Autumn Wishes
šµ Listening to: āAugustā by Taylor Swift
Itās August 1st. How? When? What?! Summer has flown by. Letās take a look at what NQH accomplished these past few months, and what there is to look forward to in the autumn months ahead.
Hereās everything NQH did during Pride Month š
Started work on our $25,000 grant with Nashville Sites, awarded to us by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. This included the onboarding of a new (PAID!) intern, Olivia Pugh, who is a graduate student at Middle Tennessee State University.
Attended the 2nd annual Franklin Pride festival at the beautiful Harlinsdale Farm, where we talked with lots of booths doing incredible work in Williamson County. Special shout out to the parents and adults running organizations like Wilco Iris, which supports queer and trans youth amid bigoted attacks from conservative Tennesseans.
Tabled a booth with Nashville Sites at Nashville SCās first Pride Night at their new stadium, Geodis Park. It was a hot and windy afternoon; we definitely learned some lessons about weighing brochures down. Thank you to everyone who stopped by our table for stickers, buttons, and to sign-up for the Nashville Sites newsletter.
Tabled a booth at Nashville Soundsā Pride festival in the outfield plaza. This was a fabulous night for baseball and being queer! NQH and Nashville Sites were joined by some great organizations and individuals, like Nashville Grizzlies RFC and local author Andrew Maraniss.
Participated in the Jackie Shane Pride Celebration Planning Committee, which hosted an inaugural night of music, exhibits, local artists and crafts, food and drinks, and a ballroom competition at the Jefferson Street Sound Museum. NQH had a booth at the Pride Celebration and handed out exclusive Jackie Shane buttons to honor the Black trans soul singer from Nashville.
Finally, NQH tabled with Nashville Sites at Nashville Pride Festival on June 25 and 26, where we received hundreds of sign-ups for the Nashville Sites newsletter, handed out roughly 500 stickers and 700 buttons. We met longtime followers of NQH, heard fantastic stories about Nashvilleās queer past, and made some new friends along the way. It was a HOT one š„ so we greatly appreciate everyone who came out and stopped by our booth.
Whatās Happening This Fall š
Digitize Me, Daddy: NQH and Nashville Sites are planning a few Community Days, where we invite members of the LGBTQ+ community to gather together at a location TBD to share stories from Nashvilleās queer past. We will have scanners and cameras on hand to digitize any photographs, memorabilia, fliers, letters, posters, or other documents from gay bars and clubs, activist organizations, parties, and other events. We will also have recorders to capture any short stories you want to verbally share, and we will have a sign-up sheet for longer oral history interviews.
NQH founder and director, Sarah Calise, is currently building up the backend of a digital archive using software called Omeka. The items we digitize at Community Days will be part of this publicly-accessible online archive.
Cruising Tour: NQH and Nashville Sites will continue to work on our driving tour of historic LGBTQ+ sites in Nashville. The Community Days will certainly help with this as well as a continuation of our oral history work; thank you to NQH volunteer Philip Staffelli-Suel for helping conduct interviews. The tour is expected to officially launch in Spring 2023.
Call for Queer Volunteers: Be on the lookout for a call for volunteers! NQH needs help in various areas of research, archival work, and content creation. Note: you do not have to be queer or trans to volunteer, we just like catchy alliteration.
Personal News š¦
A bit of personal news from Sarah: she will be leaving her archivist position at Middle Tennessee State University in two weeks to start a new position at Vanderbilt Universityās Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries. She is grateful for all the wonderful opportunities and projects she had at MTSU, but is looking forward to starting a new chapter in her career at Vanderbilt.
What does this mean for NQH? It will not affect NQH much at all. Currently, back-up copies of NQH oral histories are housed at MTSU and that will continue to be the case unless something drastically changes in our working relationship.
The end goal for NQH remains the same: to build and maintain a distinct and independent archive and library of Nashvilleās queer history. Until a brick-and-mortar space comes along, NQH is placing emphasis on creating the digital archive that Sarah maintains with her archival and digital librarianship training. No matter where Sarah works, our history belongs to us and she will continue to advocate for access for all instead of binding NQHās archive to a university or government entity.
Thatās all for now! Wishing you all health and happiness.
