Mapping LGBT Histories with Outstories Bristol

This project is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Bristol; the community groups, Outstories Bristol and Freedom Youth; Bristol City Council and Bristol Record Office. It follows on from the AHRC-funded grant, Know Your Bristol On The Move. The project engages lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) residents of Bristol in researching, writing and mapping LGBT history using digital tools. The aim is to mainstream LGBT history as part of the official history of Bristol, and through doing so, to raise the voices of LGBT people in the public eye, in the planning process and in local schools.

New material on Bristol's LGBT history will be gathered at a series of events, as well as through in-depth oral history interviews conducted by volunteers who will be trained over the course of the project. The collected material will be digitally photographed or recorded and, along with existing LGBT archive materials held at BRO, will be uploaded to Bristol City Council's online historical mapping website, Know Your Place (KYP). KYP is a visual representation of the Historic Environment Record which Bristol City Council refers to for placemaking and when making planning decisions. The inclusion of LGBT history on the map, and therefore on the Historic Environment Record, provides a way for LGBT voices to intervene in the formal planning process.

In order to ensure that collected material is readily accessible to LGBT communities and can continue to be added to beyond the lifetime of the project, we will create a user-friendly interface embedded in Outstories Bristol's own website. This interface will also be published as a generic open-source Wordpress plugin that can be downloaded and used by other community groups to display their own historical map layer from KYP or, indeed, any other Arc-Gis map database. Since KYP is set to expand across the South West, the potential user base for this is very high.

The material collected by volunteers will also be used to produce a series of new resources, including digital story-maps (digital stories where each image or text links to a place on the map) that highlight the distinctive experiences of different groups within the LGBT community (e.g. lesbian, transgender), and a mobile app that will enable engagement with Bristol's LGBT history through walking tours. Working with the LBGT youth group, Freedom Youth and Bristol University's student society, LGBT+, we will co-develop and co-deliver a series of Key Stage 4 curriculum resources. A key outcome of the schools work will be tackling homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools.

While the university's role here is key, it is by no means the lead partner. This project was initiated by Outstories Bristol and has been co-designed with them. This process of co-production is central to the project's innovative nature and will play an crucial role in its success.

The project will reach a section of the Bristol population which has been historically marginalised and is largely invisible in mainstream historical accounts of the city. It will allow this group to intervene in the planning process and promote intergenerational dialogue and support through the connection between older interviewees and Freedom Youth. It will mainstream LGBT history by including it on the official Bristol City Council digital history map, Know Your Place, and by embedding it within the curriculum in local schools.

A wide spectrum of groups will benefit from this project.

1. Outstories Bristol. While Outstories is already a well-established group with an impressive track record, this project will allow them to extend their activities, enhance their skill-set and bring their activities and findings to a much wider potential audience. The experience of co-designing a project with academic researchers is a new one for the OSB team and will prove valuable in terms of skills transfer, new connections, enhanced visibility and future funding applications. Outstories Bristol will also benefit from an increased volunteer base and publicity associated with the project.

2. Existing and new volunteers from Outstories Bristol and Freedom Youth will benefit from a series of workshops in oral history methodology, digitisation, the creation of digital story-maps, and other digital collection and curation techniques. Participation in these workshops, and in the wider co-produced history project, will be an enjoyable and enriching experience. Both groups will benefit from the intergenerational dialogue facilitated by the workshops and oral history interviews.

3. The experience of co-creating the schools' curriculum materials will be empowering and useful for the members of Freedom Youth, giving them a range of transferable skills, increased confidence and practical experience. Their participation in a collaborative project with the University of Bristol, a local history group and Bristol City Council will enhance their employment and higher education opportunities.

4. Linking Freedom Youth with Bristol University student society, LGBT+ will benefit both groups, offering a chance to reflect on life experience and to mentor and be mentored. It will enhance the Bristol students' CVs and may assist with widening participation by linking Freedom Youth participants to slightly older LGBT young people who have succeeded in accessing higher education.

5. Bristol's wider LGBT community will benefit from the opportunity to explore and to contribute to the LGBT layer via the Outstories Bristol web interface, story-maps and mobile app. Including the history of this marginalised group within the historic environment record will help to put their experiences at the heart of the official history of the City, and allow LGBT perspectives to be taken into account as part of the planning process.

6. LGBT children and young people and their parents will benefit from the incorporation of LGBT history in the school curriculum especially to the extent that this is likely to lead a reduction in homophobic and transphobic bullying.

7. Teachers who attend the planned continuing professional development course on using the map, app and project-created curriculum resources to teach LGBT history/geography, will benefit from gaining an enhanced and subject-transferable skill-set and increased confidence in teaching around equalities issues.

8. Members of the public with an interest in Bristol's history will have access to a significant and entirely new online resource detailing an aspect of the city's history that has been hitherto marginalised. They will also be able to explore the city from this perspective using the app and story-maps.

9. Future historians of the LGBT experience in Bristol will benefit from a substantial collection of interviews, artefacts and archival documents at the BRO.

10. Individuals and community groups world-wide will have free access to the open source wordpress plugin which will enable them to interface with any ArcGIS database to create and display their own crowd-sourced map layers. This will be especially useful for community groups in the South West of England who will be covered by the expanded KYP site.

11. City council community engagement officers who attend the planned workshop on using the map, app and digital tools for community engagement will benefit from an enhanced skill-set and enhanced civic participation.