Saturday 4th of February 2023 was the official launch of Queer Norfolk! At 6pm, the Norfolk and Norwich Millinium became the queerest place in town when around 70 queer history superfans turned up to show their support for the project. Adam Baker, the Community Archivist who started the project, spoke about origins of the projectand his hopes for the future. Next, Community Librarian Rachel Ridealgh, who co-founded the LGBT+ Ephemera archive at the Norfolk Heritage Centre with Jo Foster-Murdoch, spoke next about the exciting potential for the project, followed by Professor Richard Sawdon Smith who expanded on the significance of putting queer narratives and history back into the hands of queer people. Finaly, the evening was rounded off by the Sing with Pride choir, who sang a medley of songs from the OUT140 Play, which is featured in the Millenium Library’s display for LGBT+ History Month.
The project frist began in April last year, with the website first going live in September. Since then, a tiny team of volunteers have been working away, getting things ready for the official launch of the project. As the project enters this next exciting stage, we hope to uncover even more queer history and make more of what we have found accessible via the ehive.
There are a huge number of ‘thank yous’ to say:
Queer Norfolk is a volunteer-led archiving project that hands ownership of queer collections back to communities, empowering people to access, discover, and contribute to local collections that reflect our shared histories.
