This hybrid two-day symposium explored the innovative and meaningful queer heritage practice being developed by cultural organisations across the UK and beyond. Drawing inspiration from the current exhibition Untold Lives at Kensington Palace, the symposium presented different approaches to researching and publicly presenting previously overlooked, marginalised or silenced queer lives.

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Keynote Speaker: In coversation with George Chakravarthi

Rob Freeman and Kit Heyam, 700 years in the making: A community-led approach to queer and gendered storytelling
Shaan Rathgeber Knan and Nan Carreira, Queer Britain’s Community Residencies
Rowan Rush-Morgan and Nu McAdam, Community Champions: developing inclusive representation in the Queer Heritage South Live Archive

Jaime Starr, “As good as a marriage”? In Search of Messy Queers in Heritage Houses
Noël van Riswick and Hannah Squire, Portrait of a Marriage​: Queer Communities, Collections and Creative Responses ​at Sissinghurst Castle Garden
Indigo Dunphy-Smith, From Fixed Narratives to Fluid Histories

Claire Mead, Beyond the Man-at-Arms: queer and trans potential in arms and armour collections
Lucy Armitage and Gráinne Rice, How Queer! National Galleries of Scotland’s LGBTQ+ Film Series
Katie Birkwood and Felix Lancashire, Medicalisation as marginalisation: queer heritage and class oppression in the collections of the Royal College of Physicians

Keynote Speaker: Matt Smith, Reviewing History

Vicky Iglikowski-Broad, ‘Please be a dear boy and destroy this note’: the challenges of ethical engagement with queer history in a government archive
Caio de Araujo, Archival Assemblages: Queering African Pasts Through Archival Interventions
E.M. Parry, Queer History Club – queer kinship as an-archival practice

Barbara Centrone and Dani Martiri, We’ve always been there and were never told so: Queering Rome and the restoration of queerness to heritage
Kate Fisher, Community Champions: developing inclusive representation in the Queer Heritage South Live Archive

Special thanks to our keynote speakers, George Chakravarthi and Matt Smith, and to Ben Walters and the Badge Cafe.

Further resources:

  • Gendering the Museum, a PDF toolkit aimed at museum and heritage professionals, as well as community groups. It provides practical guidance for curatorial, interpretation, programming and front-of-house staff to change the representation of gender in museums, galleries and heritage sites
  • National Galleries of Scotland’s three-part film series Not Seeing Straight: Celebrating Queer Art and Lives
  • Badge Cafe offers crafty utopian hangouts where people can relax, create and connect by making badges out of old books and magazines