To wrap up 2024, our community champions share why they got involved with Queer Heritage South, what has happened with the project so far, and the things they have planned next! Kate (they/them), our 'older lesbian' champion, chats to us next:

So this is my community champion blog. My name is Kate Wildblood and I’m a 55-year-old non-binary lesbian living in Brighton. I moved here in 1990 and have been playing records and calling myself a DJ ever since. I’ve written most of my adult life, for DJ Magazine, Diva, Gay Times, Real Brighton, Queer Company. GScene and more. Alongside my wife Queenie I still DJ across the city dancefloors and airwaves of 1BTN radio. I have a neurodivergent special interest in queer clubbing, especially those soundtracked by disco and house music and have a suitably large if slightly obsessive collection of flyers and nightlife ephemera filling the shelves of my home. Queer history really matters to me, the stories we share are as important as the songs we dance to and I love finding new ways to share the lives we lived back in the day.  Any excuse to wax lyrical about my LGBTQI+ nightlife community and the 12”s we shared. 

The Queer Heritage South Live Archive project has enabled me to reconnect with lesbians I’ve known and not known as we reach out to our community and encourage the represent. To bring the tales of Brighton and Hove’s lesbian lives to the front, ensuring space and appreciation for the images, objects and stories that are us. And to connect the generations, those who once fought for the fundamentals of equality to those pushing the fight forward today as we raise all aspects of our diverse community – regardless of gender identity, disability, age or race. I see it as a chance to reunite the many dancefloors I’ve had the pleasure to play for, to bring together the parties that made us, the campaigns that shaped us, the businesses we built and the families (never pretend) we created,. 

Queer Heritage South Live Archive is a project deserving of a future as our past continues to inspire. To take the tales lesbians have to share and ensure they matter. To guarantee a city venue, an event, a particular place, or a moment in time has a connection to our present lives, that those accessing those spaces have a chance to know that history. I want the project to become a first stop for anyone creating in Brighton and Hove, for historians and students, for campaigners and creators, and yes for DJs with very special interests. For young lesbians arriving as so many of us did to Brighton back in the day all wide-eyed and hopeful, I want the history of our city to have no gatekeepers, no barriers to connecting to those who had been before – dancing, loving, living, campaigning. To turn “I never knew that” into “Did you know about this lesbian who lived and loved here?”

The hope I have that our tales should and could be shared across the city comes from the QHS Live Archive community archiving workshops I’ve had the pleasure to be part of. Calling the workshop events Rebooting The Archive was no accidental play on words, I wanted us to declare our dyke intentions, to kick down the norms of archiving, to take the doc martins worn down by our lesbian history of dancing, marching, loving and living and kickstart our true inclusion in our city’s LGBTQI+ history. Part workshop, part community reminiscence therapy, the two Rebooting The Archive sessions at Ironworks Studio Brighton brought together different generations of lesbians to tell different stories about the same city. The same places, the same dreams, the same heartache, the same fights for equality. We shared tales, photos and laughter as PowerPoints and presentations from myself, oral history royalty Jane Traies and QHS archivist Rowan Rush Morgan delivered the inspiration we needed and a community tagged Kate Shields-made city map become the only nudge we needed to travel back in time. Music mattered, memories strong, the workshops becoming a talking shop we wanted to return to over and over again. When the fizz of the youth meets the knowing nods of age there was a respect I wasn’t expecting, creating a hope for the project I didn’t know we could fulfil as every participant – regardless of their past – realised their stories mattered. 

And as we hit the scanners and find the moments that matter to us now live on the QHS digital archive the shoulders of those participating seem to rise. The sense of our importance to the timeline of LGBTQI+ history in our city of Brighton & Hove and beyond is growing. The difference we made back then being appreciated right now, right here. 

For many what we did back in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s may have seemed unremarkable. Day to day. Surviving, creating, becoming. But with the hindsight of history we distance ourselves from those days with decades of just getting on with it. It has become clear how remarkable our unremarkable was. Lesbians changed lives – our own and that of so many in our city. Rebooting The Archive dyke style has proved we have an incredible lesbian community just waiting to find their way to stand in the spotlight. To find their space and shout about the lives they lead. Their past is making our present sounder and it’s been an honour for this DJ to help turn up the volume and for us all to listen.

Credits

Photo one: Hannah Sherlock

Photo two and three: Rosie Powell