The ‘place project’ meeting planned for 11th August 2015 has been cancelled due to the number of people away on holiday.
The next meeting will be Tuesday 8th September. Venue to be announced.
In March Hugo Award winning author and OutStories Bristol co-chair Cheryl Morgan gave a Flagship guest lecture at Liverpool University on how Transgendered identities have been represented and evolved within science fiction writing and comics. See it on this video.
Cheryl herself is an active Trans writer, blogger, editor and publisher. http://www.cheryl-morgan.com
The event was sponsored by the Liverpool University Special Archive and Collection (University Library) and the Science Fiction Foundation.
Exploring Gender Fluidity through Science Fiction and Fantasy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Copy and paste this code to embed this video in another web page:
<div id=”body_frameplayer”><iframe width=”480″ height=”270″ src=”https://stream.liv.ac.uk/s/b5rdardc” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ style=”max-width: 100%;” id=”object”></iframe></div>
Bristol has been chosen as one of six UK cities to host a National Festival of LGBT History in February 2016. The festival will present a series of talks at Bristol’s M Shed museum, films and theatre performances.
It aims to promote research into past attitudes towards sex and gender diversity, provide a showcase for local research into LGBT history, and acknowledge the rich diversity of our community.
The festival is co-ordinated by Schools OUT as part of LGBT History Month. Events will occur over the four weekends of February 2016 in six cities – Bristol, Shrewsbury, London, Manchester, York and Tyne & Wear. Bristol events will be held on the weekend of 19th and 20th February and are being organised by OutStories. Click here to see some of the planned events.
The festival follows on from the success of the first held in Manchester in February 2015. Speakers then included Stuart Milk, LGBT activist and nephew of assassinated pioneer Harvey Milk, veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell, and History Professor Charles Upchurch who flew in from Florida especially for the event. The highlight of the weekend was a three-part immersive theatre production A Very Victorian Scandal which dramatised the events of Britain’s own ‘Stonewall’ event which happened in Hulme in 1880.
This 16-minute LGBTv programme gives a flavour of the event.
What they said about the First National History Festival:
“It 
is wonderful and important that our real history as individuals and organisations is captured by us rather than others.”
Linda Bellos
.
“The LGBT History Festival is a fascinating, inspiring, uplifting event that reveals and celebrates the often hidden histories of the LGBT communities.”
Peter Tatchell
.
LGBT History Festival: www.twitter.com/lgbthistoryfest #LGBTHistoryFestival
LGBT History Month: www.twitter.com/LGBTHM #LGBTHM16
Event calendar: www.lgbthistorymonth.org.uk/event-calendar/
Provided the funding application is successful, OutStories Bristol will commence a collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council in October. We are calling this project ‘Place‘ and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.
OutStories is already starting preparatory work – research in local archives, oral history interviewing, digitising material for upload to websites, etc.
We hold planning meetings to oversee the project, develop ideas and co-ordinate volunteer activities. Come along, meet a nice bunch of people, and get involved! We meet around a table in the pub and enjoy a drink too.
Next meeting:
Tuesday 11 August 2015, 7pm to 9pm
Venue to be announced
OutStories Bristol will have a stall in the Rainbow Community Tent at Bristol Pride, the outdoor LGBT festival held each year in Castle Park. Drop in and chat to our volunteers about what we do and how you could get involved.
Pride Day Saturday 11th July 2015 11am on
Castle Park, Bristol, BS1 3XD
Map
” […] I’ve had to survive a variety of things apart from sex work and transition — health issues and bad relationships, for instance, so I am temperamentally inclined to gallows humour and self-irony as general survival strategies. “
Roz Kaveney’s latest novel, Tiny Pieces of Skull, is based to a large extent on her own experiences as a young British trans woman living amongst trans sex workers in Chicago in the 1970s. As Heather Seggel’s Lambda Literary review explains, it is a highly entertaining and upbeat tale of what must, at times, have been an extremely scary and dangerous life.
Cheryl Morgan, who transitioned twenty years later but who knows Kaveney through the science fiction community, talked to Roz via email about her new book and how life for trans women has changed over the past four decades. Read the interview here.
Roz is giving a talk about her book at Hydra Books in Bristol.
Tuesday 7th July 2015. 6pm to 9pm
Hydra Books, 34 Old Market, Bristol, BS2 0EZ
Map
No step into the shop but unfortunately no accessible toilet
Roz Kaveney ‘Tiny Pieces of Skull’
Published by Team Angelica
www.teamangelica.com
Click here for a PDF flyer advertising the event.
Provided the funding application is successful, OutStories Bristol will commence a collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council in October. We are calling this project ‘Place‘ and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.
OutStories is already starting preparatory work – research in local archives, oral history interviewing, digitising material for upload to websites, etc.
We hold planning meetings to oversee the project, develop ideas and co-ordinate volunteer activities. Come along, meet a nice bunch of people, and get involved! We meet around a table in the pub and enjoy a drink too.
Next meeting:
Tuesday 9 June 2015, 7pm to 9pm
Old Market Tavern, 29-30 Old Market Street, Old Market, Bristol BS2 0HB
Old Market Tavern Map and location
Provided the funding application is successful, OutStories Bristol will commence a collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council in October. We are calling this project ‘Place‘ and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.
OutStories is already starting preparatory work – research in local archives, oral history interviewing, digitising material for upload to websites, etc.
We hold planning meetings on the second Tuesday each month to oversee the project, develop ideas and co-ordinate volunteer activities. Come along, meet a nice bunch of people, and get involved! We meet around a table in the pub and enjoy a drink too.
Next meeting:
Tuesday 14 April 2015, 7pm to 9pm
Old Market Tavern, 29-30 Old Market Street, Old Market, Bristol BS2 0HB
Old Market Tavern Map and location
OutStories Bristol is developing a collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council. We are calling this project ‘Place‘ and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.
We hold monthly planning meetings to oversee the project, develop ideas and co-ordinate volunteer activities. Come along, meet a nice bunch of people, and get involved! We meet around a table in the pub and enjoy a drink too.
Next meeting:
Tuesday 10 March 2015, 7pm to 9pm
Old Market Tavern, 29-30 Old Market Street, Old Market, Bristol BS2 0HB
Old Market Tavern Map and location
We will shortly be arranging separate sessions to carry out specific aspects of the project – research in local archives and libraries, oral history interviewing, digitising material for upload to websites, etc. If you have expressed an interest in any of these activities, we will be contacting you in the next few weeks to arrange a convenient time and place to meet. You don’t need to come to the monthly planning sessions – nevertheless you are welcome!
OutStories Bristol is developing a new collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council. Continuing the research we started for our Revealing Stories exhibition, the project aims to gather the LGBT story of the Bristol area and create a permanent online archive. We are calling this project place and it should formally commence in October (provided the funding application is successful).
Between now and October we are starting a number of mini-projects to establish small teams of volunteers:
This event is your opportunity to learn about this exciting new project and find out how you can get involved – oral history interviewing, research in local archives or online, helping digitize material for upload to our website.
Refreshments provided. To help with numbers for catering, please book on Eventbrite.
Saturday 28 February 2015, 2pm to 4pm
Mild West Room, 5th floor, Hamilton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bristol, BS1 2QY
Accessibility: the entrance on Stokes Croft to the left of The Canteen cafe/bar is ramped, no steps. There is a lift to the fifth floor.
The disabled toilets on the ground floor are unisex and may be used as gender-neutral toilets.
Print this flyer and invite your friends! :
OutStories Bristol is developing a major new collaborative project with the Know Your Bristol project at the University of Bristol and Know Your Place, a website run by Bristol City Council. We are calling this project Mapping LGBT+ Bristol and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.
The project is being funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, a government-sponsored body that finances research and post-graduate projects. It will:
Support OutStories volunteers in researching and mapping the LGBT history of Bristol and surrounds.
Copyright: Anna Henderson.
Mapping LGBT+ Bristol will be a series of explorations of LGBT lives, both historic and present. The project will draw teams of people together to research and record histories of the diverse individuals and communities that make up Bristol’s LGBT life.
Places of significance may range from common places where people meet (now or in the past), the shifting map of the LGBT scene, sites of memory or life events significant to one individual or small groups, places of religious toleration, dissent and diversity, and sites relevant to public, political and civic oppression and acceptance.
The project formally commences in October and will last for one year.
.
Everyone is welcome to get involved. We seek people to do research, conduct oral history interviews, produce video/audio, and create digital material for uploading to Know Your Place and our own website. Get in touch via our contact form.
Mapping LGBT+ Bristol is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council
***FULLY BOOKED***. If you haven’t reserved a ticket and you turn up, we’re sorry to say you may be turned away.
Historian Josie McLellan tells the surprising story of gay activism in Cold War East Berlin. In the 1970s, a group of lesbians and gay men formed the HIB (Homosexual Interest Group Berlin), the first gay rights group in the Eastern Bloc. The HIB saw themselves as a ‘family’, supporting each other through difficult coming-outs, organising parties and balls for up to 200 people.
But they were also a highly political group, making interventions at public events and lobbying the East German authorities for official state recognition. Their links to Western gay activists were extensive – indeed a visit from Peter Tatchell was one of the key events in their early history.
How was all this possible under a dictatorial regime which was insistent that homosexuality should remain behind closed doors? Josie explains all, drawing on a series of interviews with members of the HIB, as well as their archives of photographs and film.
Dr. Josie McLellan is Reader in Modern European History at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of postwar Europe, with a particular interest in the way that economic and social change affects people’s everyday lives.
Free talk, but contributions to OutStories Bristol gladly received (suggested donation £3).
You can reserve your place on Eventbrite. You do not need to print the ticket as your registration is communicated electronically.
Friday 27 February 2015, 7pm
Upstairs at Roll for the Soul café, 2 Quay Street, Bristol. BS1 2JL
Full café-bar downstairs for refreshments.
Unfortunately we could not secure an accessible venue for this event; it will take place up a flight of stairs and there is no lift. However, a sound recording of the talk will be taken and made available to anyone unable to participate. We are very sorry for this shortfall of standards in our programme of events.
LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.
Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun. Artist: Simeon Solomon
Because trans rights have only recently been talked about in public, many people assume that being trans is a modern invention, perhaps something invented by psychiatrists. However, gender-variant people have always been with us.
Cheryl Morgan takes us on a tour of some notable cases from history and makes the case for a rigid insistence on the binary nature of gender being a comparatively recent, Western, invention.
This talk is to the Bath University LGBT group, but it is open to the public. Free.
.
Thursday 26 February 2015, 7:15pm
Building/room 8W 2.27, Bath University Campus, Claverton Down Road, Bath, BA2 7AY
Map of Bath University campus
Accessibility map
LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.
Image: “Heliogabalus” (from the Greek Helios, the sun god) is a name variant of Roman Emperor Elagabalus, one of the most famous trans people from history. Artist: Simeon Solomon.
UBU Festival of Liberation
Invited panelists will give their views on this question followed by an opportunity for the audience to contribute to the debate and ask our panelists questions.
The event is free and open to all.
Wednesday 25 February 2015. 6pm-7.30pm
Room AR1, University of Bristol Students’ Union, Richmond Building, 105 Queen’s Rd, Bristol, BS8 1LN
Map and getting there
The panel:
Chair: Alice Phillips – Equality, Liberation and Access Officer at UBU
@alicephillips90
Alice is a University of Bristol Politics graduate who is the current Equality, Liberation and Access Officer at UBU. She is the curator of the festival and also organised the UBU Reclaim the Night march in November which 500 students and local people attended.
Fran Cowling – NUS LGBT Officer (Women’s Place)
@Fran_Cowling
Fran is the National Union of Students’ LGBT Officer (Women’s Place). She ran on a manifesto of challenging the cuts and making sure women’s voices are heard in a movement often dominated by gay men. She is also working on research around LGBT FE students’ experiences of education.
Daryn Carter – Director Bristol Pride
@daryncarter
Daryn is the Director of Bristol Pride, the largest free Pride Festival in the UK with a week of events ranging from theatre, film and dance with a one day festival in the heart of Bristol attracting thousands of people and international headline acts. Working all year round Bristol Pride also delivers training and consultation services to businesses and presentations on workplace and school bullying. Daryn is also the Director of Diversity Careers, which delivers diversity focused careers events.
Noorulann Shahid – NUS LGBT Committee
@YxxngHippie
Noorulann is the Black Rep on the NUS LGBT Committee and also works to support student campaigns and activism at UBU. Last year their twitter campaign #LifeOfAMuslimFeminist went viral. The campaign was featured on Buzzfeed, and Noorulann wrote a piece about it for the Huffington Post.
Cheryl Morgan – TransBristol (and OutStories Bristol)
@CherylMorgan
Cheryl Morgan is a science fiction critic and member of local group TransBristol which aims to create a safe space where trans identified people in the Bristol area can share ideas, provide support and plan events. Cheryl blogs at http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/
Accessibility
AR11 is a fully accessible room on the second floor of the union, reached via a lift on the ground floor. If you have any access needs or questions about the panel get in touch with the Equality, Liberation and Access Officer, Alice Phillips – alice.phillips@bristol.ac.
This event is covered by UBU’s Safe Space Policy. A full copy of the policy is available here.
LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.
Robert Howes of Gay West will lead a walk around the centre of Bath pointing out the buildings and monuments which have LGBT associations, either as places where people socialised or as meeting places for the LGBT movement over the last forty years.
The walk should last about an hour and a half and finish back by the War Memorial, with the option of warming up in a local tea-shop.
This is a free event but a donation to OutStories Bristol / Gay West would be welcome.
Book on Eventbrite. Contact: info@gaywest.org.uk
Sunday 22 February 2015, 2pm
Meet at the War Memorial in Queen’s Parade, Bath, BA1 2NJ
LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.
Thomas Glave speaking at Oslo Freedom Forum
Professor Thomas Glave of the University of Warwick will give a reading/talk titled:
It will look at the use of Jamaican language and contemporary culture in regard to ‘taboo’ forms of sexuality and some of the tensions that surround ‘unspeakable’ forms of ‘queer’ sexuality and desire.
Warning: the talk will contain strong language and sexual descriptions.
Free talk, but contributions to OutStories Bristol gladly received (suggested donation £3).
You can reserve your place on Eventbrite. You do not need to print the ticket as your registration is communicated electronically.
Saturday 14 February 2015, 2:30pm
The Studio, M-Shed, Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol BS1 4RN
M Shed
How to get there and map
The Studio is on the first floor with lift access.
Professor Thomas Glave is the 2014 Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick School of Modern Languages and Cultures. He is the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (Lambda Literary Award, 2005), The Torturer’s Wife (Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist and Lambda Literary Award finalist, 2008) and Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh (2013, Lambda Literary Award finalist, 2014). He is editor of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (Lambda Literary Award, 2008). His most recent work has appeared in The New York Times, The Kenyon Review, Callaloo, and in several anthologies.
A professor of English and creative writing at SUNY-Binghamton, Glave has been Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT and a 2012 Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge.
LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.
Robert Howes, author of the book ‘Gay West: Civil Society, Community and LGBT History in Bristol and Bath, 1970-2010’, talks about the role of LGBT voluntary groups in the UK, particularly in the Bristol and Bath region, since the 1960s. This talk is open to members of the general public.
‘Can we help?’ The historical role of LGBT voluntary action in the West
Talk at Bath Spa University
Wednesday 11 February 2015, 4pm to 5:30pm
Room NP.CM.134, Commons Building, Bath Spa University, Newton St Loe, Bath, BA2 9BN
Accessibility: Accessible for disabled people: please ask a staff member for help in using the lift.
Contact: Email: info@gaywest.org.uk or c.robinson@bathspa.ac.uk
LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.
OutStories Bristol is developing a collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council. We are calling this project place and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.
We hold monthly meetings to formulate initiatives and develop volunteer activities. These meetings are open to everyone who would like to get involved with research in local archives and libraries, oral history interviewing, or digitizing material for upload to websites.
Come along, meet a nice bunch of people, and get involved! We meet around a table in the pub and enjoy a drink too.
Next meeting:
Tuesday 10 February 2015, 7pm to 9pm
Old Market Tavern, 29-30 Old Market Street, Old Market, Bristol BS2 0HB
Old Market Tavern Map and location
OutStories Bristol’s annual general meeting will take place at M Shed on 7th February.
Click here for the agenda.
The meeting is open to all, and if not already a member, you can sign up on the day to vote.
The Studio, M Shed, Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol, BS1 4RN
Saturday 7 February 2015, 4pm to 5pm
M Shed
How to get there and map
The Studio is on the first floor with lift access
Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun. Artist: Simeon Solomon
Because trans rights have only recently been talked about in public, many people assume that being trans is a modern invention, perhaps something invented by psychiatrists. However, gender-variant people have always been with us.
Cheryl Morgan takes us on a tour of some notable cases from history and makes the case for a rigid insistence on the binary nature of gender being a comparatively recent, Western, invention.
Free, but contributions to OutStories Bristol gladly received (suggested donation £3).
You can reserve your place for the talk via Eventbrite. But, you do not need to print the ticket as your registration is communicated electronically.
Saturday 7 February 2015, 2.30pm
The Studio, M-Shed, Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol, BS1 4RN
M Shed
How to get there and map
The Studio is on the first floor with lift access.
LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.
Image: “Heliogabalus” (from the Greek Helios, the sun god) is a name variant of Roman Emperor Elagabalus, one of the most famous trans people from history. Artist: Simeon Solomon.
