Pride in Plymouth – eNews December 2011

Welcome to the special end of year Pride in Plymouth eNews for 2011, you have probably noticed that  we haven’t published e-news for a while, we experienced a technical hitch with the integration with the blog that has left many experts on help forums puzzled. Even though this has not been fully resolved we will publish at least once a month through 2012. So if you have any events or something special going on let us know in good time so we can include them.

A summary of 2011
The LGBT calender got off to a rough start with the cancellation of Outfest that was predominately organised by UPSU:LGBT and due to be held in March. After promising to be a ‘bigger and better Pride for the city’ the event was cancelled at short notice.
However for IDAHOT (May 17th) Pride in Plymouth encouraged people to pledge their support for the Equal Love campaign resulting in over 60 signatures being collected in under two hours in the city centre. Many more were collected at the Swallow and other venues, a great selection of images was collected giving visual support to the campaign. View the images on our website.

Plymouth was the perfect host for the Americas Cup with the Hoe providing the perfect amphi theatre for spectators and challenging race conditions for the competitors. Whether the sailing was your thing or not the FREE entertainment was amazing with likes of Seth Lakeman, Newton Faulker, Michael Collins, and Mad Dog Mcrea all performing on the main stage.

In August Pride in Plymouth teamed up with Hawkins Bar organising our 2nd Boat Party – ‘ROCK AROUND THE SOUND’, we booked a larger boat along with Jo James providing live 80′s entertainment on board. I can confess to ‘borrowing’ a freight case from another event and precariously getting the gear down the jetty. The weather and tide was perfect for a trip up the River Yealm, everyone on-board had a fantastic night many dressing up in their finest 80s gear. We also jointly booked SLEAZE a local glam rock band to perform at Hawkins in the evening this had the effect of Marmite half the people really loved them whilst the other half hated them. Fortunately Hawkins was able to demonstrate its versatility by hosting a loud four piece rock band in one room whilst satisfying the disco divas in the other. We made a slight loss this year due to the extra expense but this has not dissuaded us and we will organise another boat trip in 2012 concentrating on the boat party and on-board entertainment.

For the first time in it’s 35 year history the British Arts Show came to Plymouth showcasing some of the best contemporary art around. This fueled a whole series of fringe events that enabled local artist and students to exhibit their work in the city.

Plymouth united with many cities across the UK by holding a candle lit vigil and minutes silence at 8pm on the 28th October 2011 which coincided with a vigil against hate crime held in Trafalgar Square London.
The Plymouth vigil was organised by Plymouth University Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans group UP : LGBT, the London event and and national coordination was undertaken by the National Union of Students (NUS). The Vigil came about after the NUS published a report looking at the impact of hate crimes and incidents in further and higher education.
View the photos and more details here

WORLD AIDS DAY December 1st 2011

To Mark World AIDS Day PPF organised a ‘human ribbon’ with a minutes silence, a candle lit procession through the city centre and a minutes noise at the civic centre to celebrate life. Around 30 people braved the rain to take part and were rewarded with hot home made soup and crusty bread.
View the Pride in Our Past December news for more details

Pride in Our Past

One of the highlights of 2011 was the announcement from Plymouth Pride Forum that they had been successful in their bid for £35,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to record,preserve and present the hidden history of LGBT life in Plymouth. Pride in Our Past was officially launched on 1st July 2011 at a reception held at the Barbican Theatre Plymouth View the photos and testimonials from the night. The Pride in Our Past project website created and hosted by Pride in Plymouth has been instrumental in attracting many volunteers, and spreading the word about the project. In September 2011 we set up the Pride in Our Past news blog enabling key members of the project team to press their own news which now feeds the project website, Facebook and Twitter.

Since the launch many more oral histories have been recorded, than first anticipated in the HLF bid, work continues in the background to transcribe these precious recordings and publish them in the permanent on-line Plymouth LGBT History archive that will be officially launched during the exhibition in 2012.

The Pride in Our Past Exhibition

The Exhibition will run for nine weeks at the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery between April 28th and June 30th 2012. The exhibition is the primary means to make available to the public historical, cultural, and artistic materials related to the lesbian, gay bisexual and trans communities in Plymouth.

2012 and the future

Pride in Plymouth will continue to promote the city, events on and off the gay scene, building on our social networks to reach an even wider audience. We have the tools, ability and networks in place to help build greater cohesion between the LGBT groups, societies and support networks that exist in Plymouth. We have seen other websites come and go particularly those created by elected student groups – some don’t even manage to replace the Lorem Ipsum placeholder text in the templates before a new committee is elected or exams take over editors lives.

The Pride in Plymouth Blog has proved very popular with readers, we have made commenting easier allowing you to comment or add more detail to a post without the need to register.

Readership Grows

Some Stats: At the start of 2011 we had 267 followers on Twitter as we enter 2012 we have 717 and still growing.
We now have over 400 fans on Facebook, our blog attracts over 200 readers a week and we receive around 50 new visitors to our website each week.

Project Links

Project Website

Project News Blog

Pride in Our Past on Facebook

“Community archive activities make an invaluable contribution to the preservation of diverse local and national heritages and enrich the lives of all those who participate in and use community archives”
Community Archives and Heritage Group

Events

A series of events to support the exhibition: We will soon be announcing a program of events that will support and enhance the Pride in Our Past exhibition including guest speakers, book launch(s), performance, film and workshops.

Write for us

We would love to hear from you: If you if you would like to contribute articles, stories, news, reviews of film, books, TV , or theatre then
Contact Us
You may wish to blog direct or simply email your content, if you are already blogging we may be able to take a feed for relevant content.