Islington’s Pride is a project created Islington Heritage and was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF). The project created an archive focusing on the London Borough of Islington’s LGBTQ+ heritage. Islington has been highly influential in the growth of the LGBTQ+ community, its organisations and rights through the 20th and into the 21st century.
Several key events in UK LGBTQ+ history occurred in Islington including the first public gay rights protest in Britain in 1970, the setting up of the London Gay Switchboard in Caledonian Road (above Housman Bookshop) in 1974, the UK’s first openly gay Member of Parliament, Chris Smith, MP for Islington South & Finsbury in 1984 and the UK’s first legal afterhours club, Trade, which opened in Clerkenwell in 1990.
Our project aims were celebrate these and other amazing histories through three main groups of activities:
Creating a dedicated LGBTQ+ archive made up of a combination of 3D objects, paper artefacts and oral histories collected from the community. This archive will have five main criteria that will form the focus of the collecting for the archive. These are:
- Campaigning/politics
- Social life
- Health/well-being
- Discrimination
- Development of the community
The archive forms the basis of a collection that will be added to and developed in the future. It will be catalogued and published online as part of the project.
The second part of the project was to produce educational resources for the archive. Working with young people within the borough we will use the archive as an inspiration to create engaging outreach resources and artistic material for the archive.
Thirdly we created a Digital Heritage Map that highlights important locations in LGBTQ+ heritage. This trail allows residents and visitors of Islington to gain a greater insight into LGBTQ+ history and to highlight the importance of the subject in the borough’s heritage landscape. It includes text, images and oral history excepts.
The huge importance of LGBTQ+ heritage in Islington stands as a microcosm for the wider story of British LGBTQ+ history. If you have collections or memories of the LGBTQ+ community in Islington please get in contact.