Crowdfunding

Help LGBTQ+ communities share and preserve their stories for the future

This October Queer Britain are raising £26,000 to develop two projects that are dedicated to amplifying voices from within the community.
112% funded
£28,927.50 raised
£26,000 target
View Updates

Too often, LGBTQ+ communities are not given the opportunity to narrate their own histories. This October we are raising money to develop two projects that are dedicated to amplifying voices from within the community.

Community Residencies

Our residency series invites individuals from communities who are often underrepresented in Museums to reinterpret our collection through their personal experiences and identify gaps and missing stories. They will address these in a manner of their choosing, developing creative skills via bespoke workshops and work towards an outcome that can be shared with the public. The participants will decide the form their outcome will take - it could be a zine, an event, an installation - and a version or copy will be preserved in the Queer Britain collection.

Our first residency will host young people who are part of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community, in collaboration with Shaan Knan, Travellers Pride and Mermaids UK.

Queer Britain

Accessible Audio Guides

Our audio guide and story archiving project will support the preservation of community histories and personal narratives, and improve access of Blind and Partially Sighted people to our exhibitions and collection. The audio guides will be created with community members, and will include audio description of the contents of our exhibitions and collection, enriched with the memories, stories and reflections of participants.

This will be freely available in the museum and online as a form of personal audio guides for anyone who wants to listen.

Rahil Ahmad (@stolenoranges)

To launch these projects, we need to raise £26,000.

Part of the funding will help us launch the first community residency, including participants' travel expenses, food, and workshop materials. The rest will be used to develop the accessible audio guides, including paying the participating individuals for their time, audio description training, and the necessary audio visual recording and display equipment.

Amplify LGBTQ+ Voices

As thanks for your support, you can choose from our exclusive rewards, including a unique screen print created by FORT London or a range of experiences for you and your loved ones.

Queer people’s lives have too often been erased or mis-represented, and this is especially true for more marginalised LGBTQ+ communities. Our projects are designed to amplify personal perspectives from different queer communities by giving them resources to tell their stories in their own way.

Help us prevent more history from being lost with projects that centre those that experienced it.

Rahil Ahmad (@stolenoranges)

Latest updates (6)

March 2024

March 2024
22 Mar 24

We would love to welcome you to the finale of the Community Residency that your donation made possible.

Since February, we have been working with Traveller Pride and doctoral researcher Shaan Knan for our first community residency. Over the last few months, Traveller+ community members have been participating in hybrid sessions at Queer Britain where they have engaged in creative activities to explore their identities, histories, and communities.

As we near the end of our LGBTQ+ Traveller+ Community Residency, our participants are working toward the production of a shared work that will celebrate their 3 month residency. This final collaborative work will be displayed to the public for the first time during a presentation at Queer Britain on Saturday, 6 April.

As a supporter of the crowdfund that made this residency possible, we would love it if you would join us in this celebration.

You can book your spot now: eventbrite.co.uk/e/860961347567

After the presentation, the final production will be displayed in the Queer Britain galleries as part of our exhibition for a limited period of time. If you can't join us on the day, there will still be time to experience the work.

Thank you and we hope to welcome you on the 6th!

12 Mar 24

An update on what we have been doing since our crowdfunding campaign

It's been an exciting time at Queer Britain so we wanted to send you an update.

In February, because of all our supporters, we were able to launch our Community Residency Programme and welcome our first residency.

We are now halfway through our first residency, where we have been working with the LGBTQ+ Traveller+ community. In the last 3 weeks participants have explored ideas around representation, appropriation and resignification of archive images through collage with Tyler Hatwell from Traveller Pride and Nan Carreira, our own Programming and Community Events Manager.

We also had the wonderful opportunity to bring artist Bela Varadi in to lead a workshop around photography. During the workshop, participants had the chance to have their portrait taken by Bela. Afterwards, they explored storytelling through photography with a triptych activity.

In the last session we held, we invited the artist Gemma Lees to deliver a workshop on poetry and creative writing. The participants took poems from LGBTQ writers and poems from Traveller+ poets to build their own poems. This was then followed with an activity around manifesting what they are and what they want for the community.

In March, as we enter the second half of the residency, our participants will be working toward the production of an outcome and the public presentation on the 6th of April.

All our supporters will be invited to attend and celebrate the LGBTQ Traveller+ community with us. The event link will be shared directly once it is ready.

We hope to see you there!

With thanks to...

A big thank you to all project backers. You made art happen.