Pride in the Archives
Manchester Pride is over for this year, but we are still celebrating the landmark anniversaries of two landmark Manchester charities – 50 years of the LGBT Foundation and 40 years of the George House Trust – two stories that are told in the archives held in Manchester Central Library.
GB127.M825/LGF/17/2/27 – Cover of ‘The Magazine: Guide to Pride 05’
The LGBT Foundation is a Manchester charity with a national reach offering support services, advice and advocacy to people in diverse LGBTQ+ communities. Their mission is to fight against discrimination and oppression, but also to work positively to bring people together and connect.
Their archive came to Archives+ over 10 years ago, boxes and boxes of papers, reports, leaflets, posters, photographs, magazines showing the development of the organisation itself and the wider history of LGBTQ+ communities in Greater Manchester. Right from the start, the LGBT Foundation was actively involved in the curation of its archive, with volunteers coming to catalogue the collection to make it accessible, and the partnership with Archives+ has been going ever since branching out into hands-on archive sessions, oral history interviews and digitisation of original documents, most recently working with Google Arts & Culture to produce an amazing online gallery.
GB127.M825/LGF/14/2 – Leaflet advertising ‘Aim High – An inspirational guide for young lesbian, gay and bisexual people’, produced by Lesbian and Gay Foundation (now known as LGBT Foundation) for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Trans History Month, 2010
The George House Trust is a Manchester charity committed to providing advice, support and information for people living with, and those affected by, HIV, and its archive is a new addition to our collections. It all started in 1985 when six gay men set up the Manchester AIDSline, an act of activism in response to the growing HIV crisis. It was a way of providing support and information at a time of fear and ignorance. Re-named the George House Trust in 1990, the charity has continued to challenge stigma, advocate for change and campaign for equality and justice for everyone affected by HIV.
GB127.GHT/1/3/19 – ‘Insight – HIV update from George House Trust’, Issue 19, Winter 2002-2003
This story is held within all the files and reports, logbooks and newsletters, posters and even t-shirts that were gathered together out of cupboards and filing cabinets, catalogued by volunteers after some training from our archivist, then transferred to the secure storage at Archives+ in Central Library.
The stories of both these charities have been brought to life in two exhibitions now displaying at Central Library – the LGBT Foundation’s ‘50 years of Queer Hope and Joy’ and the George House Trust’s ‘Acting Up: 40 Years of HIV Activism’, both supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
And the source material for the exhibitions? Taken from the archives of course. That’s the great thing about archives – they hold the heritage of this community or that organisation; they forge identity, and they shine a light to the future.
