In this bonus episode made for Nothing Concrete, the podcast of London's Barbican, Tash and Adam riffle through many more items from LGBTQ+ history. The Bishopsgate Institute doesn't just look after the amazing Switchboard log books — they also hold gay badges, protest placards, intimate photo albums and historical trackie tops. Forty of these items are being displayed in the free exhibition Out and About! at the Barbican in London from February 28th to March 21st. To mark the occasion, Adam and Tash made this special episode for Nothing Concrete, featuring archivist Stef Dickers and recorded on location at the Barbican and in the bowels of Bishopsgate.
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Pretty Policeman, Multiple Paradox Net Files,

The Little Darlings, It's Great to Be Gay, Our favourite episode titles, Right on Sister, Please Be Gentle,

So we've printed them on a t-shirt and a poster,

Hello and welcome to Nothing Concrete, the Barbican podcast here to help inspire more people to discover and love the arts.

With us, your surprise guest hosts for this episode.

My name is Adam Smith and my pronouns are he him.

And I'm Tash Walker and my pronouns are she they.

Why are we taking over Nothing Concrete for this episode?

Well it's because Tash and I host another podcast called The Logbooks.

Which is all about untold stories from Britain's LGBTQ plus history and conversations about being queer today.

And today we're outside the Barbican at the entrance at Lakeside looking up at the iconic concrete building that is the Barbican.

Which is celebrating 40 years this year with some special exhibitions including 1 that's on at the Curve Gallery.

Wow, there's loads of people milling around today.

People are always coming to the Barbican for exhibitions and shows.

And then right ahead of us, we can see the Curve Gallery because they're preparing this special exhibition.

So from the 28th of February to the 20th of March, the Bishopsgate Institute is staging a takeover of this space, the Curve Gallery.

That's right, they're putting in an archive, installation of objects, ephemera and media highlighting 40 moments and stories in London's LGBTQ plus history.

And the exhibition is called Out and About Archiving LGBTQ plus history at Bishopsgate Institute.

We know how important the Bishopsgate Institute's collection is because we spent 3 years making our podcast, The Log Books, using 1 of the collections there.

So the Barbican has asked me and Tash to visit Steph Dickers, the archivist at Bishopsgate Institute, because he's choosing and preparing the items to move here.

So if you can't make it to the exhibition, this podcast episode will open it up for you.

Yeah, and I love this big golden sun that they have above the big giant doorway.

The green tiled hallways, all of these amazing pictures that you have on the walls.

They're these historical pictures that can be found in the archive that they've sort of blown up and imprinted on the wall.

It literally feels like you're going back into history as you walk through this corridor, this long winding corridor to get to the place that

There's a picture of a protest where someone's got a sign saying glad to be gay.

There's a picture of amazing icons like Bernie Grant from London's history and pictures of LGBTQ ephemera on the walls just above the green tiles.

It's a very old Victorian building isn't it?

I can just see loads and loads of boxes ahead of me and drawers, Drawers and drawers.

So we are in a room which is lined on all 4 sides with glass and wooden cabinets filled with books and papers, magazines, and those kinds of things.

stacks and stacks and stacks of these archival shelves which I've only ever seen downstairs in the basement.

This is the first room I've been into at Bishop's Gate where they're actually in the room and they're as high as the ceiling which is probably about 3 times me.

Yeah and then maybe if Steph stood on yours.

Yeah I'm not bad, I love being at Bishop's Gate.

Could you just explain what Bishop's Gate Institute is?

Yeah of course, it's Bishop's Gate Institute, it's a cultural centre.

So adult education classes, events, and obviously the wonderful special collections and archives we hold here.

We've only used the logbooks here from Switchboard, Tash and I, and obviously other items in the Switchboard archive, but you have a lot more LGBTQ plus collection than that, right?

I mean It's been a quick 10 years and we've amassed a huge amount of material in 10 years.

Archives are most of the major organisations that have been involved with LGBTQ+, politics and culture, but also lots of other stuff as well.

So we archive in a slightly different way, as in we will take anyone who wants to deposit something about their own queer history, they're welcome to come and donate the stuff here.

So yeah, part of this and part of doing everything I do is try and encourage people to bring in their treasures or what my colleagues sometimes say, their old junk.

Which is why it's so amazing at Bishopsgate that you're collecting not only our LGBTQ plus histories, but people's actual histories, the stories of people who've lived through those times, as well as the organisations and the bigger activist movements.

And there is so much here and you're doing this fantastic exhibition at the Barbican but we haven't unfortunately got all day to sit here and go through that exhibition so can you pull us out some of your favourite items from it?

Oh definitely well it was very hard to pick 40 items which is what the exhibition is going to be.

I mean we could have filled the Curve Gallery several times over but I can definitely show you some of the highlights, 10 of the best things that I picked out for the exhibition.

Oh my God, 1 of my favourite things that belongs in this archive.

I spent years in this archive and I always go back to the badges.

What we've got here is not only the badges, but Pride badges from

We've got Lesbian and Gay Pride, 69 to 89, Pride 1919, they're all so colourful.

You've got triangles everywhere, pink triangles, explosion signs, so much colour.

It's amazing to see them all and of course to see them all here as 1 collection.

Oh it's amazing, we get donated badges all the time, we love badges obviously they're amazing and very colourful and people come in, it's amazing because they have their own stories behind them as well, people keep badges from the prides they went to.

Very much a symbol of pride as well to be worn afterwards.

And what I really love is badges making a bit of a comeback.

So we're getting new badges coming in as well, which is great.

Cause it's a bit lull in the early 2000s, but now people are like, badges, we want more badges.

I love that the evolution of the archive continuing as the collection keeps growing.

But of course, badges are really important within the LGBTQ plus communities historically as well, because they were often a sign or a symbol that only people from within that community would acknowledge or recognise.

So you could see who was part of your community by the badges that you wore.

And of course that sometimes turned against people by them being excluded if they were wearing certain badges.

They have a sense of pride in themselves to be worn.

And when you look at the pictures of the pride as well, from the pride that the badge is from, everyone is wearing a badge that they can wear home and go, this is me, I've been on pride.

I feel top of the world, I've been, even though people from my community.

So they're essential part of the archive that we have here.

And we just love receiving badges from people.

So if anyone's got any, do bring them in.

And I've got a badge on today actually, which is from a previous Barbican exhibition and it says queering masculinity.

Okay, let's have a look at what we've got next.

So we have a beautiful, well, I would say beautiful, red exercise book.

You say beautiful, it's actually very tatty and broken.

No, no, as an archivist this is beauty for me.

Full of different people's handwriting, obviously recording the calls that came in to switchboard.

We've log book written in large letters on the front, just in case anyone mistakes it for the telephone book, I don't know.

But yeah, full of things stuck into the pages, little notes, all sorts of different messages and stuff, an ephemera as well from different organisation maps.

Why did you choose this particular logbook to go into the exhibition at the Barbican?

This is from 87 and this is the sort of period obviously when HIV AIDS was at the real crisis point and obviously 1 of the most amazing things about Switchboard was the work it did in supporting the community during this period but also seeing through the logbooks as well this amazing record of LGBTQ plus history but how Switchboard became armed and informed about HIV as well So it could offer advice to people who were calling up, scared, worried, not knowing what to do.

And this logbook really exemplifies that and shows that experience through.

So, I mean, it's a really powerful moving document.

It's just incredible to look through that and I've lucky enough to have seen this before and Tash we obviously made our podcast about this the logbooks but it's just still every time I see it and you open it and you see all these different volunteers handwriting And you know that every single entry reflects a different call that was made to switchboard of someone asking for help or support.

And you realize, wow, these are all the voices and all of the stories from our history.

And it's just such an important piece of our history about this is how the community asked and this is how the community answered really.

I mean we're so privileged to have them here I mean every time I do tours all the time around the Institute and the collections and every time I talk about Switchboard someone has a story, either they volunteered on Switchboard or they called Switchboard at a moment where they needed to talk to someone and it's always amazing and amazing how much Switchboard touched people's lives and helped people through tough times.

So you know it's an archive that always attracts a lot of love when I talk about it on the tours here.

And of course an organisation that's still here today which is amazing to look back in its history.

The infamous, let's take it out of its protective archival packaging, obviously.

This is the infamous Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin book by Suzanne Bosch, I think I've got that right.

But basically a picture book full of, well some quite scary pictures of Jenny to be honest.

So effectively this is a story about Jenny who lives with her dad and his boyfriend.

And am I right that it was in Haringey, in a library in Haringey, where this was held that people could actually check it out?

The book is basically black and white pictures, really lovely black and white pictures actually of Jenny with Eric and Martin, a family, having tea and breakfast in bed, going for a trip, smiling, laughing.

The only thing that I can see when I look at these pictures is a kid being looked after by its parents, which of course is a really shocking thing to see.

And and the wonderful 80s outfits, which I kind of take a lot of my fashion from today.

I think it's just its presence and the cover that terrified all these horrible Tories into reacting, but it caused such a fuss and lots and lots of press cuttings here about the furore from the tabloid media that this caused and the horror, but you know, you actually look at it now and it's, you know...

It's a kid's book, Yeah, which caused all the controversy in the schools where it was being sent out to schools in London and was probably 1 of the contributing factors to Thatcher's Section 28 later.

And just so we're clear, could you just explain briefly what section 28 is?

So section 28 which came into force in 1988 was the Conservative government passing legislation and a local government bill preventing the promotion of homosexuality as a normal family relationship in schools.

And I can remember it being in force and the headmaster saying horrible things and thanking God that he didn't have to talk about homosexuality in class.

That's when it was repealed, which again, you know, we reflected just looking back at how recent some of this history was, but how long it took for that to be removed from legislation.

I mean, it is quite amazing, really, when you think that it lasted that long.

It's mine and Adam's entire school education years.

Okay, next on the list, they look like some photo albums.

I think we used to have photo albums like

We all did, like with the big spiral bound thing.

Maybe there's not as many semi-naked gentlemen in your family.

These are an incredible and real treasure that we got.

These were being disposed of by another museum.

We got in contact and said, we've got these photo albums of a guy, we think he's gay, do you want them?

And of course, I was like, yes, yes, yes, straight away.

And they came in and we did a lot of research about who it was.

And we found out they were the photo albums of a gentleman called Russell Watkin, who lived from about 1930 to 2000s and was a gay guy, but was also international salesman for Lion's Ice Cream.

Which meant he could go around the world having fun and sleeping with quite a lot of very attractive young gentlemen who he records quite actively in these photo albums.

So it's 1 of those old photo albums where you peel back the plastic and the page is like sticky so that you can stick down the photos and then put the plastic back on to protect it.

See all The Log Books transcripts on Applepodcasts

BONUS: Tash and Adam tour the Out And About LGBTQ+ exhibition at the Barbican