OUTing the Past festival conference

The keynote speech was held by Professor Jeffrey Weeks, who spoke about “History as Personal, the Personal as History: A Journey into the LGBTQ Past and Present”. This speech sat the tone for the rest of the conference, and the engagement of all those who research, communicate, archive and exhibit queer history became one of the central issues. The academic director of Skeivt arkiv, Hannah Gillow-Kloster, also attended the conference, presenting Skeivt arkiv’s work on communicating queer history in museums with the speech “Museums and the archive: joining forces for queer historical visibility”. Richard Sandell, professor in Museum Studies at Leicester University, also spoke in the same session, being one of the responsibles for the program “Prejudice and Pride: LGBT lives at the National Trust.” This program highlighted queer lives and histories at several buildings of the National Trust, in the occasion of the fifty year anniversary of the partly decriminalisation of male homosexuality in Great Britain.

At the conference Queer Britain (queerbritain.org.uk) was also presented – a virtual, and future physical, museum dedicated to queer history in Britain. For now, the museum will focus on collecting personal interviews, and thereafter, like Skeivt arkiv, shed light on what exists of queer history in the country’s archives, museums and research institutions.

Visit outingthepast.com.