OutStories Bristol

Come and pin some LGBT+ stories on our map

OutStories Bristol is creating an online digital map to tell the LGBT+ story of the wider Bristol region. The map will appear in this website and also as a new community ‘layer’ on the website Know Your Place.

This workshop is the first to user-test the new map and to start uploading data – stories, photographs, documents and audio clips. Come and help us create this permanent online archive.

Everyone welcome. No experience required – we’ll provide guidance.

The event is free but places are limited. Please book via Eventbrite.

Mapping LGBT+ Bristol is a collaboration between Bristol University’s Know Your Bristol project, Bristol City Council’s Know Your Place website, and OutStories Bristol. The project will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT+ history of the Bristol region.

Activities include:

• Gathering the stories of LGBT+ people through oral interviews.
• Research in the Bristol Record Office, libraries and other local archives.
• Collating and storing the digital material we collect and uploading it to websites.
• Creating a custom-made mobile app and a user-friendly interface embedded in OutStories’ own website.

Read more about the project here.

Activities are co-ordinated at monthly meetings, usually the 2nd Tuesday of each month. The next meeting is:

(c) Bristol Record Office

OutStories Bristol have researched and documented a fraction of the huge variety of LGBT+ lives past in Bristol and its surrounds – there is so much more to uncover!

Come along to our first workshop at Bristol Record Office (BRO) for a behind-the-scenes tour of the strongrooms where 800 years of historic documents are stored.

(c) Bristol Record Office

Following this we will have a short ‘research skills’ workshop lead by staff from BRO which caters for complete beginners upwards. Learn about handling documents, the variety of sources available and how to start researching the archives and online sources that can be accessed from BRO.  Finally we will put our new-found skills into practice by finding and ordering some LGBT+ themed historic documents and revealing their stories ready to be mapped.

The workshop is free but places are limited – please book via Eventbrite.

John Addington Symonds on a sledge at Davos. University of Bristol Library, Special Collections (DM377)

Bristol University’s Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition (IGRCT) invite you to Ancient and Modern Love, a concert to celebrate the life and work of John Addington Symonds, one of Victorian Britain’s greatest scholar-writers and an early advocate of homosexual rights.

Bristol-born Symonds was an influential scholar, public intellectual, and prolific writer in Victorian Britain. His works, ranging from ancient Greek poetry to the Italian Renaissance and modern ethical issues closely match the Institute’s promotion of research linking ancient and modern.

Ian Venables

On the 5 December we will hear, for the first time ever, Symonds’ poetry set to music by the acclaimed British composer Ian Venables, recently described by the BBC Music Magazines as ‘one of the finest song composers of his generation’, who will be present at the concert. You are invited to sit back and enjoy the performance in the aptly named Symonds Drawing Room in his old family home, Clifton Hill House.

The concert will be followed by a drinks reception.

All are welcome at this free event. Booking required via Eventbrite.

IGRCT Donors’ Celebration: Ancient and Modern Love

Saturday 5th December 2015, 5.30pm to 7pm

Clifton Hill House, Lower Clifton Hill, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 1BX

Map

Sponsored by the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition (IGRCT).
Find out more about the IGRCT on their website. You can also find them on Facebook and Twitter.

Symonds in Bristol is a wonderful website detailing the people and places associated with John Addington Symonds.

Interested in our Mapping LGBT+ Bristol project? Then come along to this introductory session and find out how to get involved.

Saturday 21st November 2015,  2pm to 4pm

Mild West Room,    Hamilton House,     80 Stokes Croft,     Bristol,     BS1 2QY

Map and getting there

We need you!
We seek volunteers for all aspects of the project. Training will be provided for free and no experience is necessary!

You could help:

• Gather the stories of LGBT+ people through oral interviews. Edit and transcribe audio files.
• Research in the Bristol Record Office, libraries and other archives.
• Collate and store the digital material we collect, and upload it to Know Your Place, Bristol City Council’s online mapping website.
• Help create a new user-friendly interface embedded in the OutStories Bristol website that will draw LGBT+ data from Know Your Place and facilitate crowd-sourced contributions.
• Develop a custom-made app that will display the Know Your Place LGBT+ data on mobile devices.
• Collaborate with local LGBT+ youth groups in producing curriculum materials to be used in local schools to combat homophobia and transphobia.
• Generate publicity. Organise public events.

(c) Bristol Record Office

What will happen at the session on the 21st November?

• You’ll meet people already involved.
• We’ll explain the project aims and activities.
• You can chat about areas that interest you and find out how to get involved.

Come along if you would like to join the project or want to know more.
Please get a free ticket on Eventbrite so we get an idea of numbers for refreshments.
For more information, email: contact@outstoriesbristol.org.uk

Accessibility to Hamilton House:
The entrance on Stokes Croft to the left of The Canteen cafe/bar is ramped, no steps. There is a lift to all floors. The disabled toilets on the ground floor are unisex.

Mapping LGBT+ Bristol is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Beatrice Hitchman:  Negotiating with the Dead: Writing Lesbian Historical Fiction

The tribade, in search of one of her own kind, has a distinctive badge: this is the magnificent, curled, trimmed, sometimes beribboned poodle.

Photo copyright: Sarah Lee

But how reliable is the witness? How does a lesbian historical novelist go about writing a past that’s complicated by bias or plain old invisibility? This talk by Bristol lesbian author Beatrice Hitchman looks at the ethical detective work of researching a novel and what writers owe – or don’t owe – to communities of the dead.

The talk will be followed by OutStories Bristol’s AGM.

Saturday 14th November 2015.    2pm to 4pm.

The Function Room,     The Golden Guinea,     19 Guinea Street,    Bristol,    BS1 6SX.

Map

Please note: there are nine steps up to the front door, and 12 steps down to the basement function room.

The event is free and open to everyone, however a small donation to OutStories Bristol would be appreciated.

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Beatrice Hitchman was born in London in 1980. She read English and French at Edinburgh University and then completed an MA in Comparative Literature. After a year living in Paris, she moved back to the UK, trained and worked as a documentary film editor, also writing and directing short films. In 2009 she graduated from the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA, winning the Greene & Heaton Prize for best novel-in-progress.

Petite Mort was published in March 2013 by Serpent’s Tail. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Authors’ Club First Novel Prize, has been shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Novel Prize, and adapted on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour as a ten-part serial starring Honor Blackman.

OutStories Bristol’s highly successful ‘Revealing Stories’ exhibition is to be displayed at Bath Spa University from 26th to 31st October 2015.

The exhibition is based on archival records and oral history interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people associated with Bristol and the surrounding area. Focusing on living memory (c. 1940s to the present) it tells how people fought to shape and control their own lives. It is the story of those who witnessed these changes and helped to make history.

Monday 26th to Saturday 31st  October 2015

‘Commons’ Building,  Newton Park Campus,
Bath Spa University,   Newton St Loe,   Bath,   BA2 9BN

The Commons Building is open 8am to 10pm daily to all – not just students! It is fully accessible.

Please note: this display comprises vertical text panels only; it doesn’t include any of the objects that were in the original exhibition at Bristol’s M Shed during February/March 2013.

Mapping LGBT+ Bristol is a collaboration between Bristol University’s Know Your Bristol project, Bristol City Council’s Know Your Place website, and OutStories Bristol. The aim is to create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT+ history of Bristol and the surrounding areas: Bath, South Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Activities will include:

• Gathering the stories of LGBT+ people through oral interviews.
• Research in the Bristol Record Office, libraries and other local archives.
• Collating and storing the digital material we collect and uploading it to websites.
• Creating a custom-made mobile app and a user-friendly interface embedded in OutStories’ own website.

Read more about the project here.

The project will kick off with a workshop on Saturday 26th September to: