17 Apr Campaigners call for UK’s first LGBT museum
Campaigners are calling for the first permanent British museum dedicated to gay rights be established in Leicester.
In the Midlands city, several fans of a recent popular exhibition documenting the lives of local LGBT people want it to be moved to a permanent museum site.
The project, named ‘Untold Stories’, was curated by Leicester LGBT Center and supported by a £50,000 ($77k, €58k) Heritage Lottery Fund grant.
It documents the history of Leicestershire and Rutland’s LGBT community over the past 70 years, and reveals what life was like for people in the UK before the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967.
Since February, the exhibition has attracted more than 1000 visitors, causing organizers to suggest its expansion into a museum.
The potential movement of ‘Untold Stories’ to a permanent site would mark the establishment of the UK’s first museum dedicated to LGBT culture and history.
As reported by the BBC, Mayor of Leicester Sir Peter Soulsby has welcomed these calls, saying: ‘It’s one of a number of very exciting suggestions that have come forward recently.
‘Telling the story of the LGBT communities is an important part of modern Leicester.’
Dennis Bradley, the policy officer for Leicester LGBT center, has said the project will be for the benefit of the local and wider communities and for present and future generations.
‘Similar projects have been successfully conducted across this country and many others around the world,’ he said.
Calls for a LGBT museum in Leicester come after more than a decade of discussion about the establishment of a venue of that kind in London.
Similar museums dedicated to gay rights and their history are established in San Francisco, Berlin and Sydney.
Veteran gay rights activist Peter Tatchell has repeatedly stressed the need for a museum documenting LGBT life in England’s capital city.
He has cited the ideal location for a museum of this kind as the former Bow Street Police Station, where the gay writer Oscar Wilde was held after his arrest in 1895.