Out in Oxford

This trail is the result of ‘Celebrating Diversity’, a project funded by Arts Council England via the Oxford University Museums Partnership and created with the LGBTQ+ community. Nearly fifty volunteers who identify as LGBTQ+ or are allies have been involved writing the interpretations and co-curating the trail’s launch events. Through these interpretations we strive to celebrate diversity and highlight LGBTQ+ experiences. The items included have been identified with the help of staff from each collection represented. Through Out in Oxford, we hope to offer alternative insights into our shared, queer heritage.

Museums and Heritage 2017 awards shortlisted supported by ACE - project on a limited budget

This project is a response to a lecture given by Professor Richard Parkinson, author of A Little Gay History, Professor of Egyptology at the Faculty of Oriental Studies and a Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford, during LGBT History Month, February 2016. The lecture highlighted the demand for more explicit, not implicit, LGBTQ+ representation within museum displays. 

The locations of each item are correct as of 2017, but displays do sometimes change - ask gallery staff for help if you cannot find what you are looking for. 

 

 

 


Out in Oxford Booklet

 

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Out in Oxford App

 

Learn more about Out in Oxford


 

 

 

Portrait photo of Stephen Fry

(c) Claire Newman Williams

One of the simplest things museums do – so simple it’s easy to overlook – is to connect us to the worlds that our ancestors saw, interacted with, shared, dreamed of, planned, ran away from and interpreted. At the simplest level to see ourselves reflected back through the generations is a very rewarding, exciting and fulfilling experience. To see that our people looked at, considered, explored, generated and played with ideas of sexuality with as much freedom, imagination and insight as ours comes as a relief, a confirmation and an enchantment.

- Stephen Fry


 

 

Portrait of R. B. Parkinson

Portrait of R. B. Parkinson in the British Museum

by Simon Davis (2007)

By kind permission of R. B. Parkinson

 

LGBTQ+ histories are becoming increasingly visible in museums, and this inspiring new trail shows how Oxford’s collections reflect the diversity of human cultures and of the natural world. ‘Out in Oxford’ reassuringly reminds us that LGBTQ+ people have always been an integral part of human life and that our varied identities are not limited to the usual set of media stereotypes.

Visibility is important and it is especially welcome in a university city where many young people come out. On a personal level, I’m delighted to see this trail happen in a place that always feels romantic to me, since it’s where I first met my husband. The University is wonderfully committed to equality and diversity, and he has been made to feel very much at home in my own college, Queen’s. But we still think twice before holding hands elsewhere in the University and the legacy of hetero-normative history can still seem oppressively persistent. The time of full equality is not quite with us yet, but a trail like this brings it closer, by showing to everyone that we are utterly normal parts of the world: it provides a vision of what Oxford can and should be as a diverse, inclusive home for all its inhabitants. 

- Richard Bruce Parkinson



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