What have we been up to all Summer?!

All Summer? Well the Summer we’ve had at least! We may have been quiet on here but the project has been busybusy promoting and planning for an exciting twelve months!

We had a great time at Burnley Canal Festival. The sun even came out for the day! Loads of children made badges and plenty of grown ups visited us for a chat and to have a good read of our Lancashire LGBT timeline too.

At the end of September we had a fabulous time at Preston Pride where we were part of a Cultural Corner in the Harris Library together with the museums, libraries and archives services. The atmosphere was brilliant and we really enjoyed meeting people and chatting about the project. Thanks to all who came over to say hello!

 

Burnley Canal Festival

Burnley Canal Festival

We’re really looking forward to going along to Burnley’s Canal Festival on Saturday 8 September 2012!

The festival’s going to involve stalls on the Weaver’s Triangle, an outdoor cinema, guided walks and of course lovely canal boats! You can read more about it if you follow our link.

Our stall is going to have info about the project and the chance to design and make your own badges or copy some from Paul’s collection! Come over and say hello and find out how you can get involved with our project!

Burnley Canal Festival

Burnley Canal Festival

We’re really looking forward to going along to Burnley’s Canal Festival on Saturday 8 September 2012!

The festival’s going to involve stalls on the Weaver’s Triangle, an outdoor cinema, guided walks and of course lovely canal boats! You can read more about it if you follow our link.

Our stall is going to have info about the project and the chance to design and make your own badges or copy some from Paul’s collection! Come over and say hello and find out how you can get involved with our project!

We’re really l…

We’re really looking forward to going along to Burnley’s Canal Festival on Saturday 8 September 2012!

The festival’s going to involve stalls on the Weaver’s Triangle, an outdoor cinema, guided walks and of course lovely canal boats! You can read more about it if you follow our link.

Our stall is going to have info about the project and the chance to design and make your own badges or copy some from Paul’s collection! Come over and say hello and find out how you can get involved with our project!

Burnley Canal Festival!

Lesbians Ignite!

Our project coordinator Paul has a brilliant collection of badges from the 1970s and 1980s!

This ‘Lesbians Ignite’ badge is identical to the one worn by Mary Winter and was the reason for her losing her badge in the ’70s.

If you can know any more about this story we’d love to hear from you!

Get involved!

We are looking for volunteers who would like to be interviewed about their lives and memories as members of the LGBT community!

Do you remember the meetings that took place in Burnley Library in 1971 to fight for a Gay Club in Burnley? Can you remember Mary Winter fighting for her job as a bus driver? What are your own experiences and memories, both positive and negative?

Would you like to be the interviewer rather than to be interviewed? We’re looking for volunteers to interview and record  oral histories as well as to share their own stories. We’ll provide training and equipment, we just need you!

Maybeyou have papers, posters or memorabilia that relate to LGBT heritage that you could show us? We want to build an archive of LGBT history to fight the ‘Hidden History’ status of LGBT heritage!

We also need volunteers to research newspapers and police archives, develop our Burnley LGBT History Trail and help design a mobile phone application and take part in a piece of theatre.

If you’d like to get involved or if you have ideas to share, just drop us an email to burnleylgbt@yahoo.co.uk 🙂

Gay Liberation Front Badge

Paul brought his collection of badges to the launch – do you remember wearing yours? Maybe you still do?

More about these soon and an event coming soon where you can make your own!

Launch Day!

So we launched our Burnley LGBT Heritage Project on the 1st of August at Burnley’s CVS (Council for Voluntary Services) Centre. Thanks to everyone that came along! It was great to meet people and talk about what we want to achieve over a few cups of coffee and a few more biscuits!

We’re really excited that people were as excited as we are about uncovering Burnley and East Lancashire’s hidden history, designing an LGBT Heritage Trail and most important celebrating LGBT heritage past and present!

Maybe you know of some LGBT heritage we dont know about yet? One lady’s name keeps cropping up – Mary Winter. Do you remember Mary? Or are you Mary?! We’ve heard she lost her job as a bus driver some year’s ago for being openly lesbian, but we’d like to know more. We need your help!

Launch of Burnley LGBT project

We are holding a meeting aimed at stautory and voluntary organisations in Burnley and East Lancs to give them an opportunity to find out more about the project and to meet members of the team Paul Fairweather – Project Coordinator and Kathryn Rooke Archivist at Lancashire County Council . The launch will be at Burnley CVS 62/64 Yorkshire St Burnely BB 11 3BT on Wednesday 1st August  at 2pm . For more information about the launch or the project contact Paul at burnleylgbt@yahoo.co.uk