The Importance of Archives

Queer history is important, definitely. Don’t forget the past. We survived then, and we will survive now. Solidarity is important too because it can feel like when you look at the news and see another negative story, it’s easy to feel very down. But remembering that this kind of shit has happened before and we got through it and came out stronger, and queer people stick together even if they try to drive a wedge between us.

Like, a friend started a queer body-positive dance studio in London... I learnt pointe, and it got to the point that
my pointe shoes were broken and I couldn’t use them anymore... I thought, “I wonder if an archive would like these?”, and at the time the fashion and textiles curator at the London Museum was queer. I messaged him, “would you be interested in items from one of London’s vanishing queer spaces?” And I donated the pointe shoes, a t-shirt, and zines from our showcases... No one’s going to see them if they just sit in my house, whereas in a museum a researcher might find this snippet of queer life from the 2010s.