LGBTQ+ Diary Blog 2 – Internal Staff Training

Posted: 14th August 2020

Before the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a lockdown meaning that we all had to work from home, we were planning a series of LGBTQ+ awareness training sessions for staff to be delivered by Yorkshire MESMAC – Yorkshire’s largest LGBTQ+ Sexual and Mental Health charity.

Yorkshire MESMAC visited us in November 2019 and delivered one of these training sessions for a limited number of staff. Following this we hosted a full staff survey so we could identify which skills we needed to develop and how Yorkshire MESMAC could help support us with this. Then, unfortunately, all plans came to a halt.

However, this week I have reached out Yorkshire MESMAC to ask if we can look at new ways of delivering this training. Martin from MESMAC suggested that going ahead as planned would indeed be possible, and (like the rest of the world at the moment) we could meet on Zoom to deliver it remotely.
We agreed that this would be a great plan and while Martin adapted his in-person training, I set about getting in touch with some colleagues to see if they could, and if they would, like to attend the training!

This week I have also been doing some research into our collections, looking at Hull-born Mick Ronson to celebrate his birthday on Tuesday 26th May.

We have a bodice in our costume collection at the Hands On History Museum, which was made by a dedicated David Bowie Fan in 1973 – they sewed all the sequins on by hand!

Look out for a Curator’s Choice blog, which looks at this bodice in more detail and uses it to explore an iconic performance on Top of the Pops in 1972. David Bowie introduced Ziggy Stardust to the nation, angering some with his openly affectionate behaviour towards Ronson, but supporting others by demonstrating you can be who you want to be whilst preforming on a national stage.

The next post in this series is called ‘Researching Our Collections’ and can be found here – click here!