OutStories Bristol

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

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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.

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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.

John Addington Symonds

Happy 175th Birthday, John Addington Symonds!

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.

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
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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

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!

***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  

Website and location

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.