Happy Transgender Day of Visibility! This year, Queer Norfolk is celebrating by sharing some of the objects in our archive donated as part of The Museum of Transology’s National Day of Trans Collecting, which aimed to highlight the importance of community archives to the preservation of local queer history. Participants were invited to donate objects that celebrated their identities as transgender people. Each object is accompanied by an explanatory label handwritten by the donor.
Even the most ordinary objects can hold sentimental significance for their owners. This pot of LUSH shaving cream was bought for the donor by a supportive sibling to celebrate starting testosterone. This ordinary item became a symbol of affirmation and a source of trans joy. The donor writes: “I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling joy at having facial hair I need to shave off.”
This painting depicts a Trans Pride event in Norwich in June 2023. As the world emerged from the COVID lockdowns, this artist made it their mission to document pride events throughout the summer. The colourful, impressionistic image captures the excitement experienced by the trans community at this historic moment, capturing vivid pink costumes, dancers in the crowd, and of course, a lot of pride flags.
Ephemera archives like ours can capture momentary experiences in a person’s life, such as this pressed flower from the donor’s “angsty teen journal”. The flower was initially collected on the donor’s first date with a girl, pressed between the pages of the journal, and then carefully removed so it could be donated to the archive. The donor writes that the flower was especially meaningful because “said date started my long thought process on my gender identity – the flower looking a bit like a pansy should be a clue.”
This copy of WI Life magazine was donated by Petra Wenham, who features on the cover. She was the first trans woman to appear on the cover of the Women’s Institute’s official magazine. Sadly, the Women’s Institute has recently had to restrict membership under pressure from transphobic campaign groups. Petra’s story is a reminder of a more hopeful time, and a reminder that change is always possible.
These objects were originally displayed at the Museum of Transology’s National Day of Trans Collecting exhibition. After the exhibition ended in 2025 they returned from their big museum adventure to local archives across the country. Our archive team have been hard at work digitising the Museum of Transology collection, and thanks to their efforts you can view the full set of donated objects in our digital archive. Which ones are your favourites?
Author: Errol Seymour
The Museum of Transology’s National Day of Trans Collecting took place in Norwich in 2024. Objects collected on this day were included in the Museum of Transology’s 10 year anniversary exhibition in 2025 at the Lethaby Gallery. The collection is housed at The Bishopsgate Institute in London, with some objects in local collections. For more information, go to: Museum of Transology
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.
