Daily Mail vs National Trust (AGAIN)

These are obviously my own views about the recent Felbrigg debacle, NOT that of the National Trust.


As everyone knows, the 50^th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales is being marked by many huge heritage institutions, including the British Museum, Tate Modern/Britain, Historic Royal Palaces, V&A etc. It seems though that the only institution to be consistently ruffling the feathers of homophobic right wing rag commentariat is the National Trust. 

When the 2017 Prejudice and Pride programme was announced at the end of last year, Breitbart fascist Delingpole claimed the ‘once great’ institution had been sullied by the inclusion of LGBTQ histories, and name dropped my beloved Sutton House as being his former favourite property, now hosting the ‘nonsensical’ Sutton House Queered programme.

I’m currently at my family home, and I’m ashamed to say my dad buys and reads the Daily Mail. Today, amidst the political chaos in our country, the Daily Mail deemed the National Trust front page material. He made a joke about hiding it from me. He mistakenly thinks that my distaste for the Daily Mail in contrast to his reverence for it is amusing.

I know very well that the Daily Mail is reactionary, and barely based on truth. We all do. But earlier in the year when the rag bemoaned with outrage that the National Trust had CANCELLED EASTER, I could only roll my eyes, as the day before I had helped to hang a huge canvas banner emblazoned with the word Easter in front of a National Trust property. It was amusing because it was laughably reactionary, and also, very easily demonstrably not true. It also created the largest number of visits for the Easter weekend that Sutton House had ever seen.

Today’s headline reads MUTINY IN THE NATIONAL TRUST, and is in response to volunteers from Felbrigg in Norfolk who refused to wear Prejudice and Pride badges. In response to their refusal, the Trust asked them to move away from public-facing duties for the duration of the programme. Firstly, let’s just unpick the headline. 10 ‘furious’ volunteers out of a body of over 70,000 volunteers across the National Trust (ie 0.01%) is emphatically not a mutiny. It’s a mere drop in the ocean.

When the Prejudice and Pride programme began, the Trust approached it very carefully, working with and consulting many experts (including myself), such as Stonewall, curator of Queering the Museum and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery Matt Smith and Leader of the Leicester University School of Museum Studies, Richard Sandell. We worked together on a series of training days to discuss how various inevitable challenges could be met. Volunteers were always a great consideration. The Trust is so privileged that so many people devote their time, skills and energy to volunteering there, but sometimes volunteers can be difficult- anyone working in museums and heritage can tell you that much. I visited Seaton Deleval in Northumberland once and I had to walk away from an elderly volunteer who was using sexist language to refer to a Mary Eleanor Bowes portrait, when he noticed her portrait had caught my eye. Not everyone thinks LGBTQ history should be uncovered, they prefer that it should continue to be hidden, like a shameful dirty secret, and unfortunately, out of 70,000 volunteers, it’s inevitable that some of those would share that view. 

The news that the National Trust had stood firm on this ruling that volunteers must wear lanyards or badges reflecting the programme at the house was like music to my ears. Like a lot of large charities and organisations, the Trust has a set of values and behaviours that all staff and volunteers must abide by. These range from being respectful to people, to being willing to try new things, but also that we be advocates and ambassadors for the National Trust.

So often, as with many of my own visits to National Trust properties, the only people you will encounter as a visitor is a volunteer. It makes perfect sense then, that they be ‘on message’, for whatever is going on in the property at that time.

Pam Meecham, my PhD supervisor, has written about the Hello Sailor exhibition at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, and noted how some of the museum staff wanted nothing to do with the exhibition, and were vocal in their disapproval of it. It shouldn’t be behaviour that is tolerated from staff, and therefore should not be tolerated by volunteers. The difference is, volunteers are not contractually bound to sharing the values of the Trust, so the alternative, if they are not prepared to do so, is to take their skills elsewhere, and use their time where their values are in line with the organisation (the daily mail perhaps?). I think it’s very generous for the Trust’s stance to be to allow them to move their duties away from front of house rather than just showing them the door.

I obviously feel very strongly about criticisms about the Trust’s LGBTQ engagement, and take a lot of it very personally given my role in laying the foundations for it, and in building the programme this year (especially since I know that people like my parents are consuming the sort venom that is being written about it). It hasn’t always been easy, both from inside and outside the Trust, but reading that they were taking such a bold stance made me feel really valued, and genuinely moved by the Trust’s devotion to these important histories, and to making their properties more inviting and welcoming to LGBTQ communities.

I’m disheartened to see they have reneged this bold stance in the face of criticism from the Daily Mail and the Telegraph. They haven’t yielded to the ‘fury’ of volunteers, they’ve yielded to homophobia/transphobia. And if you change your course in response to hatred and ignorance, you give weight and merit to that hatred and ignorance, and say that those who voiced it are in the right. This is really disappointing, it feels like one step forward and too steps back and it’s exhausting.

The Daily Mail is the enemy of many people and many things and carries a lot of power given its colossal readership. But if you continue to worry about what the Daily Mail is going to say about every thing you do, and if you cave in to bullying from thick right wingers, you’ll never get anything done. The future members and visitors of the National Trust are not old white Daily Mail readers, so we really, really need to stop bending to the every wishes of old, white Daily Mail readers.

I feature on episode three of the National Trust's Prejudice and Pride podcast, speaking with Dr Gus Casely-Hayford and Clare Balding about hidden queer histories. The whole series is great, written by Museum of Transology's E-J Scott, check them out here.

"Get your acorns out!" - the National Trust at Pride

I've finally handed a full version of my thesis to my supervisors, so hopefully will have more time to blog, and I'm also planning on making the blog a bit nicer too, and adding more info about the exhibitions we've had at Sutton House this year.



This week has been a pretty unusual week for me at work. On Wednesday we hosted a member's event at Sutton House hosted by National Trust Director Helen Ghosh. I was delighted to be asked to chair the panel event, and the discussion was around making the Trust more diverse and inclusive. On Saturday, the Sutton House team led the National Trust's presence at Pride in London. If you'd have told me when I started researching and volunteering for the Trust in 2013 that either of these things were happening I'd have guffawed. It seems a very appropriate way to bookend the uphill struggle that has been my relationship with the Trust (and frustrations with the heritage world more broadly), and my PhD.



I've ranted on here before about how problematic I find Pride, and haven't attended for the past few years, opting instead for Queer Picnic, Black Pride or Trans Pride in Brighton, all of which embody what Pride events should feel like for me much more than London Pride.



I hate that Pride now presents an opportunity for institutions to stick a rainbow flag on themselves and be seen to be visibly supportive of a community they do shit all to support all year round. I hate that the organisers so consistently get everything wrong (as an aside I attended a winter club night they did at Scala and they had a men's queue and a woman's queue... yet they claim to be for the whole LGBTQ community...). I hated that a police man came up to me this year to ask for a selfie, I said no, and that he could have a selfie for every time the police have appropriately dealt with a hate crime I've reported... Pride is too corporate, too white, too cis, too homonormative, pats people and institutions on the back too much for being "allies" but for not actually doing anything, is hypocritical and blind to the genuine pressing issues that queer communities face around the country and the world.



So it was with a lot of anxieties and doubt that I agreed to march in Pride for the first time, and especially to march as part of a huge organisation. But I'm actually pleased I did. The Trust haven't always got it right this year when dealing with LGBTQ histories as part of the Prejudice and Pride programme, but I know that those who worked on it, and helped put together the Pride march are all coming from the same place as me. When we were first talking about Pride, I said I wouldn't be involved if we were selling memberships on the day- as I think it would be desperately inappropriate to do so. Instead, our presence should be to show support, to celebrate the work we have done over the last few years (especially at Sutton House!) and to celebrate our LGBTQ staff and volunteers.

This year at Sutton House, all of our programming has been related to LGBTQ themes. We have worked with (and paid!) exclusively LGBTQ artists, have given platforms to people that otherwise wouldn't have had them from the Sutton House community (such as Victor Zagon, who I will blog about more fully at some point!), we've worked with a young LGBTQ support group, we have explored queer themes with school groups and in our family offers. My exhibition Master-Mistress in 2014 was the first ever LGBT History Month exhibition in a National Trust property, we were the first to launch gender neutral toilets, we've been hosting queer club nights with Amy Grimehouse and Late Night Library Club for years, and I know that we won't stop just because the Prejudice and Pride programme ends. I'm very concerned about legacy, but for now, I was very proud to march as part of Sutton House in Pride, I have worked very hard to help educate a large organisation about LGBTQ heritage, I have called out staff in the Trust when they have got things wrong, and just because the Trust are now on the cusp of progress, I won't stop doing either of those things.



I love the National Trust, that's why I've spent over four years researching and writing about it, that's why I volunteered with them, and why I'm so pleased to have a job at my favourite National Trust house. Marching in Pride also made me realise how much affection my community has for the Trust too, even if sometimes it seems very conservative, or inaccessible, people appreciate the aims of Europe's largest conservation charity, and recognise our attempts to get better. Fear not- I will continue to hold the Trust to account and work with my equally passionate colleagues to ensure that this is just the beginning of making the Trust a better place for EVERYONE.

We met a lovely man called Martin from the London Gay Men's Chorus, who had been part of the Save Sutton House Campaign back in the late 1980s- I'm looking forward to getting in touch with him to start recording his memories, some of which we were lucky enough to hear over a pint after the march.



Also: huge shoutout to the man in the crowd that shouted "Get your acorns out!" as we marched past.

Petworth (and a very queer statue)

I was lucky enough to visit Petworth this week on a training day. The West Sussex country house contains one of the most iconic art collections in the care of National Trust, and a Capability Brown landscaped deer park in the 700 odd acre grounds are home to the country's largest herd of fallow deer. We only had time for a brief whistlestop tour, but I will definitely make time to go back to have a closer look, and also to explore the grounds more.

There was one particular statue in the collection that stood out for me. The Petworth twitter feed helpfully pointed me towards this record on the collections website.

This is Pan and Apollo (or Marsyas and Olympos or Pan and Daphnis). In other words, it's potentially any of three combinations of mythical figures. I was struck by the tenderness, and lets face it, queerness of the statue. Let's consider for a moment that the sculpture depicts Pan and Daphnis, Daphnis was a Sicilian shepherd whose mother was a nymph, and is often depicted as an eromenos, which means the younger man in a pederastic relationship- a convention which was both socially accepted, and recognised in Ancient Greece. Pan fell in love with Daphnis, and taught him to play the panpipes. These models of relationships can be problematic to use as parallels with contemporary understandings of sexual identities. There were no rules or laws about age when it came to sex in Ancient Greece, but there were about consent. Either way, it's certainly one aspect of Greek/Roman culture that hasn't directly informed our own 'civilisation'. The curators of the British Museum's Warren Cup exhibition in 2006 no doubt had to think very carefully about how the object, which more blatantly depicts sex between erastês and erômenos, was framed in contemporary conversations around sexuality.

Apart from being a really striking statue, it serves to remind us that you never have to look too hard for queer histories and narratives in historic houses, or at least for artworks, furniture and objects that lend themselves well to queer readings and interpretation.

I was also compelled to do a little sharpie doodle of the statue:

all 126 LGBTQ sonnet videos now online

I have finally put all of the contributions to the 126 LGBTQ sonnet project online. You can view them all in this album here. I'm looking into potential ways of displaying them, perhaps with a dedicated website, but for now they are all there for your viewing pleasure.

The exhibition at Sutton House has finished and it was a great success. I was sad to see it go, but looking forward to writing about it for my thesis, and I don't think this is the end of the project, I am hoping to edit them in to a second version of the film and to continue to look for opportunities to screen it to make sure it can be seen by as many people as possible.

I want to extend my thanks again to the staff at Sutton House, but especially to the 125 (I was the 126th!) volunteers who gave up their time to contribute so creatively and generously to this project. I am overwhelmed and moved by the contributions, which range from funny to really moving. All of them are brilliant. Visibility is still really political for queer people, so we have all done something towards ensuring that we are seen and heard, and I think that's a beautiful thing. I'm also delighted to have met so many of the contributors since, at Sutton House, the V&A and various other queer events. I never imagined this project would help me feel so much more a part of the queer community, and that I would make so many friends through it.




















I'm really excited that the exhibition had a brief mention in an article in the Independent. Unfortunately it was only two days before the exhibition ended, meaning that it wasn't an effective marketing device, but still great to have been noticed, and I hope the higher ups in the National Trust are paying attention to our success.




















Special thanks to Alex Creep, who has put up with me being quite insufferably stressy during the build up to the exhibition! and who also made the beautiful poster for the exhibition.

V&A Friday Late: Queer and Now

I'm delighted to have been invited to speak at the V&A's Friday Late 'Queer and Now' which takes place on Friday 27th February from 18.30 - 22.00

The event is free and consists of talks, music (from Amy Grimehouse), performance, food and drink and first come first served free haircuts from Open Barbers!

My talk is called 'There's no place like homo: the deconstruction of the queer country house' and takes place in the beautiful National Art Library at 19.30.

Last year, the V&A celebrated the 40th anniversary of the influential and groundbreaking exhibition ‘The Destruction of the Country House, 1875-1975’. While the exhibition was concerned with the preservation of houses, this presentation will look at the idea of the preservation of homes, specifically the homes of those who could be considered queer figures. Domestic spaces have historically been some of the very few places where queer lives could be safely enacted and lived. Using a number of case studies, including National Trust properties, and other historic houses open to the public, I will make a case for activism in heritage sites to ensure that queer voices are heard in the spaces they called home. I will also showcase some of my own interventions, specifically my audiovisual exhibition at Sutton House in Hackney, and a multimedia protest based on Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire.

You can see the full programme of events here. Hope to see many of you there!

'126' exhibition poster!

I'm delighted to unveil the official poster for the '126' exhibition at Sutton House.

The poster was made by the super talented Alex Creep.

The event on Facebook is active, please click 'attending' and invite everyone you think might be interested!

The event is also on the LGBT History Month calendar. Which is a great source for keeping an eye out on the various events taking place in February and beyond.

Hope to see you all there!

'126' and 'Queer Season' at Sutton House

We're less than a month away from the exhibition that I (and 125 volunteers) have been working on. I'm delighted to unveil the trailer here:


'126' LGBTQ exhibition trailer from Sean Curran on Vimeo.

I'm also delighted to announce that owing to the success of last February's exhibition Master Mistress, the staff at Sutton House have decided to eschew the confines of LGBT History Month by hosting a two month long Queer Season throughout February and March. Below is the exhibition blurb and more information about the other events taking place throughout Queer Season:

Queer Season at Sutton House

Starting in LGBT History Month, Sutton House is hosting its first Queer Season, a series of exhibitions and events celebrating the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer communities.

National Trust’s Sutton House presents:

126 
5th February to 29th March,
Weds to Sun 12pm to 5pm

Building on February 2014's exhibition 'Master-Mistress', the first LGBT History Month event to be held in a National Trust property we think, '126' is a crowd-sourced audiovisual experience featuring all 126 of Shakespeare's Fair Youth sonnets as read by members of the LGBTQ community. Each sonnet is self-recorded and is accompanied by video portraits of the contributors.

Admission: Adult £3.50, Child £1, Family £6.90, National Trust Members FREE.

The Amy Grimehouse and National Trust’s Sutton House present:

The Craft Valentine's Massacre 
14 February 7pm to late

 Join The Amy Grimehouse for their special presentation of that 90s classic, The Craft. Explore Sutton House and participate in some anti-Valentine's spells, Hex-Your-Ex, the Nancy Booth, The Craft Craft Room with binding and poison pen Valentine's cards and more. All before the pre-screening show with the Bitches of Eastwick. The screening will make way for the 'Invoking the Spirit of Manon Ball' with Connie Francis on the jukebox and more til late. "Now is the time. This is the hour. Ours is the magic. Ours is the power." 

Nick Fox and National Trust’s Sutton House Present:

Bad Seed 
5th February to 29th March,
Weds to Sun 12pm to 5pm

 This will include the first comprehensive survey of work by South African-born artist Nick Fox. Arranged over seven rooms, the exhibition brings together artworks created over the last ten years, principally painting but also films, installations, cyanotype prints and intricately laboured object d’art from his celebrated Nightsong and Phantasieblume series. Fox has also chosen Sutton House to launch a new artistic project called Seedbank, which invites members of the public to select seeds linked to a veiled dictionary of floral meanings to give as long term and living tokens of love and loves loss. Bad Seed will be shown simultaneously with Fox’s International touring exhibition Nightsong, at Angus-Hughes Gallery (7th February – 7 March 2015), which is also located in Hackney.

Admission: Adult £3.50, Child £1, Family £6.90, National Trust Members FREE.

2nd call for volunteers for '126' LGBTQ exhibition at Sutton House

[EDIT: thanks for the overwhelming response to this second call out- all sonnets have now been assigned!]


Hello all!

I am currently working on an exhibition for LGBT History Month (and beyond- it will be running until the end of March!) at Sutton House, a National Trust house in Hackney.

(the dates on the poster are wrong- they will be amended when the proper posters are made! It actually ends on the 29th March!)

I can now announce that the exhibition will be called '126'. It will be an audio visual exhibition featuring crowd sourced recordings of LGBTQ people reading one of Shakespeare's 126 Fair Youth sonnets, and short video portraits of the contributors.

I have been overwhelmed by the quality of the submissions so far, but alas- there are still between 20-30 sonnets to be assigned to volunteers!

If you wish to get involved, it only takes 5-10 minutes to record, and you can do it in the comfort of your own home, and it's a great chance to be involved in a huge community effort to raise the visibility of LGBTQ identities in historic houses, and in the National Trust, you will also receive an invite to the private view!

You can see some examples of the contributions so far here. And read the original call for volunteers here.

To get involved or for more information, contact SuttonHouseLGBTQ@gmail.com and I will assign you with a sonnet!

I need all of the sonnets and videos to be recorded by the end of December, so please share widely with your networks!

Sutton House LGBT History Month exhibition- updates!

Just thought I'd share a few updates about the LGBTQ sonnet project exhibition to be exhibited at Sutton House in February 2015.

The exhibition will open on the 4th February, which is also when the house reopens after the closed season. The private view will be the following evening, on the 5th, and we're toying with holding a second event to follow up on the success and interest of this year's panel discussion. I'll keep you posted!

Here is another teaser of the exhibition, featuring snippets from 5 of the contributions so far:


126 sonnets - teaser video [three] from Sean Curran on Vimeo.

I really can't express how pleased I am with all of the contributions so far! You can listen to the sonnets so far here.

The exhibition will be taking place in the chapel, here are a few pictures of the space for those of you who have not visited yet (obviously it will look very different once the exhibition is in place):

I'm also delighted to say that the posters and promotional material will be designed by a super talented queer artist, more on this soon, but I'm really excited about it! In other great news, this year's Master-Mistress exhibition and the upcoming follow up will receive a brief mention in the National Trust magazine that goes out to members, a readership of approximately 4.5 million...

I'm also hoping to soon be able to reveal some other LGBTQ related things that will be taking place at Sutton House during February and beyond, it's really great that the success of this year's exhibition is increasing the visibility of LGBTQ identities and narratives more widely throughout the property, I can only hope that other National Trust properties follow the lead soon.

By November 30th I should know for sure exactly how many more contributors I will need as, for various reasons, some of the original contributors are no longer able to commit, so I will be posting a second call out in an attempt to fill the final few spaces by the end of December, so that I have plenty of time to experiment with how the audio and the videos will work in the exhibition space.

A huge warm thank you to those who have already contributed and those who are planning to, this exhibition would literally be nothing without you all!

The National Trust at the Balfron Tower

In September last year I was involved as a tour guide in the National Trust London Project's Big Brother takeover. It was such an interesting experience that when I heard about their pop-up opening of Flat 130 in Balfron Tower I was eager to be involved.

I had, unknowingly, known about Balfron Tower from 28 Days Later, being a huge zombie film enthusiast (arguably it's not a zombie film, as the 'infected' aren't dead, but yadda yadda), as Cillian Murphy's character takes refuge there with other survivors. Interesting that I knew a building originally envisioned as a socialist utopia as the refuge from complete nightmarish dystopia. It also turns out that my good friend currently lives in the tower as a property guardian, albeit 21 floors below the flat that the National Trust temporally opened.

The experience was quite different to the Big Brother opening, partially because of the considerable amount of research that was required before the tours (the Big Brother tours were quite small in comparison, and as a fan of the programme I didn't really need to learn much), as well as the anxieties that many, including me, had about the project. I was uncomfortable in the direction that the building was going, as it is being developed and sold as luxury apartments, the original social housing residents having, mostly, been "decanted" (i.e.: booted out) since 2010. I was also uncomfortable at how the tours could be read as voyeurism- touring largely white, middle class people around an area that is mostly social housing, not to mention the potential for disturbances that could be caused to the current residents (a few remaining social housing tenants, property guardians and artists from Bow Arts Trust), however, my initial concerns quickly vanished once the project got underway, as the Trust had taken great steps to ensure limited disturbance to the residents and local communities, they offered free community group tours to ensure that those who lived and went to school locally had the opportunity to see the flat and experience the tour, and part of the income from the tickets will be donated to the Residents Association.

The enthusiastic visitors on the tours, and the other volunteers I worked with shared my discomfort with the direction the building was being taken in, and by being reflective about that in our conversations, it became clear that everyone was there out of an interest in modernist architecture and the socialist values imbued in it by Ernő Goldfinger. The conversations we had on the tours about our own experiences of social housing, high rise living and East London meant that the tours were more self aware and critical than perhaps your average National Trust tour. I tried to make sure that the tone of the tours was not one of fetishising the building as an icon, but instead getting to the core of the social values that Goldfinger intended to be enacted by such a building, and how it has been, and is being, undone.

Flat 130 is the one in which Goldfinger and his wife Ursula briefly lived in in 1968. Part publicity stunt, part "empirical" research, the Goldfinger's used their time there to inform the future Trellick Tower, by finding out what residents thought about living there. They only occupied the flat for two months, so the Trust decided to go down a more fantastical route rather than trying to recreate what would have been a very sparse flat. Instead, Wayne and Tilly Hemingway were invited to create a 1968 flat for the imagined family that moved in after the Goldfingers. The idea was that all furniture was from 1968 or earlier, assuming that families would have inherited furniture from earlier to bring with them. There were, however, a few anachronisms, and perhaps the furniture would not have been reflective of a family in social housing, but my questions about the logic of presenting well researched fiction rather than, say, the empty flat, were soon challenged when I saw how much visitors enjoyed the flat, mostly because of the nostalgia it triggered. One woman said it was strange seeing somewhere that looked so much like an old flat of hers being presented as a museum piece.



I gave tours on three days, and was asked to Duty Manage the volunteers on three more. The tours were such a success that the initial run was extended. The tour guides were all volunteers, and the turnover of recruitment and training was a lot quicker than usual National Trust endeavours- and definitely the better for it. The dynamic and diverse range of guides and styles of tours made the project feel fresh and exciting, and it proved, to me at least, that being a Tour Guide is not necessarily something you get better at with experience...

A huge thank you to Roshan and Katherine, and many others, for making the project such a great pleasure to be a part of it, and I really wish it was a happier story for what happens to the tower next.

I made a little video of the flat:


Flat 130, Balfron Tower from Sean Curran on Vimeo.

LGBTQ sonnets exhibition

When I first suggested collecting all 126 sonnets read by LGBTQ people to the staff at Sutton House I was half hoping for them to suggest it was a bit too ambitious. However, with almost all of the sonnets now assigned to willing volunteers (there are still a handful left!), and the contributions coming in thick and fast, I'm delighted that they had faith in me!

Here are two little teaser videos of two of the contributions, I'll be posting more in the build up to the - as yet unnamed (I have a few ideas) - exhibition, which will take place in February 2015. As well as the recordings of the sonnets, I am also asking contributors to record a ten second video portrait, or a moving "selfie". In the exhibition, I don't think the sonnets will be matched with the videos, but rather will all run into each other, but I will have to wait until I have received them all before I experiment with the best ways to exhibit them all.


126 sonnets - teaser video [one] from Sean Curran on Vimeo.



126 sonnets - teaser video [two] from Sean Curran on Vimeo.

I can't tell you how overwhelming I am finding the generosity and creativity of the contributors so far, and it's a real treat every time I receive a new submission, it really strengthens the love I have for a community I'm so proud to be a part of, and it feels like we're all part of something really big and meaningful!

I'll continue to document the progress of the exhibition, and in the next few days I'll blog about my experience of volunteering at the Balfron Tower with the National Trust.

Balfron Tower

I'm so excited to be part of the upcoming National Trust tours of the Balfron Tower, which is becoming a 'pop up' property much like the Big Brother house did this time last year. I will be one of many volunteers guiding the tours, which run for two weeks from 1st October.

While I did not expect the project to attract the sort of vitriol in the media as the Big Brother takeover did, I've been surprised at the largely positive response so far, though perhaps more scathing comment pieces are being saved for while the tours are running. This is a controversial project, in many ways much more so than the Big Brother tours, as aside from continuing debates about what heritage is, there are issues around gentrification, and the "decanting" of those who lived there in the manner it was originally conceived by architect Ernő Goldfinger, as social housing. I'm hoping the tours will be a part of this debate, though no matter how much I might roll my eyes at the gentrification of a tower block that will soon be luxury apartments and that is currently occupied by artists, I have to accept that as a National Trust tour guide, I am part of that gentrification.

That aside, I visited the tower on Friday for training and I can promise a really fascinating visit for those with tickets, the tower is filled with great stories and the view from Flat 130, which has been recreated in 1968 style by Wayne and Tilly Hemingway, is phenomenal. I hope this venture generates a healthy discussion about heritage and about what happens when a once reviled building used as social housing becomes a revered icon, at the expense of its residents, it's a very timely discussion too, and I'm really pleased to have the opportunity, and the privilege to see this beautiful building up close, and to share its stories with others.

I'll blog more thoroughly about this once I've done the tours!

You can get tickets here (looks like they're almost gone).

#NTHouseproud

I'm delighted to have been part of the launch party for #NTHouseproud last night. The newest initiative of the National Trust's London Project, with the help of RCA students and graduates and MADE.COM, the project aims to capture a snap shot of how Londoners live today.

Billed as a 'social media experiment', the London Project invites Londoners to upload pictures of the interiors of their homes to twitter or instagram using the project #NTHouseproud hashtag, and the those who the take best pictures can win MADE.COM vouchers, with the over all winner having the opportunity to have their homes temporarily become London's 13th National Trust property, with the red velvet rope treatment, room stewards and a guide book produced.

I think this is a great idea to continue to challenge people's ideas of what heritage means and can mean, much like the Big Brother takeover last year did. I'm curious to find out more about the logistics of taking over a 'normal' and lived in house, and even more curious to know the sorts of people who would want the prize! As excited as I am about the project, having visitors traipse around my home sounds like a panic attack waiting to happen.

Aside from the innovative idea to open up a lived in and real house, the #NTHouseproud project will produce a vibrant archive of photographs of home life in 2014, in an accessible and social media-friendly way, the kind of archive that future historians will be very grateful for.

I'm really interested to see how the project unfolds, and hope to continue to be involved with it.

call for volunteers for LGBTQ exhibition

Following this year's Master-Mistress exhibition, the staff at Sutton House have invited me to curate a follow up exhibition in February 2015.

In Master-Mistress, four brilliant volunteers contributed their voices by reading from Shakespeare's Fair Youth sonnets. For Master-Mistress Take 2, we're going to have all 126 of them read and recorded, and exhibited at Sutton House. This might sound very ambitious, but this is where you can help!

I'm looking for 126 people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer or intersex (or any combination of) who would like to take part in this.

What I will need from you:

• a self recorded reading of a sonnet (I will assign the sonnets to make sure we have no duplicates), if you have a smart phone you will be able to do it on that, if you are unable to, or don't have a phone that can record sound, then I can help you record it. The sonnets all take approximately 1 minute to read.
• a 10 second 'moving selfie', a video (again, just use your phone, and again if you don't have the technology, we can help you out) that serves as a portrait of you, of your face or your full body, or if you're not comfortable showing yourself, you can send a clip of something personal that captures an element of you, an object, an item of clothing, a place, or whatever you want (get in touch if you're short of ideas and I can help).
• Your permission to use both the sound recording, and your videos in an exhibition, promotional material for the exhibition and online.

The sounds and clips will help to create an immersive audio-visual experience at Sutton House in LGBT History Month in 2015. Once the exhibition is over, there will be an online space to bring all of the material together, so that together we create a legacy that lasts beyond LGBT History Month.

Please email SuttonHouseLGBTQ@gmail.com If you want to contribute- get in touch and I can assign you with a sonnet to read, or if you want any more information, or have any questions, get in touch too.

We're aiming to have collected all 126 sonnets by November, so get in touch as soon as you can!

Also, please share this post widely with your networks, it's a really exciting opportunity to be involved in a ground breaking community sourced project and exhibition in a National Trust property!

Here is an example of one of the readings from last year:


Sonnet 93 from Sean Curran on Vimeo.

You can hear the other three here.

I visited the house today, and was shown around the new breakers yard, which is gorgeous, do go and visit, here are a few pictures from it:

"Challenging histories" at Sutton House

On Thursday 13th, we celebrated LGBT History Month at Sutton House, Hackney, in an event to support the 'Master-Mistress' exhibition, which runs until 7th March. The event was called 'Challenging Histories: what place do LGBTQ identities have in museums and historic houses' and was so well attended that people had to sit on the window-sills in the beautiful Great Chamber.

The discussion raised many interesting ideas and questions, and we could have run for longer than we did- but hopefully we have peaked people's interests for future events.

 Below is the podcast of the evening, I'm hoping to put it on iTunes at some point- but it's beyond my technical capabilities, so this will have to suffice for now.

I'd also like to thank again the four speakers for the event; Jan, Claire, Naomi and Oliver, and of course to the team at Sutton House for being such great hosts!
 

I hope this is a conversation that will continue amongst everyone who attended, and amongst other National Trust properties.

Coverage of 'Master-Mistress'

Just thought I'd share some of the coverage we've had for 'Master-Mistress'.

I've been delighted in the interest in the exhibition so far, it's appeared on various listing sites, but I'll highlight a few:

Elle UK have listed the exhibition as one of their 'Alternative Valentine's Day' recommendations here.

We were featured on the homepage of Destination Hackney for a few days, though I can't find the link to the feature itself anymore!

We're also mentioned on the Hackney Gazette page here. (although they have misquoted me saying the sonnets are "suggestive", which I'm pretty sure I've never said!

I had a short interview with Laura Raphael who wrote these great pieces on East London Lines and Shades of Noir.

We appeared in a feature about LGBT History Month events in the Hackney Today newspaper (on two separate days!) (apologies for the blurry pictures)

and we also had a tweet from Diane Abbott Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (hopefully not all of her 62.3K followers will visit at once)

Shakespeare's Fair Youth Sonnets being read at Sutton House for LGBT History Month #lgbtsmallsteps http://t.co/whewIKq4PF
— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) February 6, 2014

It's really promising that the exhibition, and LGBT History Month more broadly is stirring up interest, hopefully the coverage will help persuade people to come to the panel event at Sutton House tomorrow 'Challenging Histories: what place do LGBTQ identities have in historic houses?' you can find more information here.

Don't forget to check out the LGBT History Month calendar for other great events.

'Master-Mistress' at Sutton House

Less than a week to go until my first curating venture opens... myself and artist Judith Brocklehurst set it up earlier this week and everything is looking and sounding great. I'm really excited to see what people make of it, and I hope the visitors will leave feedback, as aside from curating this exhibition as part of my volunteering at Sutton House, it will also form one of three practice led case studies for my research.

See below the 'e-flyer' for the exhibition and events to accompany it. There's also a little teaser picture of one of the artworks. I'll post more pictures once the exhibition is open, and write a post about the event on the 13th too, which I'm hoping will be a really interesting debate.

More details about the exhibition and event can be found on the LGBT History Month calendar. And the facebook events are here and here.

LGBT History Month event and exhibition at National Trust's Sutton House, Hackney

Happy new queer everyone!

 

I've got some exciting news about LGBT History Month in February. Following on from my work with the Black History Month project, I have been tasked with curating an exhibition at Sutton House in Hackney. It will be the first time that Sutton House has celebrated LGBT History Month so I'm really pleased to be a part of it.

Master-Mistress: passion, desire and ambiguities in Shakespeare’s sonnets
6 February 2014 - 10:30am - 7 March 2014 - 5:00pm

In the Tudor spaces of Sutton House we pose questions about desire, sexuality and gender through readings of four of Shakespeare’s sonnets, originally published in 1609. Shakespeare’s sexuality has often been contested, based largely on the series of sonnets known as the Fair Youth Sonnets (sonnets 1-126), which were seemingly addressed to a man known only as ‘Mr W.H’. It might be that to read these sonnets as an indication of same-sex desire is to see them through a contemporary lens, and therefore not an accurate reading. It might also be true that these sonnets are not autobiographical, and are fictional, in which case, both the speaker and the subject of the sonnets are in question. It is often disputed that Shakespeare had even intended these sonnets to be published. In 1640, publisher John Benson notoriously changed all of the pronouns in the sonnets to suggest that the subject was always a woman, suggesting discomfort with the implied love- platonic or sexual- for another man.

To celebrate LGBT History Month here at Sutton House, we have decided to remove four of the sonnets from their context and present them throughout four of the Tudor rooms by the disembodied voices of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or queer, alongside artworks by Judith Brocklehurst. By doing so, we hope to raise questions about desire, gender and sexuality. Rather than questioning whether or not Shakespeare would be considered part of the LGBT community in contemporary terms, we instead address the universality of desire and the ambiguities of gender and identities.

The usual cost of entry to Sutton House applies (£3.50 adult, £1.00 child) and free to National Trust members.

Note: the house is not open on Mondays and Tuesdays for the duration of the exhibition.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a free event:

Challenging histories: what place do lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer identities have in museums and historic houses?
13 February 2014 - 6:30pm - 8:00pm

To accompany Sutton House's first LGBT History Month exhibition 'Master-Mistress: passion, desire and ambiguities in Shakespeare’s sonnets' we are holding a panel event, and an opportunity to see the exhibition for free.

Join us for an exciting discussion about including lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer narratives in heritage spaces, chaired by exhibition curator and National Trust volunteer Sean Curran and featuring four experts from the heritage world. The evening will also be a chance to see the exhibition beforehand.

Panelists include:
Oliver Winchester - Curator of the Permanent Collection at the Design Museum
Jan Pimblett - Principle Development Officer at London Metropolitan Archives and founder of the annual LGBTQ History and Archives Conference
Claire Hayward - PhD student at Kingston University, looking at representations of same-sex sexualities in public history
Naomi Campbell - National Trust

For information about this, and many other great events throughout history month and beyond, visit the events calendar.

I hope to see many of you there!

Black History Month: Dido Elizabeth Belle

To celebrate Black History Month, Sutton House, Hackney has an exhibition for October & November called Influential Black Londoners, featuring letters from admirers written to historical Black figures who have helped to shape London and beyond. As part of this, I helped to research three of the figures, the one who captured my imagination the most was Dido Elizabeth Belle. As a taster for the exhibition, I thought I would share my research about her. The exhibition will continue to evolve with the inclusion of art works created by children, so make sure you check it out.

Royal Naval Captain John Lindsay captured a Spanish ship around 1763 and on it met a black slave woman, whose name is unknown. Together they had Dido Elizabeth Belle, named perhaps after the queen of Carthage. What became of her mother is unknown, but Dido was sent to live with her great uncle William Murray, Lord Mansfield at Kenwood House, London, while Lindsay was at sea. Dido was raised alongside her cousin Elizabeth Murray, whose mother had died young and whose father was an Ambassador in Austria and Paris. Life at Kenwood was largely pleasant for Dido, for although she ate her meals alone and was greeted with discomfort, and sometimes hostility from visitors to the house, she had a strong companion in her cousin Elizabeth and was treated with great affection by Lord Mansfield, an affection thought to have played a large part in the Mansfield Ruling of 1772, which decreed that no slave could be taken abroad by force. Dido ran the dairy and poultry yards at Kenwood, and received a handsome allowance, though it was significantly smaller than her cousin’s. In 1785 Elizabeth left Kenwood to marry, and three years later, Dido’s father died, leaving £1000 for her in his will. Lord Mansfield died in 1793 and left her £500, plus £100 per year for life. In his will he confirmed Dido’s freedom, the word ‘confirmed’ suggesting that she had lived her life already as a free person.

The portrait of Dido and her cousin, originally thought to have been painted by Johann Zoffany, but later attributed to an unknown artist, is striking in many ways. In contrast to many earlier portraits, such as Anthony van Dyck’s 1634 painting Princess Henrietta of Lorraine Attended by a Page, and to portraits that followed, including Manet’s Olympia, the black figure in the painting is given an almost equal prominence to their fellow white sitter, and has clearly been rendered with the same care and attention. The unknown artist, whilst ignoring conventions of presenting the black sitter as an accessory for the white sitter, usually denoting status or wealth, still hints at an inequality. Dido is seen pointing to her face, perhaps to highlight the differences in skin colour with her cousin, she is also stood slightly behind Elizabeth, reminding us of the ambivalence of Dido’s role at Kenwood house which fell somewhere between being treated as a proper member of the family, and being treated as a servant. The clothes the two cousins wear are at odds as well, as Dido is exoticised, which may indeed be a way of asserting the status of Elizabeth, especially since accounts of visitors to Kenwood House suggest that Dido dressed in much the same clothes as Elizabeth. Even so, this painting is assumed to have carried a pro-abolitionist message and serves as a reminder that the role of black people in aristocratic families and historic houses, even in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Viscountess Weymouth (née Emma McQuiston) has made the news recently for becoming Britain’s first black future marchioness. She married Viscount Weymouth and now lives at Longleat House, an unusual stately home in Wiltshire that includes the first safari park outside of Africa in its grounds. While relishing the traditions bestowed by her newfound title, McQuiston is using her status to help elevate her own brand, as she promotes healthy eating through her recipes and provides beauty tips and advice. Whilst notable for her new title, the Viscountess is just one of many black women and men with a prominent role in the British aristocracy, many others including Dido, have often been overlooked, forgotten or silenced.  

In 1794, Dido is thought to have married John Davinier and had three sons, twins Charles and John in 1795, and Edward William in 1800. Dido died just four years later.

Some useful further reading:
Adams, G. (1984). 'Dido Elizabeth Belle: a black girl at Kenwood'. Camden History Review, 12, 10-14
Minney, S. (2005). 'The search for Dido'. History Today, 55, 2-3.
Roulston, C. (2006). 'Framing Sensibility: The Female Couple in Art and Narrative'. Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 46 (3), 641-655.
A resource created for an exhibition at Kenwood House

The research was overseen by Patrick Vernon OBE and the research was interpreted by Dr Miranda Kaufman. Artist Jane Porter has created a series of beautiful stamps which are dotted around the house and in the exhibition space. The exhibition runs until the end of November.

Unusual bedfellows? When the National Trust met Big Brother

I am astounded by the vocal opposition to the National Trust’s collaboration with the Big Brother house that comes not only from the usual offenders such as the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, but also from some waspish Guardian readers: ‘even the National Trust is at the vanguard of dumbed-down Britain these days’, ‘They [the National Trust] will not be getting any more of my money’ and so on. Ann Widdecombe, who has in the past been critical of the National Trust’s attempts to widen its appeal and the definition of heritage (in particular the award winning Soho Stories app “I fail to understand how getting young people to listen to these stories of Soho relates in any way to the important and historic work of the National Trust”), has been equally vocal about the Big Brother House, stating that the house is emblematic of a "tawdry and celebrity-obsessed" society. Ironic really for someone who has made a post-politics career from the likes of Celebrity Fit Club, Strictly Come Dancing and Have I Got News For You.

I’m not suggesting for a second that everyone needs to like, or appreciate Big Brother, I know many people who have good reason for disliking the show. My problem is with people objecting the National Trust giving tours of the house for two days. The expansion of approaches to new heritage does not mean the neglect of traditional heritage; a more inclusive sense of heritage excludes no one. If you’re not a Big Brother fan, I expect you probably didn’t fork out for a ticket to attend a tour. There is no obligation, as a National Trust member, to attend all of the sites they either own, or take over for short term projects, I daresay most members have only ever seen a tiny proportion of the vast wealth of properties belonging to the National Trust. If your instinct at hearing about the Big Brother collaboration is to shred your membership, then your notion of heritage needs reconsidering.

What the objections boil down to, is cultural snobbery. We live in a world where people still consider there to be a difference between “high” culture, or “high” art and popular culture/art. I don’t believe such a distinction exists. John Carey, in his brilliant book What good are the arts? argues much more eloquently than I ever could that there are no rational grounds for assuming a difference between the two (see the chapter called ‘Is ‘high’ art superior?’). The assumption of “high” art is that enlightenment comes from engaging with art work and culture that is approved by those above us, the highly educated, the pre-approved “real” artists. This is the realm of canons and hierarchies that presume a particular uniform standard of what can be considered good. This has massive implications around class, Carey notes ‘high art is exclusive, popular art is receptive and accessible, not aimed at an educated minority’. Criticisms of popular art is that it is purely escapism, and formulaic. Escapism is no bad thing, and to dismiss popular art as mass produced or formulaic is to overlook the ‘established genres and rules of composition’ found in much “high” art, such as impressionism. If we were trying to establish how long it takes something considered trashy, throwaway, popular and mass produced to shift into the space of “high” or “real” art, I suspect Andy Warhol would be a good place to start.

I am, and always have been, a massive National Trust fan. I currently volunteer at Sutton House in Hackney, and have many favourite sites around the UK, including Cragside (Northumberland), Gibside (Tyne and Wear) and Kingston Lacey (Dorset). Growing up in the North East, there weren’t many others in my classes at school who would spend their weekends exploring historic houses and crumbling ruins, my family’s National Trust membership was a notable middle class luxury. The engagement with newer interpretations of heritage have largely been framed in the attempt to attract a younger audience to the National Trust, but my instincts tell me that it’s not an age barrier that the Trust needs to overcome, but a class barrier. Many of the people I met on the tours were not National Trust members, but were interested in hearing about some of the sites I’ve previously mentioned, and were keen to visit in the future. Why? Not because they aren’t “enlightened” enough to have engaged with historic sites before, but because the recent initiative at the National Trust said, quite loudly, ‘we are for you too’. The visitors ranged vastly in age, the youngest in my tours was 16, but I saw many younger children in other groups, and the oldest were elderly people, many of whom were Big Brother fans as well as long-time National Trust members.

I was honoured to be able to be involved in this project, I assisted at the launch party and gave tours on the Friday. The National Trust team were brilliant, Joe, Chloe, Mark and many others, as were the Big Brother team, including one of the voices of Big Brother and producer Lauren. This collaborative effort between Elstree Studios, the Big Brother Team and National Trust staff and volunteers was inspirational and a near-military operation, such was the scale of the visitors in such a short space of time. The visitors who took the tour were delightful to spend time with, enthusiastic about the show, enthusiastic about the opportunity to be a part of history, and to interact with a set that many felt they already intimately knew. The tour went through the camera runs around the house, giving a rare opportunity to see the house through the eyes of the camera men and women and the production staff, before entering the house itself, where each visitor was beckoned to the diary room by the ominous voice of Big Brother, where they could have a photograph in the historic chair. There was also the opportunity to meet ex-housemate, the lovely Jackie Travers, who could speak from much more experience about the house than I, or the other tour guides, ever could. The tour then moved to the gallery to see how the programmes are edited, and the booth where Big Brother sits to communicate with the housemates. It ended in the Big Brother Bit on the Side studio.

We were prompted, in our guide notes, to anticipate any objections to the National Trust’s involvement, but I eschewed this defensiveness unless prompted. Unsurprisingly, the few visitors who raised the controversy shared my views of ‘a lot of fuss over nothing’ and felt that it was a promising and exciting opportunity that they hoped was only the beginning.

One of my favourite moments was speaking to a 16 year old boy who had come with his older sister. He was a Big Brother super fan, and had more to tell me that I could ever tell him about the show. He was itching to get to each new room and when the tour came to an end he did not want to leave. Most movingly, he was telling me that he had heard that two ex housemates, both male, were now apparently an item. He said this without judgement at all, in a way that 16 year old boys when I was that age would never have done. This reminded me that above all else, Big Brother has been a great judgement-free platform for marginalised people, presenting honest and objective insights into the lives of people that are usually framed within sensationalist documentaries or scathing tabloid articles. Of the 14 classic series of Big Brother, we have seen two transgender winners, and two winners with disabilities. The Big Brother series has been a great platform for LGBT people and women too.

Big Brother tells us as much about our society (however you feel about it) as Sutton House in Hackney tells us about Tudor times. If these stories can be shared in a tongue-in-cheek and exciting way, all the better. The Big Brother house is Orwellian, it’s Warholian, it’s the photographs of Dianne Arbus brought to life. And just as importantly, it’s bloody brilliant viewing and has changed the face of television. I’m pleased that this has stirred up debate, but if the debate never moves beyond straight forward snobbery, then I don’t think it is worth pandering to the critics. Ivo Dawnay, the London Director for the National Trust said that the housemates from Big Brother were the aristocracy of today, while tongue in cheek, I think there is some truth in this. These are people who are no more or less important than anyone else, but whose lives become of great interest to the general public. I hope this is the beginning of a really radical time for the National Trust, where the definition of heritage continues to be challenged, refreshed and revisited. Keep your eyes out for future events taking place through Project London.

This has definitely been the most interesting and exciting project I've been involved with in my short heritage career, so I’ll end with a few fan-boy pictures from my (very surreal!) time in the house. (top to bottom, Jackie Travers who helped with the tours, me and Lauren Harries' lightbox in the living room, me and fellow Northerner and National Trust fan- the very handsome Liam McGough, me and Lauren Harries who was just as lovely as I expected her to be).