Notice: What’s Your LGBTQ+ Story?

Published on: 21 Jan, 2022
Updated on: 21 Jan, 2022

Come and celebrate National Story Telling Week and LGBT+ History Month with Surrey Libraries and the Surrey History Centre.

Surrey is a county with a rich LGBT+ history, and archivists at the Surrey History Centre are working to preserve the stories of Surrey’s LGBT+ residents, from policeman Harry Daley, lover of E. M. Forster, to Roberta Cowell, the first person in the UK to have gender reassignment surgery. By actively collecting and preserving records of Surrey’s LGBT+ people and their lived experience Surrey History Centre ensures that this history is not lost.

Now they want to hear from you. This National Storytelling Week, come and tell your Surrey LGBT+ story.

The evening will open with a reading from Surrey History Centre staff with material from the archive.

Library and archive staff are hosting an online session on Wednesday February 2, from 5.30pm to 6.30pm on Zoom, giving Surrey residents the chance to add their own stories to the collection.

Come and tell them your memories of being an LGBT+ person in the county, however recent, and contribute to this wonderful record of the history of our community.

The evening will open with a reading from Surrey History Centre staff with material from the archive, with more readings throughout the session and lots of chances to share your memories and get involved.

If you don’t wish to share, then you’re also very welcome to come and listen. The event is free but booking is essential.

Please book a place online at www.surreycc.gov.uk/heritageevents.

Responses to Notice: What’s Your LGBTQ+ Story?

Jim Allen Reply

January 21, 2022 at 2:54 pm

Would time not be better spent in logging and recording our historic artefacts and, for instance, searching the site where the Samien Bowl was found in 1890s in Burpham above the A3 or properly documenting the recently accepted “flowing river” of Sir Richard Western c1610, Stoke Lock to Sutton Place on the 98-foot contour – which was going to and probably still will be destroyed by the Weyside Urban Village, despite being recognised as a heritage asset.

Saving our physical heritage is far more important than the investigation of people’s alleged bedroom habits from the past simply because peoples moral beliefs have changed.