Redbrick

Gay Birmingham

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Written by James Williams

THROUGHOUT Feb­ru­ary, the School of Edu­ca­tion build­ing will be home to the ‘Gay Birm­ing­ham Remem­bered’ exhibition.

Feb­ru­ary is LGBT His­tory Month and to mark the occa­sion the Birm­ing­ham LGBT Com­mu­nity Trust is host­ing the spe­cial dis­play, doc­u­ment­ing Birmingham’s gay roots, and how the move­ment has pro­gressed through recent decades.

The Les­bian, Gay, Bisex­ual and Trans­gen­der com­mu­nity in and around Birm­ing­ham is now flour­ish­ing, and com­pared to how it fared through the 1970s and 80s, the move­ment has come a long way.

The exhi­bi­tion explores this tran­si­tion through images, tes­ti­monies and archive mate­r­ial from the last 60 years.

The influ­ence of both local indi­vid­u­als and organ­i­sa­tions that brought about social and cul­tural change is analysed. Sec­tions of the dis­plays include a ‘Por­trait of Gay Birm­ing­ham’, an expla­na­tion of ‘How Birm­ing­ham got its Pride’ and a map of ‘Gay meet­ing places in the 1980s’.

Addi­tion­ally looked at are the prob­lems with HIV and AIDS which affected the city and also the strug­gle for equal­ity ‘through into the new millennium’.

Advice is given for those who are strug­gling to come out, and also first­hand tes­ti­monies given from those who have been vic­tims of homo­pho­bic bullying.

Matt Ward, the Guild’s LBGTQ offi­cer, reacted pos­i­tively; ‘This exhi­bi­tion is a fit­ting trib­ute to the ongo­ing strug­gle for LGBTQ equal­ity, whilst it also appre­ci­ates the free­doms we enjoy today fol­low­ing the sac­ri­fices made by our com­mu­nity in the past.’

Birmingham’s Gay Pride this year takes place over the week­end of Sat­ur­day 29th and Sun­day 30th May.

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This article was posted on February 7th, 2010 at 6:13 am.