QUEER HERITAGE INTERPRETATION

Queer people leave legacies that can be found everywhere.

Museums and heritage organisations have been ‘queering’ their sites and collections for some years now – looking again at what they hold in relation to LGBTQIA+/queer* lived experience, reviewing existing exhibitions and creating new narratives for visitors. We’re finding material all over the place – in large and small collections; in rural and urban venues; in social, creative and scientific subject areas.

As an interpretation consultant, helping heritage organisations share their stories with visitors and non-visitors, I’ve been playing my small part in this ongoing work. Recently I:

  • co-authored the AHI Best Practice Guideline LGBTQIA+ heritage interpretation (2024-25)

  • appeared on Interpreting LGBTQIA+ heritage on What’s Up Interpreters? podcast (National Association for Interpretation, USA) with Norena Shopland and gave a paper at the NAI conference called Queer interpreters (and allies), unite! (2026)

  • curated the Lightbulb moments exhibition at Victoria Museum & Art Gallery (University of Liverpool) including queer stories in the interpretive mix and giving a public LGBT History Month guided tour of the exhibition (2025)

  • won the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Critical Writing Competition with the essay Does this portrait look queer to you? and Gave a lecture at the National Portrait Gallery Does this portrait look queer to you? (2024)

  • worked with Domino Association and Zagreb City Museums to facilitate exploration workshops about LGBTQ+ online interpretation in Croatia (2024)

In publishing, I’ve written reviews of LGBTQIA+ exhibitions such as   

Exhibition review: The Holly Johnson Story, Museum of Liverpool (2025)

Exhibition review: Never going underground: the fight for LGBT+ rights at People’s History Museum (2017)

Exhibition review: Robert Mapplethorpe at Tate Modern (2014)

Opinion piece: Queer Up Now: archives help us to make sense of the world (2026)

Opinion piece: What makes a museum object queer? (2016)

There is more work to do. We have more collections to uncover, more stories to tell and more people to bring into queer interpretive practice. By including multiple voices, past and present, in our storytelling, we remind the world that queer people have always existed and that they always will. Queer heritage is part of everyone’s heritage. I’m committed to supporting a heritage sector that can tell these stories not with reluctance or shame, but with confidence and pride.

 

* ’Queer’ has historically been used as a term of hatred and abuse and it still gets used as such by bigots and homophobes. Yet it has also been reclaimed by some as a positive word, forging a new identity for LGBTQIA+ people as we stand together and make our voices heard. It’s also used as an inclusive umbrella term for any who identify as part of the rainbow family.

I use ‘Queer heritage interpretation’ to refer to interpretive work conducted by queer/LGBTQIA+ people and/or work relating to the lived experience of people who identify as queer/LGBTQIA+.