Rainbow QuarterThe independent guide to gay Blackpool

LGBTQ+ heritage projects in Blackpool

Why your memories matter

A surprising amount of gay Blackpool's past was never written down. There is no published history of the first gay hotels, very little on lesbian bars like Lucy's, almost nothing on how the town lived through the AIDS years, and only fragments about life before 1967. The people who remember those things are getting older, and every year some of those stories are lost. A single photograph of a night at the Flamingo, a Pride flyer from 2006 or ten minutes of recorded memories can fill a gap no archive can.

We're Still Here!

We're Still Here! is the most important LGBTQ+ heritage project in Blackpool. It was started by the artists Garth Gratrix, director of Abingdon Studios, and Harry Clayton-Wright, with support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, to create the town's first permanent collection of LGBTQIA+ heritage. Its founders point out that Blackpool has one of the largest LGBTQ+ populations in the North West, yet until recently it had no archive of its community's lived experience.

The project began with a sound installation at The Old Electric in October 2021 and a pilot year in 2022. It has:

  • Recorded oral histories with LGBTQ+ people from Blackpool, covering activism, family, love, work, nightlife and the costume and dress of a showbiz town. Sixteen recordings, some named and some anonymous, can be listened to online through the Abingdon Studios website.
  • Trained volunteer oral history champions to gather more.
  • Staged an outdoor exhibition of Stuart Linden Rhodes's photographs of early-1990s nights at the Flamingo and the Flying Handbag on the forecourt of the Grundy Art Gallery on Queen Street, from February to June 2022, which reached more than 10,000 people.
  • Run a survey asking LGBTQ+ people what events, materials and activities they would like to see, to shape how the town's queer heritage is captured in future.

The History Club

In 2026 the project launched a free, over-18s History Club, mixing talks with the chance to bring and share objects:

  • In April 2026, at Showtown, Stuart Linden Rhodes talked about his archive of northern queer nightlife.
  • In July 2026, at Aunty Social on Topping Street, community organiser Catherine Mugonyi, who coordinated the Pride parade for almost a decade, shared her personal archive from the early Prides, and everyone who had been to a Pride was invited to bring photos, outfits and memories.

2027 exhibitions

The project's next phase includes two major exhibitions in 2027, with the Grundy Art Gallery and Showtown, marking sixty years since the 1967 Act and forty years since Section 28, the law that followed Margaret Thatcher's speech at the 1987 Conservative conference in Blackpool. Material gathered from the community, including memories of twenty years of Blackpool Pride, will feed into them.

How to contribute: visit the We're Still Here! pages on the Abingdon Studios website to listen, take the survey or offer your story, or email the studios at info@abingdonstudios.co.uk. Abingdon Studios is at 14 Abingdon Street in the town centre.

Showtown

Showtown, Blackpool's museum of fun and entertainment on Bank Hey Street, has woven LGBTQ+ stories into its programme. Its Pride Beside the Seaside tours, led by its curatorial team, cover Vesta Tilley, Colonel Barker, the trans magician Terri Rogers and Funny Girls, and a free version has run during the national Heritage Open Days festival in September. The museum has hosted talks on Colonel Barker during Pride, show-and-tell events with We're Still Here!, and the History Club. Its Wonderland Project explored gender identity, body image and empowerment through the history of Blackpool's sideshows.

Showtown also runs a history centre and publishes research articles on Blackpool's entertainment past. If you have objects connected to LGBTQ+ performers or venues, such as programmes, costumes, posters or photographs, the museum is a natural place to ask about donating them.

The Grundy Art Gallery

The Grundy Art Gallery on Queen Street, right on the edge of the Rainbow Quarter, hosted the 2022 Linden photographs and the earlier Pride art exhibitions, and it is a partner in the 2027 exhibitions. The council's Be Who You Want To Be action plan also includes an LGBTQ+ exhibition at the Grundy. You can contact the gallery on 01253 478170 or at grundyartgallery@blackpool.gov.uk.

The Linden archive

The photographer and journalist Stuart Linden Rhodes spent the early 1990s documenting queer nightlife, protests and Pride parades across northern England, including Blackpool. He began scanning his negatives during the first lockdown in 2020 and has since published Out & About With Linden: A Queer Archive of the North and a second volume. His archive is now held by a major university library in Manchester, making it one of the most important visual records of the Flamingo and the Flying Handbag in their heyday.

Lancashire's county archives

Blackpool has always been part of Lancashire, so the county's archives in Preston hold many of the official records that touch on LGBTQ+ lives here: Quarter Sessions court records, records of institutions, local government files on Section 28 and oral history recordings. The archive service has published a guide to LGBT sources in its collections and invites researchers to share what they find. Be aware that some records are closed for thirty years or more, and hospital records for a hundred years, to protect the people named in them, though access can sometimes be granted for genuine research if no individuals are identified.

Blackpool Pride's twenty-year archive

For Pride's twentieth anniversary in 2026, a community project began gathering photos, flyers, videos, T-shirts and stories from two decades of Blackpool Pride, from the first parade with its line dancers and borrowed wrestling ring in 2006 to the Tower Headland festivals of today. Anyone who has marched, volunteered, performed or simply cheered from the Prom is invited to contribute.

Other places to look

  • Blackpool Central Library has hosted Pride show-and-tell events with Showtown and We're Still Here!.
  • Blackpool StoryTrails, an augmented-reality walking trail, includes artist research on Colonel Barker.
  • Aunty Social on Topping Street runs community events, including a monthly queer craft club, and has hosted History Club sessions.

How to share your story safely

  • You choose how you are named. Oral history projects let you use your full name, a first name or stay anonymous. Some of the We're Still Here! recordings are anonymous.
  • Think about other people. If your memories involve friends or partners who are not out, or who have died, talk to the project about how to protect them.
  • Copies are fine. If you do not want to part with original photos or flyers, projects can usually scan them and give them straight back.
  • Label what you can. Dates, venues and first names on the back of a photo make it far more useful to future historians.
  • Nothing is too small. Drinks tokens, membership cards, matchbooks, Pride wristbands and old club flyers all help to tell the story.

What the town most needs

If you can help with any of these, the heritage projects would especially love to hear from you:

  • memories of queer life in Blackpool before the 1970s,
  • Lucy's, the Clifton, and other early bars, especially women's spaces,
  • the first gay hotels: who opened them, when, and what they were like,
  • the AIDS years: friends lost, carers, volunteers and support groups,
  • the Flamingo on Talbot Road, from 1979 to 2006,
  • the first Blackpool Prides from 2006 onwards.

Project contacts, event dates and opening times can change, so check before you go.