Events tagged with "Gay Community Centre"
Gay Community Centre Bordesley Street
The Gay Community Centre opened in mid 1976 in a row of Victorian shops at the junction of Allison Street and Bordesley Street in Digbeth. The building consisted of three large four storey Victorian shop premises, all interconnected. The main entran...
Lesbian and Gay Community Centres
In February 1976 a group of about a dozen people began regular meetings to discuss and plan the setting up of a gay community centre in Birmingham. They were drawn from all the gay groups operating in the city and from the commercial gay scene.A buil...
Zap published 1978
The first edition of Zap was printed in July/August 1978 and available at a cost of 20p. The editorial committee was Helen Rose, Neil Matthews, Pete Kirby and Steve Ewart, who also contributed some of the articles, along with copies of articles from ...
Memories tagged with "Gay Community Centre"
All happening at the Gay Centre, Digbeth, 1977
The Gay Community Centre in Bordesley Street was set up not long after the time that Gill and Betty moved to Birmingham (1975) Gill: “Somebody secured the premises on the corner of Bordesley Street and Allison Street and people put a lot of effort i...
Birmingham activists just changed hats, 1970s
Betty: “In the ‘70’s, the Gay Community Centre started, but also the Peace Centre, and GLF (Gay Liberation Front). Around that time a mixture of gay and lesbian people including Pete Kirby and Helen Rose put on a musical starting with the song “There...
Gay Centre Committee and Switchboard 1977
Caroline was on the first Gay Community Centre Committee and Gay Switchboard 1970s:“I’m someone who gets involved in things so after coming out, I was involved with various groups. I was on the committee of the first Gay Community Centre, on the corn...
Gay Centre discos at the Matador
“Prior to the Nightingale moving into town (Thorp St) in 1981 there was nothing in the city centre other than the original Gay Community Centre discos in Allison Street, bring your own booze, and 25p for a baked potato, that sort of fund-raising. So ...
Gay Centre too noisy for the neighbours
G: “The neighbours complained that there was too much noise (at the Gay Community Centre), and I think Birmingham City Council eventually decided it could no longer be run in the way that it had been run in those premises. (I don’t even know if we h...
Getting the Gay Centre started, 1976
“The Gay Community Centre arose though one person called Glen who was frustrated by the fact there was no alternative gay activity going on. He got us together and said, ‘Why don’t we run a gay centre?’ I think we were before the London Lesbian and G...
Hierarchy of ‘right-on-ness’
“The main place we all came together and had our big rows, where things went a bit hairy, were at the Women's Liberation Day Conferences. The heterosexual women in particular felt criticised for being with men and they thought that we thought that we...
Lesbians' attitudes to children
Betty: “In Birmingham I don’t think boy children was an issue, like in London. I remember noticing when I moved up from London to Birmingham that in London there were things like the Women’s Arts Alliance which wouldn’t even allow newborn boys in bec...
Never as happy in Gay Centre number two - '84+
After the first Gay Community Centre had to close in 1978, the committee continued to meet, ultimately finding an alternative location for a Lesbian and Gay Community Centre, in Aston, in 1984.Gill: “A lot of work went into finding somewhere else, an...
Rubyfruit played Birmingham and Chicago
“Rubyfruit consisted of Caroline Hutton, Lorna Eady and myself. Rubyfruit came about because some of us had been to Frankie Armstrong’s voice workshops; Caroline Hutton took me along, so there was already this interest in women's music, and all those...
Running away to the gay centre
Karen was born in 1959. She says that when she was 14 she ran away from home to the Gay Community Centre in Digbeth, (though she may have been older as the Gay Centre didn’t open until 1976.) “There were lots of people there and it was on Allison Str...
The Matador
“The Gay Community Centre discos went on at the Matador for years, alternating I think with Switchboard discos. I liked it very much, at times there were a lot of women, times more women than men, or vice versa, I always felt OK there, I never felt o...
Volunteering at Switchboard 5 nights a week
Lyn became involved with Switchboard from 1983 to 2000. “I started training on the first Saturday after New Year in 1984. It was a fairly successful organisation with 20 or so regular operators. There was a separate Lesbian Line on Wednesdays but sti...