Sexualities and Localities, c.1965 - 2013

This research examines the complex changes in sexual identities and communities in the contrasting cities of Leeds, Plymouth, Brighton and Manchester since c.1965. It explores the difference locality makes to the ways sexuality is understood and experienced, and so develops an account of particular 'queer' social, radical, and commercial networks. The research will look at how continuities and disjunctions in these local lives and networks articulated with, but also functioned at a distance from, broader currents and accounts of gay and lesbian life in Britain. It considers the local impact and relative significance of famous LGBT landmarks such as the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, the inception of the Gay Liberation Front in 1970, the AIDS crisis from 1981, the activism around Clause 28 in 1988, and the successive pieces of equalities legislation culminating in the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act of 2013. At a detailed and local level, we explore the intersection of sexual, religious, ethnic, class and gender identities and identifications. We will investigate how patterns of local socio-economic growth or decline, of gentrification, of dissent and radicalism, and of migration affected people who identified as gay and lesbian and others who did not but whose sexual, social and community networks overlapped or intersected. In this way we will, firstly, fracture (or 'queer') homogenising general accounts, and, secondly, complicate local community research where identity categories are often the starting point.

This will be the first sustained, contextualised and comparative historical investigation of the local impact of changing cultural attitudes and official policies concerning sexuality, and the first to look at the particularities of lesbian, gay or other queer lives in cities with different subcultural associations and reputations. The project reveals the factors which have modulated queer lives and cultures of rejection, toleration or acceptance in these places and elsewhere. It will contribute to debates about the intersection of sexual and other categories of identity and identification, and about conceptions of community, belonging and cultural change. Crucially it will also feed a broader appetite for accounts of the lesbian, gay and queer past and interrogate the individual, community and political implications of that appetite. The project will bridge a gap between 'popular' and 'academic' LGBT or queer histories, and draw attention to local and national resources, archives, community projects and on-line resources - including at least six HLF-funded LGBT community history projects. It will also garner new testimonies relating in particular to the local impact of those projects on ideas of identity and community.

The research will be undertaken by two leading academics in the field, together with an experienced postdoctoral researcher. The immediate academic outputs will be: 3 journal articles; a co-authored book, 'Queer North, Queer South', by the PI and Co-I providing comparative analysis of the four core themes (see obj.5) in specific relation to the four cities; a companion volume, 'Out of the Archives' - a contextualized selection of extracts from each of the community history projects, co-edited by the PI, Co-I and PDR; an international conference, 'Provincial Queer Lives'; and papers and panels given by all three researchers at 2 international and 3 UK conferences. Impact activities will include a community archive workshop and witness seminar in each of the case study cities, a comparative History and Archive day, and a History and Policy forum with representatives from community groups, the HLF and linked professionals. A series of special blog dispatches, the project web and Facebook presence, and a Twitter feed will foster further engagement in the research.

This project proposes an interweaving of academic research with the public histories already collected by community groups, including those funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). It will develop the interface between academics, public history professionals and third sector groups through partnership work and events while at the same time deepening the critical analysis of this relationship. The PI, Co-I and PDR each have extensive experience of this kind of impact activity (see CVs); the project administrator has a strong track record in organising it.

Who will benefit from this research?
A key aim of this research project is to work together with participating organisations in the public and third sectors, while informing policy making and funding bodies in public history. Specific beneficiaries will include:
1. Professionals working in public history including museum curators, archivists, librarians and heritage managers, and their networks.
2. Third sector/ voluntary groups - including the community groups that have initiated specific projects in the past decade such as Queer in Brighton, Brighton Trans*formed, Pride in Our Past (Plymouth), and the Lesbian and Gay Foundation (Manchester). Other groups and networks will also benefit from the knowledge exchange elements of the project. These include Age Concern UK's Opening Doors network, Brighton's Allsorts youth group, and LGBT History Month (of which Dr Cook is a patron).
3. National and local funding bodies including the HLF, and local authority leisure and heritage services.

How will they benefit?
Our platform for user engagement and co-production will consist of the project web-pages, four local day events (including an archive workshop and witness seminar in each of the case study cities), a comparative History and Archive day (at the London Metropolitan Archives [LMA]), a History and Policy forum, and virtual networking via the LGBT History Month platform, Twitter and the project Facebook presence. More specifically:
1. Archivists and curators, library managers and related professionals will gain access to a wider pool of potential service users. The project will also deepen their professional knowledge of equality and diversity issues, and trial new ways of working with materials. Local archives and collections will be directly enhanced through the depositing of additional interviews in an under-represented area of social history. Their collections will also be networked with those of three other cities, and the LMA in London.
2. Third sector/ community groups. The comparative focus of the project will enable these groups to see their own work in public history in the wider context of the history of sexuality and other facets of local history as well as in comparison to other parts of the country. This will offer new ways of articulating their place-specific experience.
3. LGBT community groups will gain contact with a network of other LGBT projects across the country and with other community history groups.
4. National and local funding bodies such as the HLF and local authority stakeholders will gain by seeing projects in comparative perspective. The research will inform them by:
i. Showing what local communities have gained through these funded projects;
ii. Indicating what methods are especially productive in heritage and public history work;
iii. Understanding how they can effectively meet their obligations under the 2010 Equality and Diversity Act (and similar local government directives);
iv. Showing what networking between projects can yield;
v. Suggesting additional directions for funding policy and practice which go beyond 'identity'.

These activities will contribute in the longer term to the dissemination and preservation of local histories of sexuality in archives, libraries and museums, contributing to the 'care for the future' of sexuality and gender history.