian Urban Legend) Photodump

Image 01: Spring-Heeled Jack Image 02: Detective James Lea (Bow Street Patrol) Image 03: Colorized photos of Victorian London (“Slum Children”, “Chimney Sweep and Assistant”, “Shellfish Stand”, “Encampment in Notting Hill”, “Evicted Slum Family”), Credit: Bishopsgate Institute Image 04: Victorian Slum photo, Credit: Bishopsgate Institute Image 05: Spring-Heeled Jack Image 06: Spring-Heeled Jack Image 07: Spring-Heeled Jack Image 08: A Penny Dreadful publication showcasing Spring-Heeled Jack! Credit to: Issue 2 cover of 1904 Aldine Spring Heeled Jack Library Image 09: Photo of children awaiting the start of a Punch & Judy puppet show, courtesy of Getty Images! + An illustration of a punch and judy show Image 10: Jeeper’s Creepers Monster

[thequeereview]

Out and About! Archiving LGBTQ+ history at London's Bishopsgate Institute

Out and About! Archiving LGBTQ+ history at London’s Bishopsgate Institute

From now until Monday, March 21st, London’s Bishopsgate Institute takes over of The Curve at Barbican Centre, with an archive installation of objects, ephemera, and media highlighting 40 moments and stories in London’s LGBTQ+ history. Bishopsgate Institute has been collecting the lived experiences of everyday people for over a century, and their unique special collections and archives present…

[notfspurejam]

MR LUCAS & MARK GATISS at The Bishopsgate Institute, London  06 FEBRUARY 2020

Actor, Producer, Director and Writer Mark Gatiss brilliantly brought to life Mr Lucas's diaries at a sold-out event at the Bishopsgate Institute. From the early 1940s until his death in 2014, Mr. Lucas kept a daily diary; millions of words detailing a lost London of rent-boys, guardsmen and the permanent fear of being queer-bashed or worse. The evening was also a chance to hear about Queer Britain's work and celebrate material that has already gone into our growing collection. We exhibited stage costumes from pop group Years and Years’ Olly Alexander, HBO/BBC’s Gentleman Jack, a short film authored by the performer and writer Travis Alabanza, made for us by gal-dem and Levi's, plus other artefacts. Thomson Reuters Foundation’s LGBT+ news site, Openly, was media partner for the event.

[leatherdykelust]

A very tongue-in-cheek(!) handwritten(!!) British(!!!) hanky code, dated 16 October 1976. Shared by Dr. Julia Shaw, and preserved by the Bishopsgate Institute.

Since the point of hanky codes is standardization, it's generally more interesting to note what makes any given list distinctive — which is why I shared this, because this is the quirkiest I've ever dug up.

Taking it from the top: it doesn't use the word top. The two roles are broken down into "butch & sadistic" vs. "passive & masochistic," suggesting that top/bottom terminology hadn't standardized in the UK yet.

Something immediately conspicuous to me was the colours that aren't on the list. Light blue (oral) and grey (bondage) were already codified by the time this was written, and both are conspicuously absent; at this point we'd probably need a séance to find out why they didn't make the cut. Given the age of the list, it's entirely possible that this reflects the colors available in the UK at the time.

White ("hasn't had time to change") is a unique Britishism, but reflects something we often forget: looking gay was something people used to get away with only under controlled circumstances.

This is a gay men's list; mustard (8+" long), robbin's [sic] egg blue (69ing), and lavender (drag) are all listed with the standard meanings you'll find in online codes today. I point this out because most of my followers are women, and I've reblogged variations of the Samois hanky code (which assigned different meanings to all these colors) before.

Puce ("pre-Columbian art") is a hapax legomenon: a color I've never seen listed on any other hanky code before or since. I hope it's a joke, because I have absolutely no idea what "pre-Columbian art" is a euphemism for if it isn't.

In most Seventies hanky codes, military uniforms are flagged for with American olive drab. Khaki represents something almost unique: a culture-specific localization.