In December 2001, at a meeting of Diverse Artists at the Glasgow LGBT Centre, I asked a question: ‘Who is collecting the stories of the LGBT community in Scotland?’ We had seen a huge change in Scottish society during the previous 20 years, and it seemed that no-one was recording the personal experience of those who had gone through this momentous change. So we decided to do it ourselves.
During 2002 my partner and I went to various institutions for advice. Rob Perks of the Oral History Society and the British Library Sound Archive gave so generously of his time to make sure we started out in the right way. More than 20 years later we are still going strong, and still following that wonderful advice. We are a collective of unpaid volunteers, dedicated to collecting, archiving and presenting the stories of the LGBTQ+ community in Scotland. Our recordings are archived at the National Library of Scotland in the OurStory Scotland Collection, a collection that is live and growing. We are hugely grateful to Rob Perks and the Oral History Society for their advice and support from the outset.
