Janet Jones: AIDS activism, theatre, and punk

Hi, I'm Roni Guetta. And I'm David Sheppeard, and this is My Queer Museum, a podcast about a queer museum that doesn't exist in real life, but definitely exists in our minds. And our minds are a great place. Tell me a bit more about that, David. Well, what we've done is invite some of our favourite queer people in Brighton and Hove to choose which objects they would put into an imaginary queer museum, our dream queer museum. And these are their stories. Hi Janet. Thank you so much for having us over to talk to us. And what we'd like to do to start with is for you to introduce yourself to our listeners. So who are you, Janet? Yes, who are you? Hello there. I'm Janet Jones, recently resident of these parts, Brighton this is, and originally from, well, originally from Wales, but more recently originally from West Yorkshire, but moved down to Brighton, where I now live.

Wonderful. Wonderful. Fantastic. So Janet is a long time kind of supporter, audience member, participant, community curator. Fan. Fan. Fan of all things queer and Brighton. She was one of the... She is a pillar of queer and Brighton. Oh my gosh. I'd say. An inspirational community curator on the Queer the Peer exhibition that is currently on at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery that has recently reopened. And we wanted to bring Janet here in order to get some pearls of Janet wisdom. And I also want to say that from my many conversations with Janet, this is just going to be the tip of the iceberg. But we will ask you the same questions we've asked everyone else. She's a natural raconteur. Yeah. Conversationalist.

There's many a story, but today we're only going to get about three. So we're here today because we're imagining a queer museum. And so we want to know from you which three objects that represent you, your queer history, your life, your experiences, would you put in a queer museum? Right. Okay. Well, I would say the first object that springs to mind is this, which I have next to me. And it's a fluorescent green T-shirt with, never mind the bollocks, here's the Sex Pistols written on it. And I have to say it's an original. It's a Westwood, Westwood, I've forgotten the guy's name. What was the guy's name? Oh, was it Malcolm McLaren? Yeah, McLaren Westwood original. It says it on the label, this is, I know, which I had kind of given.

And a group of children went to see the Sex Pistols in concert, which I think was their last UK concert, actually, in Huddersfield, which is going to be the 1980s, late 70s, early 80s, I guess. And they performed a concert there. And somebody, it makes me smile, this, because I don't know, because I was a child at the time, probably about nine, ten years old, something like that. And my mother, who was relatively recently separated from my father in difficult circumstances, was in Gingerbread, which you may know nothing about. This is an organisation for single parents. And somebody else associated with that organisation took, it was a benefit gig for the children of the firefighters, the firefighters were on strike at the time.

And somebody, who knows, who knows? Some bright spark. Some bright spark. So get those kids in the back of this run here. And we went to the Sex Pistols concert. It's great. Well, it seemed appropriate in the 80s, isn't it? What a child activity. I know. And we were so happy as kids, because obviously, John Lider now, think what you like, you know, and I'm not going to get into that, because that's not part of my history. But at the time, we were so excited to be touching on the edge of this punk thing, because it seems like everybody was better dressed. They all had the teenagers. This is who were going. And they seemed to be more interestingly dressed, more different identities, like in the way that young people, I had been relatively shielded, not shielded from all that, but I just was new to anything interesting.

So that gig is a first encounter with another reality is possible, difference, something out of the norm and out of the ordinary. And I guess, I'm trying to think of the word, because you wouldn't say, you know, I have no negative sense of different sexual orientations, and I'm a kid at that time, so that's not what I'm thinking. But I guess it is that sense of going into something that's, I'm saying alternative, but there's a much stronger word for it, but, you know, a sense of a rebelliousness in it. It's like, oh, it's kind of less normative. Countercultural, maybe. Yes, that's the word. Thank you, David. That is exactly the word. And that was an introduction to it, in a sense, through like a strange route, really, because this is...

Did your punk career continue from there? My which career? Your punk. My punk career, it was funny, because at the time, I had no idea of punk. I didn't know what, except that all these people were, younger people were dressed in these outfits and all that. So, at home, back at home, I've got this jacket, which was green cord, corduroy, but old school cord, not even thick cord. It was thin cord. And so, I chopped the sleeves off it when I got home. And put whatever safety pins I could find in the whole house. And my mother would be like, oh, where's all the safety pins going in the house? But anyway, and put safety pins in it to make it in. And I had, I think it had some kind of weird, like, maybe a bath plug type chain.

I couldn't find chains. So, I had all these random things that I could find at home that seemed like punky type things and adorned the not that cool brown cord jacket with. And this was my attempt to be punk. How did you feel in terms of wearing kind of normative clothing as a young person? Oh, hideous, hideous. Because, you can't really tell on radio, can you, on recording. Visually, you would say that I tend towards the female masculinities in terms of my sense of myself. So, I was, I'm trying to find the words to say it, not, I didn't think this as a child. That wasn't my language, but, you know, I was into really practical things. I was always, you know, a kind of female masculinities child, really, always making, doing whatever.

And football with boys, but not in today's fabulous women footballers way, but just this, like, fairly, and I was in a fairly dysfunctional situation at home. So, this was not a good time in my life as a person, but that's this quest towards difference and other. And these things that I thought were really cool, like, you know, a more female masculinity type identity, you know. And so, I would say that I was, you know, a butch dyke as a child. So, on one side, on baby butch, on one hand, you've got your school uniform. I hated it, hated it. I don't want a skirt. Which you're rolling your eyes. Well, I was forced into a skirt. This is before even trousers were. Girls weren't allowed to wear trousers.

And so, I was even subversive with that in that, right, I'm having a corduroy skirt, like a blue, you know, navy blue. And it's all these, I remember things, like, always I'm looking for this other, different way of, you know, personalising something to my feelings that were the rules that were gruesome, really. That for non-normative people, probably boys and girls, but certainly for me, it was a painful kind of way of losing yourself. But trying to find the essence of things in clothes and, you know, wasn't exposed to, we only had black and white telly until I was quite old as a child. You know, it's hard to know where that was coming from, but there was this quest towards. Yeah, something in the ether.

Yes. That was guiding you. It's coming, it's coming, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Towards practical clothing. Well, yeah. Trousers. And I guess the punk aesthetic was giving you an alternative to that normative wear. Yeah. So to wrap up this first object, in my head, we have a Janet-shaped mannequin with this kind of lurid yellow T-shirt. And we are entering this into our queer museum. So can you tell us, Janet, about your second object that you are going to put into our queer museum? Is this writing? It informs one of the questions that you're asking me when you were asking me to contribute to your work was about Latex Theatre Group. Now, this is much later now. I've grown up a little bit, but I'm 25, left a heteronormative relationship that I've been in for a long time,

which I kind of see as a sort of an escape from my childhood, really. You know, there's a sort of a transitionary. I went through a straight phase after my teens, into my 20s. But at 25, I was a kitchen fitter in a very, in a partnership with this guy. But I'd seen an advert for, in Leeds, for women. I mean, they're still going now. It was Kenrick, you know, you know Kenrick. Right, so there's an ad for Kenrick and it's, and I'd been over some years had kind of snogging with women and kind of sexual things, but not, but still within, I'm in the context of in a straight relationship. But I was kind of having liaisons and things with women throughout that time. And then I'm moving more and more towards thinking, you know, I want to do something about this.

I need to understand this more. And then I saw an advert for Kenrick and there was a meeting. And this is, I'm in North Wales here as a kitchen fitter, close to Chester. But then the Kenrick group are having a meeting and I saw the advert for it and thought, and was really motivated to go. So I kind of arranged things so that I could go and be at that meeting. And at that meeting I met, or I was drawn to the only other younger woman who was the same age as me at the time, was 25. And we both said, no, we'll have to meet up again. And I was going, yeah, when, when, when, you know, in that kind of a while. So I, you're 25. I was 25 and I kind of, it was like, oh gosh, this is a different thing.

And felt like, right, I need to not be with this guy now. So we had a big, difficult situation like it would be. So I took the van, drove to Leeds and turned up at a flat, which was in Leeds, in, in, Hare Hills in Leeds. And then it was a bit like, I'm doing a sign here that means things that are crossing. Because I went there and came out and became just mostly a lesbian. She went off to America and slept with a guy because she'd never been involved with a guy before ever. So it was that sort of thing's crisscrossing. Like, I was motivated to move on to what you see now. And she went to America and did that. But in the meantime, because I moved to Leeds, then I broke up with her finally in that sequence.

So I got together with somebody who had two children from a previous relationship. And then I saw an advert in this thing called Leeds are the paper. You know, like you get small, you know, a couple of sheets worth of, and it's, I'm trying to want an equivalent. Yeah, you know, listings of things, but also Leeds are the paper. So there's different political things in it. Anyway, there's an advert for Latex Theatre Group. And I was like, hmm, that sounds great. And so me and, I'm not going to name names at the minute because it's not. But anyway, who I was living with by that time, I'm like, wow, let's go to that. So we went together. It was a sexual health project for Mesmac, which is men and other sex women actually in the community that are still going.

That's an incredible sexual health and a strong organisation. And he, part of what he was doing was to set up a theatre group. And so those of us that turned up and there were 10 to 20 of us over the time just went, met up an evening a week for several weeks and then put together a show. We just wrote whatever we wanted. So I was just writing bits of stuff, bits of stories, bits of poems, bits of, and everybody was writing things. You know, there was a whole play that came out of it from some people. But it was a really creative and kind of this time of being able to explore things. It was at the start of the HIV AIDS crisis as we experienced it. And it was really, both personally and I think for the LGBT plus community, really a very challenging, but a time where everybody was moving and moving into creative possibilities and exploring politics.

And that's what I did. During that period of time, I wrote a lot of material myself and collaboratively with my partner at the time. Would you be happy to read us your piece? Oh, okay. Okay. Short poem? Short poem. Go on, Janet. Can I do it in the Northern vernacular? Yes, please. I'd be offended if you didn't. Yeah. All right. This is jointly written, so I can't claim the whole, it's not all me writing. It was a collaborative piece. It's called Enid. I'm so bloody full of pasta and greens. And I've had a few beers as well. My belly's all bulging. I can't raise a limb. My fart has that rich wet smell. I'm cuddled up snug by the fire on the rug with a cat perched on my hip. And I can't wait till it gets really late and it's time for me to kip.

But from now till then, about quarter to ten, my Enid will sit on me face. She's the love of me life. Some say she's me wife. But I'm clever and she's to face. She's bonny and big and she'll share her last cig. She's a treasure with wondrous thighs. I can smell her right now like a lactating cow. And my heart melts at sight of her eyes. Yee, my Enid. We go to the club, to the shop and the pub. We get attitude. I mean a bad time. Because they say, hey, it's them. Mrs. Butch, Mrs. Femme. It's as if we'd committed a crime. They say we're like straights. They say I lift weights. That Enid bakes cookies. And never wants nookie. And I'm a bit mucky. Do you know? Now I would look silly in Enid's red stillies.

And frocks and me don't best get on. I like me trousers. And they don't fail to rouse her. Me and Enid. The duck and the swan. Now the end of this sequel is just to tell you. We're equal. In passion. In strength. And good taste. And I love the bones of her. My big femme lover. And I live for that bum on my face. Hey, that's her coming in. Come in, honey, honeysuckle, plum plunger.

Beautiful. That's fantastic. So, yeah, I was just thinking that that material seems quite radical. And I imagine August 1994. That's almost 20 years ago. I know. It's making me feel ancient. Where were you performing? Right. So, latex were performing then everywhere where people would have us. And one of the women that was involved with the group knew different people, knew someone would know someone who would have, you know, like you now in Brighton, you know where we'll get access to a place where you can perform something. And it was just started like that locally to us in Leeds. And then venues all over the country. I mean, two people who were involved in the group were just putting energy.

And Roland, who's sadly no longer with us, he passed away from HIV AIDS at the time. But people knew people and just set up gigs in all sorts of places all over the country. You know, so we performed in Chester. We performed in all along the coasts. But basically it was by these two people who were part of the group just working on the thing that you do, Roni, to put things on, you know, to find out and to put things on. What was the response generally in these tour dates? Wow. It's funny.

Because they must have, this is, I didn't know that much about that side of things, but whoever was putting them on must have kind of got a sense that we're not going to perform in somewhere where we'll get killed instantly or where, you know, there was hardly any negativity. And what would happen is that, like, if you're performing, I remember one, when we arrived, and like quite often it would be pre, like, in a, like, where gay men clubbing venue type venue. So it would be a gay club or a gay pub. And so we'd go on and do the show, which would maybe be about an hour and a half of sketch shows, and then the guys would be like, come on, come on, hurry up and get finished because we want to be, you know, we want to start clubbing now

because they needed to get off with someone quick before the end of the night. Do you know what I mean? It was that sort of feeling of like, oh, well, we'll tolerate. But then as we got more known around, then we'd pull a crowd and people were excited. And, you know, I've been to things, well, Hull, yeah, Hull, performing in Hull. And the people would come up to me afterwards because you don't know, but some of my other material relates to sexual abuse and what happened, you know, different things. And, you know, I had people that would come up to me and say, we never get this. We never get this material. We never see this. This is fantastic. You know, it was like not just that, but the experience of we're writing all about our lives.

We're just writing about gay life. You know, there was loads of, not loads of, there were sexual references that we worked fantastically, actually, with a youth group in Keithley. One of the friend of one of the lads in the group was a youth worker in Keithley. And she took a massive risk. This is at the time of, of course, 28. Yeah, right. Right. But she's like, right. So we went and performed our show to the youth group. And then she'd worked with them for some months every week that they were meeting. And they'd written their show, their response to our show. And we performed them to all of the Bradford Youth Service, you know, right up to the head of Bradford Youth Service. And it was this real big test case thing.

I mean, she took a big risk, really, in working with this youth because that is the, right, teaching these kids about, you know. Promotion of homosexuality. Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly what she was doing. And then we performed the show. So really quite a radical thing to be doing at the time because in the context of these ridiculous rules coming in. It's also just sinking in for me that this is a theatre group that's coming out of a sexual health service during a sexual health pandemic. Yeah. So I imagine there was some excitement around coming together and a lot of joy, but also a lot of sadness. Yeah, we got some people, guys who passed away with them. Yeah, we knew, everybody knew people.

And also a lot of lesbians were supporting, I mean, you know, friends who were impacted by HIV AIDS. And, you know, there was a real sense of deep sadness and the loss of a time. Like lots of, you know, lots of men who were like, you're not going to do that anymore. Like the sex fest of the time, you know, and there was all that stuff about people in the group had written material about, you know, is it okay to have unprotected, you know, what's it called? It's got a name. Is it bareback? Yeah, I'll do that. You know, is that okay? And then one of the guys that was in the group, he'd be like, it's my fucking arse, I'll do what I want. You know, that sort of sense of rebelliousness against being told, you know, how to have sex and how not, you know, the sort of push to protect yourself.

And I think it was, for some people, it was only when, like more and more, we had one show where we'd do this thing where somebody had got a bell that was ringing, ringing, ringing, and it represented a death each time. So part of the sketch that it was in was that, will you stop it with that fucking bell, you know, and it's like, this is ringing every time, this is a death. You know, it was that type of theatre, and it is like, we're here, and this is, you know, our lives, and don't, you know, one, it's not all about pity and all about terrible. The material that we wrote was also really celebratory about sex. It was celebratory about lives. It was funny. It was just a brilliant time to be generating material, creative material that was like, yeah, we're here.

We're here. This is what, you know, this is our lives. And this is our sadness, and this is our loss. And this is, I mean, lots of stuff for, well, my friend and I wrote stuff about, because people, you know, women were having children taken off them or losing out big time financially in marriage. You know, there was all of the issues that you think, ah, you know, we were able to write material and present it. And so it was a very. So loss, but also rage and joy and reclaiming. Yeah. The space where we're not just victims. Exactly. That sounds beautiful. Incredible. Thank you, Janet. Thank you. I'm happy to put that poem in the museum. And many, many more if you find more. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, and it's got a newspaper headline. Somebody holding a newspaper headline saying the Iron Curtain Lady. That's Janet. That's Janet. What? I know. I'm blown, but that is definitely Janet. Live reaction. That's kind of funny. Janet with bleached blonde.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The coif was the thing. And you know, the jackets, I was talking about the, this is not the, in later years, I finally got the. That's when you finally got the denim jacket. Which I still have. It's hanging on my, on my coat hooks out there. Um, and this is, the thing was that, um, I can, I can perform that because, um, not perform, but I can read you this if you would like. That would be fantastic. Well, I'm saying read it. There's two in here, but. So where are you in that picture? You're obviously at a rally of some sort. This is London Pride. London Pride. The first time Latex performed, we went down to London Pride. And, um, I don't need the text because there's only three lines to it, but my friend, um,

who was a cast member also, we would be the side of each other. So if you imagine this is me there and then, then she's there also holding up a tabloid. This is a tabloid newspaper and it's referring the Iron Curtain lady until it's the era of Thatcher because that was the, but we're holding up newspapers. Uh, and what we, what we'd written is a sketch that was based on newspaper headlines, actual newspaper headlines from tabloid press. And we just shout it like we come, we come onto the, to the stage, you know, individually and stand side by side. And then we both got, um, tabloid press in my hand and hand. And the whole sketch is AIDS. You're better off dead. AIDS. A bullet in the head. AIDS.

You made your bed. Lie on it. That's, that's the sketch. So tell us a little bit about this gig and this experience at London Pride in this particular photo then. Wow. What was, what were you feeling and how many people were in front of you? The whole of London Pride. It was different. You just had it in Brockwell Park or I don't know how well you know those. I think, yeah, probably Brockwell Park, um, where it's changed a bit now, I think in the way they do it, but there was just one main stage and then maybe some performance tense, maybe less. So it was kind of quite a minimal thing compared to later years. So there's one main stage and then you're, um, timed on and off. And then, you know, we could only do like, that was a good one to do because it was very short, very loud and punchy.

If you, you know, and it's in the delivery of it. I'm very, uh, you know, we get this raucous cheer afterwards because it really spoke to people's, the way that the tabloid press were treating people and what, and what the feelings were around it. Um, so it, for me, that is the, that is the, the Pride where the bus, the minibus journey that I'm talking about, where I got up. Well, the night before I'd been and hired the minibus at it, at the house where I was living. And then we'll drive around all of the cast members houses about five, six in the morning to pick them all up. Then drive to London, perform on the, on the stage at Pride. At the end of that, gather them all back up and then drive back up.

And I was tired because, you know, I'd been up since whatever in the morning, go down. So it was kind of like an adrenaline fueled, uh, a mission occasion. And that, and that, that sense of the, the strength and the rage that we were performing that sketch with, um, it lives in my memory as kind of just quite an amazing thing. So we've got this, this, this final piece that is going from Janet's, uh, amazing life and collection into our queer museum. It's Janet in the height of her powers, uh, on the stage at London Pride. And we think that this is probably so early nineties by the looks of it. It's close to, it's close to 94. Within that, within that time period to be the nineties. Amazing. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much, Janet. Yeah, Janet, thank you for your time. For your entries to our queer museum. I feel like we can have a whole Janet podcast, but that's a future project. The Chronicles of Janet coming to you in 2021. Well, thank you for the opportunity to share my stories. And from that period of time is a joy because you may be aware that I, I tried to track down, like, this is my handwriting of the time. And these were handwritten, but I didn't, it wasn't done on computers, but nobody had a computer of the time. And sadly, all of the scripts were collected by one person of the, of the cast. And then I think as far as I know, the original scripts, unless lots of other people have copy of their original scripts, this is the one we wrote.

And then they were all typed up. But then they were all typed up. There were a couple of other things within that that had been typed up. But then they lost. They've gone. They're typed up. They were, um, Roland, the guy who passed away. As far as I tried to track down what happened to the scripts then, because I thought that would make a really interesting thing to have a collection in a museum of that stuff. But I guess I would have to do quite a lot of work to ask other people if they've got, if they've, I mean, who keeps stuff? I'm a keeper of nonsense, as you can tell. Yeah. I think queer people are keepers of stuff because it's very peculiar stuff that doesn't, it only exists within our stories.

Um, I wonder if there's any footage of those gigs. I've got there. Okay. See, third along, there's a VHS. Yeah. Right. And on it, it probably says whatever I was into at the time. DV8. Do you remember? You know DV8? The original. Yeah. Close 28. And all the lesbians. Oh, that's a bit of that. You know, that TV show that was, uh, so there's, I think that there's a tiny bit of me. You know, when you realise what a bad actor you are. I think there's a tiny bit of me, um, performing part of a sketch on that, on that tape. But other than that, I don't know. If it, like it was recorded bits and pieces, and this was one time and, uh, like I say, I, yeah. Well, this is all the more reason if, for, to have some sort of queer museum.

Yeah. Let's put the call out again to our reach, reach founders. Yeah. If anyone knows Elton John or a similar queer benefactor, we'd really like a museum. Our heritage is incredibly precarious. Yeah. No, but I do think that. More and more. A body of work. Years and years of, of a theatre company. I know. And thanks to Janet, we have a couple of scripts, but yeah, Elton, if you are there. It could be a call out to the other cast members. I mean, personally, it's a challenge because obviously after we'd finished, uh, writing and meeting together, like everyone went their distant ways. You know, I know there are people in Scotland who live in, you know, people went here, there and everywhere and not necessarily, although I am still in contact with one person, but

the ex-partner of mine, you know, we moved on, we broke up, we were, you know. The ties, yeah, the ties. You know, it changes, doesn't it? All of our lives, unless you're in a really close-knit bunch of you, like you are now, in this location. Me and Ron will never be parted. Well, you know, and that's the joyous. Whether we like it or not, actually. This is a joyous thing, isn't it? That you can maintain strands of things because that, in my opinion, is where the queer history resides. You know, it's us, isn't it? It's our stories. Great, great note to end on there, Janet. Thank you so much. Thank you, Janet.

We play Janet's stories to our resident queer museum curator, EJ Scott, and this is what he has to say. Well, I was struck right at the start with Janet's story about her favourite T-shirt, because, of course, favourite T-shirts play a central role in queer collections and exhibitions everywhere. And it's, you know, for a couple of really good reasons. One is that, for a start, much of our community culture, obviously, is set in really casual settings, like clubs and pubs, where streetwear is our fashion de rigueur, and where you want to be comfortable enough, obviously, to drink and dance and sweat. T-shirts also are affordable, and they cross class boundaries. So they unite our chosen family, despite us coming together from a variety of different biological

family backgrounds. And perhaps one of the most important reasons that queer love T-shirts is because we can screen print onto them and literally wear our hearts, or more to the point, our politics on our sleeves. The 1990s was a particularly vibrant time for gay and lesbian T-shirts that were printed with political slogans across them, because wearing them enabled people to speak out amidst both the AIDS pandemic and the draconian Section 28 that was, of course, notoriously anti-queer publishing. But no one can stop you publishing a T-shirt. And anyone who lived through the 90s will probably remember the Act Up T-shirt with the big P triangle on it, and the slogan underneath them that said, silence equals death.

And again, to go back to the V&A's fashion collection, there's a T-shirt in that that they dated to 2000, but I think maybe it's a little bit earlier. And it has a big Nike swoosh on it and says, dikey, just do her. The slogans, of course, speak to the politics of the day, which is incredibly interesting when you consider that no one really walks around with proud to be gay T-shirts anymore. There's a T-shirt on display in the Queer the Peer exhibition at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery that says the Sussex helpline and the SUS is in red and the SEX is in black. So you can see sex standing out, which, you know, really speaks to the moment. It speaks to what the helpline was doing. But, you know, nowadays we don't walk around with gay T-shirts that go proud to be gay,

proud to be lesbian. But interestingly, I think political T-shirts are still very popular in the trans community. My favourite one that went on show in the Museum of Transology exhibition at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery has printed on it, nice gender. Did your mum pick it out for you? And I think it's a material reminder that today's trans and non-binary struggle really is about 30 years behind the gay and lesbian movement. And of course, it brings me to my final point. Have you ever seen an intersex proud to be intersex teacher? I haven't. And I guess that's because really intersex politics still remain largely invisible. Thanks for listening. The My Queer Museum podcast is a Queer Heritage South project created by Marlborough Productions

and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. For more information about our work, visit queerandbrighton.co.uk. Original music and editing by Olive Mondegreen.