OutStories Bristol

Celebrate and discover LGBTQ+ lives across the centuries.

Bristol’s social history museum M Shed in partnership with OutStories Bristol present a fascinating range of talks highlighting LGBTQ+ stories and heritage. Topics range from the search for ancient trans Celts to a cheeky look at butts in art.

Saturday 24^th February 2024,  11am to 4:45pm
M Shed,  Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol  BS1 4RN
Getting there      Access

The event will be held in the Studio Room on the first floor, upstairs from the main entrance.
Entrance is free. Booking is not required – just come and go as you wish.

There will also be information stalls including Bristol Pride, Bristol Radical History Group, Gay West and the Bristol Museums gender exhibition team.

Programme

Each session includes time for Q&A and breaks between talks.

11.10am – 11.15am    Welcome by hosts Chloe Little and Marek Barden, Trustees of Outstories Bristol.

11.15am – 11.55am    H.H. Gore – Bristol’s Nineteenth Century Gay Christian Socialist Solicitor
Mike Richardson, Bristol Radical History Group

12.05pm – 12.45pm    Novelist Mary Renault’s Bristol and The Charioteer  Jonathan Rowe, OutStories Bristol

12.55pm – 1.35pm    In search of Trans Celts   Cheryl Morgan, trans history specialist and diversity advisor

1.35pm – 2pm         Interval

2pm – 2.40pm    The Gender Exhibition  Helen McConnell Simpson and Steve Bradley, Bristol Museums

2.50pm –  3.30pm    They’re Just Good Friends – a cheeky look at butts in art and historical documents
Mark Small of Museum Bums

3.40pm – 4.20pm    A Sinkhole of Vice and Infamy: Transportation for Sodomy in 1840s Bristol
Andrew Foyle, social historian and member of OutStories Bristol

4.45pm   Event closes

About the talks

H.H. Gore – Bristol’s Nineteenth Century Gay Christian Socialist Solicitor

Hugh Holmes Gore was a key figure in Bristol’s labour movement during the last two decades of the 19th century. A popular “people’s solicitor” at the service of Bristol’s working class, he also defended militant trade unionists, anarchists and revolutionary socialists.

However in 1898 Gore vanished under mysterious circumstances. His friends suggested a scandal, most probably because of his sexual attraction to men at a time when homosexuality was a criminal offence.

Mike Richardson is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the West of England and an expert on the history of the labour movement in Bristol. One of Bristol Radical History Group’s most prolific writers, his publications include the biography The Enigma of Hugh Holmes Gore.

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Novelist Mary Renault’s Bristol and The Charioteer

This talk by Jonathan Rowe is about lesbian novelist Mary Renault, her Bristol associations and her ground-breaking 1953 male gay love story The Charioteer which is set in a fictionalised Second World War Bristol.

Jonathan is a local historian, Bristol born and bred. He regularly writes for OutStories Bristol and the Bristol Times supplement of the Bristol Post. He is also chairman of Brislington Conservation and History Society, and Secretary of his local drama group for which he has written several productions.

In search of Trans Celts

Tribal societies around the world are known to make space for gender diversity in their societies. We’ve observed this in places like the Americas, Africa, Polynesia and Australia. But similar societies in Britain are in the distant past, and from times when little or no writing was done. What can we tell about gender amongst the ancient people of Britain?

Cheryl Morgan, is a Senior Trainer and Consultant in Trans Awareness for the Diversity Trust and a former co-chair of OutStories Bristol. An expert in trans history and literature, she writes for various history blogs and is a frequent speaker at LGBTQ+ History Month events.
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The Gender Exhibition

Find out about this exciting exhibition due to open in Spring 2025 exploring the complex and rich theme of gender identity. The show is being developed in partnership with National Museums Liverpool, Brighton & Hove Museums and local communities. The exhibition will tour following its debut in Bristol. Hear about:

• the museum’s queer objects and artworks
• new approaches for contemporary collecting
• how you can potentially get involved.

Speakers: Helen McConnell Simpson (Senior Curator of History) and Steve Bradley (Exhibitions & Displays Manager), Bristol Museums.

They’re Just Good Friends – a cheeky look at butts in art and historical documents

Based on their eponymous viral Twitter (‘X’) account @museumbums, Museum Bums take us on a whirlwind tour of butts in museums and art galleries around the world. Heritage scholar and art educator Mark Small pairs tongue-in-cheeks humour with insightful commentary on the representation of the naked body in history, and how galleries and museums approach gender and sexual diversity today.

A Sinkhole of Vice and Infamy: Transportation for Sodomy in 1840s Bristol

Tasmanian Convict Station, c. 1850 (courtesy State Library of Tasmania)

Andrew Foyle presents new research on the harsh lives of two Bristol men convicted for sodomy in 1842, constructing from scant evidence a plausible hypothesis for their discovery and betrayal. He follows the extraordinary tale of their transportation and eventual fates in the notorious convict stations of Tasmania.

Andrew is an architectural and social historian, and a founder member of OutStories Bristol.

Throat parched: hand trembling: choice made. They reach for the phone: a piercing ring: the wait unending. Deep inhale: a silent breath: the whole world pauses just for a moment…

Hello? Is anybody there…?  Are you a ….  are you a gay person?

Welcome to Switchboard, a LGBTQ History Month show by radical performance artist Astro-Zenica.

The show draws on archival research, call logs from the Bristol Lesbian and Gay Switchboard (1975–2012), and oral histories about queer nightlife and protest in the 1970s and 80s. Astro explores the myriad codes and languages developed by queer people to reach out, hook-up and find community. The codes for making friends and fighting back in a world often violent and harsh to the emergence of the queer spirit. Naïve in its beginnings, there is a longing for acceptance and search for connection.

There’s something in this being held, in the call that answers… before the phone connection dies and the next choice is made….

This is a show about class, violence, access, visibility, hedonism, sexual freedom and community.

Written as a Valentine’s Day love letter to the radical queers, the club promoters, the party starters, the drag artists, the volunteers at the switchboard, and most of all to Dale Wakefield, who opened the switchboard at her home in Totterdown in 1975.

Dale and the team received thousands of calls in the Switchboard’s opening years. They were listening to the fears, signposting to the club, offering rescue missions to those attacked on the street, and becoming a beacon of support during the AIDS crisis. All because of a belief in and commitment to the power of community.

For those who are living and for the many more who have died, this one’s for you.

Written by Astro-Zenica. Set design by Emily Diamond. Image: Jason Leung.
Find the artists on Instagram:
@AstroZenica_
@TheHouseOfSavalon
@e_diamond_sculpture

This event is provided by Bristol Museums in assocation with OutStories Bristol.

Tuesday 14th February 2023.   7.30pm—9.30pm
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Queens Road, Bristol BS8 1RL
Getting there    Accessibility

This event is aged 18+
Tickets: £12 adult, £10 concession
Book in advance from Bristol Museums