About Small Town Queer

Small Town Queer explores the rich tapestry of Tweed's LGBTQIA+ history from the early 1900s to the present, uncovering local stories of sexual liberation, love, activism, discrimination, defiance, performance, spaces, places and local business.

The Tweed Regional Museum is collaborating with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA+) and Ally community members to collect, share, and preserve the histories of Tweed's many and varied queer voices.

Small Town Queer also presents the Tweed Regional Museum with an opportunity to re-examine its collection through a queer lens, and to open up its collecting and program to comment and critique.

Queer/ing

Tweed Regional Museum acknowledges that Queer is still a derogatory and problematic term for some people. However, Queer has been reclaimed and adopted as an identity and an umbrella term for LGBTQIA+ people.

The Queer perspective is not only about questions of sexuality and gender. Queer/ing or 'to queer' energises museums to uncover stories and objects of significance to queer identity and culture.

Small Town Queer aims to:

• create an interactive and inclusive space for the LGBTQIA+ community to tell their own stories, in their own voice, about being a small-town queer
• Collaborate with local LGBTQIA+ people about how best to include community stories in the Tweed Regional Museum's collection
• work together with Tweed's LGBTQIA+ and Ally community members to build a shared public narrative of queer history and contemporary culture
• explore the intersection of museums and queer narratives by examining how the Tweed Regional Museum has documented queer history until now
• question accepted curatorial practice by challenging unconscious, and inherited, ways of conducting core business and collection management
• ensure that language used in relation to the Tweed Regional Museum collection and programs respectfully acknowledges self-determined identities and pronouns
• stimulate thoughtful and critical engagement with the Tweed Regional Museum's collection.

This project would not have been possible without the support and collaboration of the people of the Tweed who have shared their lived experiences, archives, and objects.

Tweed Regional Museum is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.