In partnership with volunteers from Bournemouth’s LGBTQ+ community, Dorset History Centre is adding twenty-five queer stories to the Dorset Sound Archive.
DHC has worked carefully over eighteen months to shape a project and are delighted with the results. Trained volunteers, who collaborated on the design of the project, spoke with people from their early twenties to their seventies. People honestly and bravely shared their experiences of living in Dorset as a gay, bisexual, lesbian, non-binary or trans person. Taken as a collection, they present a thoughtful and nuanced response to questions around social life, the LGBTQ+ community, family life, radical shifts in language, health and prejudice.
The majority of these interviews will be available to listen to in our search room by the end of February. Come on in and ask our staff for a list, and they will make you comfortable for some moving and fascinating listening. Meanwhile, you can get a flavour of the interviews by listening to this selection of clips.
This project reflects DHC’s on-going aspiration to improve the representation of marginalised groups in the county’s records. We are committed to working sensitively with groups or communities which are less visible in our traditional collections so that future researchers can find evidence for the diverse nature of our Dorset population.
There is a great deal to be learnt from the recordings and Dorset History Centre is looking for volunteers interested in transcribing the interviews or helping with their analysis.