Ammgueddfa Cymru’s LGBT events
Alun Jones, education administrator
Amgueddfa Cymru starting running LGBT events a couple of years ago. A sub-committee was set up, largely with the brief to organise something for LGBT History month. Membership of the committee was open to anyone within Amgueddfa Cymru who were interested.
The enthusiasm of the members was so great that well as planning to organise something for February 2010, we also decided that we would have a stand at 2010's Cardiff Wales Mardi Gras, where the highlight was the presence of Shirley Bassey's wellington boots, complete with Glastonbury mud! We also had an activity of decorating a bag which had a drawing of a pair of wellies on them - this was incredibly popular (some photos are attached).
For LGBT history month in 2011, a number of events took place;
· a 'community dresser' which was curated by the 'Gay Ammanford' group and was on show at St Fagans
· a performance by the South Wales Gay Men's Chorus, with a talk by the author Paul Burston (amongst others), also at St Fagans
· An exhibition entitled 'We are family' at the National Roman Legion Museum, Caerleon, and at National Museum Cardiff:
· a popular evening lecture on the topic of 'Ancient Greek Homosexuality'
· an exhibition of portraits of famous Welsh LGBT people (drawn from our own collections), including a series of lunchtime talks (one of which, on the photographer Angus McBean was one of the most well-attended lunchtime talks at the museum for some time).
We then had another incredibly successful stand at 2011's mardi gras, where we had on show items from gay Ammanford's community dresser and had activities on the theme
'Be yourself', which was the theme of Mardi gras for the year.
Our events for 2012 LGBT History month kick off in February with a reading event at National Museum Cardiff, and a 'rainbow Day' at St Fagans, where the SWGMC again appeared and we had a talk from the Welsh-Language journalist Malan Wilkinson, who shared her thoughts on being a lesbian in Wales, and how this has had an effect on her work.
During this time, we have worked with a number of different organisations, such as 'Gay Ammanford', and the LGBT Excellence Centre (who organised an event at the Senedd in February 2012), where we have been involved with their HLF-funded project 'Welsh Pride'. We have also been trying to make sure that such events do not just get slotted into times such as LGBT History Month, but run throughout the year. For instance the South Wales Gay Men's Chorus performed at one of our Christmas Night events in December 2011 at St Fagans. Events such as these are now established in Amgueddfa Cymru's calendar; we had another (amazingly successful) stand at last September's Mardi Gras, and we now hold events every February as part of LGBT history month.