Chichester’s Novium Museum is offering a genuine landmark moment as the area’s LGBTQ+ voices take centre stage in a new exhibition.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Really lovely
00:07to speak to Rachel Ong, who is co-curator of a really significant, real landmark exhibition
00:14at the Novium in Chichester, Out and Proud in Chichester, and this opens on Saturday,
00:20February 1st. This is such an important exhibition, isn't it? Why do you think it's happening
00:24now?
00:26Yeah, this is a hugely significant exhibition. It delves into our local LGBTQ plus community
00:35here in the Chichester district, and we look at the formation of Chichester Pride and the
00:41stories of the people that make up the LGBTQ plus community. Historically, these stories
00:49have been ignored, forgotten about in history, and they're so significant and important
00:58and special that we need to be making more of an effort to bring them into the forefront
01:03of our conversations to create a more accepting, understandable society.
01:10This sounds a fascinating exhibition and presumably interesting to put together. It was very much
01:15in collaboration with Chichester Pride, wasn't it?
01:18Yes, so we approached Chichester Pride back in 2022, so it's been an exhibition in the
01:24making for a few years now, about using our community exhibition space to tell their story.
01:33So we've co-curated it, all of the exhibition text has been written by Chichester Pride
01:38committee members, and all of the objects have been lent to us by members of the committee,
01:46but also local LGBTQ plus individuals to tell their own story in their own words. All
01:55of the object labels have been written by the lenders to show why the object they chose
02:01is significant to them. So it's definitely a very collaborative process, this exhibition.
02:08It sounds brilliant, and you tend to think probably wrongly of museum exhibitions as
02:11being somehow about the past, but this is about the recent past to an extent, but it's
02:16also about now, but it's also about shaping the future, isn't it? What are you hoping
02:21that people will take away from this exhibition?
02:24Yeah, absolutely. It's a mix of, you know, looking at how pride events nationally came
02:31about, not just here in Chichester, and looking at why they're still essential and what happens
02:38going forward, you know, it's still illegal to be gay in so many countries, and those
02:44laws need to change. So pride events are so important to keep those conversations within
02:53everyone's realm.
02:54And you were saying your impression is that we're heading in the right direction, but
03:01clearly there's more work to do, isn't there?
03:04Yes, yeah, absolutely. We still need to bring that education to people. So we're hoping
03:11that being in a museum creates a safe space for everyone to learn about the history of
03:17pride and the LGBTQ plus community.
03:21Fantastic. Well, congratulations on co-curating such a significant, important exhibition.
03:28Lovely to speak to you, Rachel. Thank you.
03:30You too.