Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 2 of 4

From the collection of

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton collects, preserves, catalogues and provides public access to its collection of films and magic lantern slides. The collection charts the rise of screen culture in the region and the nation and captures many aspects of life, work and creativity in the South East from the late 19th century to the present day. It is available for research, screenings, creative re-use and commercial access.

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 2 of 4

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton
2003-07-31
Sound

Charlotte's search for gay men and women willing to be interviewed proves to be more of a challenge that at first thought.

In this short extract Charlotte Cooper describes how she found potential participants for GLAM's 'Before Stonewall' oral history project.

After placing an advert in the Pink Paper, a free paper distributed in bars, clubs, libraries and community centres, Charlotte received a large number of responses from mostly middle-class older gay men who in turn, through word-of-mouth and networks of friends, drew in more potential candidates.

She also used various community newsletters to publicise the project but with varying degrees of success. Some groups seemed more reticent to participate and Charlotte thinks that, for many potential contributors, the project's 'Before Stonewall' title was off-putting because it was associated with events that occurred in the USA and thus far removed from what was happening in the UK at the time. Indeed, many women who eventually featured in the interviews were not even 'out' at the time of the Stonewall riots in 1969, and therefore saw the event as not being relevant to their own experiences.

Given that the demographic seemed to be largely male and middle-class, Charlotte observes that a reasonable number of working-class people got involved eventually and that across all the interviewees, the 55 to 65 age group predominated, with an 80 year-old as the oldest participant.

Charlotte also regrets that the project lacked a sufficient number of ethnic-minority participants but puts this down to the lack of time and resources that were made available.

GLAM: Before Stonewall (2003-2004) was an oral history project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund to document the life experiences of older gay men and women from all regions of the UK.

The project was organised and run by the Gay and Lesbian Arts and Media, or GLAM, who hired and trained a team of volunteers to record over one hundred interviews with participants aged 55 and older.

The aim of the project was to create a visual and oral record of the experiences of gay men and women – moving gradually from the days of oppression, criminalisation and punishment towards the liberalisation enjoyed today.

GLAM was a Brighton-based arts and media organisation that offered a wide range of services, classes and activities to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities until its closure in 2004 due to funding issues.

GLAM Before Stonewall: LGBT Oral History Project

This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, from individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community.

‘Before Stonewall: An Oral History of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community’ was a Heritage Lottery Funded project organised in 2003 by a Brighton-based organisation 'Gay and Lesbian Arts and Media', otherwise known as GLAM. The project sought to record for posterity the first-hand recollections of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from across the United Kingdom and beyond, of a time before the events in New York’s Greenwich Village which culminated in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. This was a time which was very different, and in many respects more oppressive for homosexual and transgender people, than the one we’re familiar with today. This fascinating and important collection, recorded onto videotape, contains the testimonies, in the form of interviews, of over one-hundred individuals of varying ages, backgrounds and ethnicities from across the LGBT community. With recollections that reach back as far as the 1920s, what all of the interviews describe and reveal is the whole gamut of human experience, from the deeply tragic to the exhilaratingly joyous - all from the perspectives of a section of society that has often been considered to be ‘different from the others’. Journalist Charlotte Cooper, who worked for the gay press at the time, co-ordinated the project’s video-recording with volunteers and conducted many of the interviews herself. Charlotte describes her time on the project as both a revelatory and profoundly moving experience. Screen Archive South East has made available from across this collection a total of eighty four extracts from thirty individual interviews. Together they give an insightful and first-hand account of what life was like for LGBT people, both in the United Kingdom and abroad, and in both the years before Stonewall and after.

75 videos in this collection

Before Stonewall Summary: Charlotte Cooper Clip 1 of 4

2003-07-31