>Birmingham LGBT Community Trust has received £50,000 in funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund for a new LGBT social history project. Building on the success of Gay Birmingham Remembered, the ‘Gay Birmingham Back to Back’ project will research the lives of four LGBT people from Birmingham’s past. Researching as far back as the 1850s up until the 1970s the project will look at the social, political and personal circumstances of LGBT people in these time periods.

SHOUT Festival Producer, David Viney comments, “We are pleased to have been awarded this funding, which will help us extend the Gay Birmingham Remembered project and research what life would have been like for lesbian, gay and bisexual people even further back into history. It is vitally important that LGBT people take their place in Birmingham’s history.”

Working in partnership with Women and Theatre and the National Trust, the research will be developed as on site performances, presented in the Back to Back houses on Hurst Street in Birmingham’s Gay Village. The performances will form part of the SHOUT Festival in 2011. The project will also produce an exhibition and a book looking at the four characters’ lives.

Janice Connolly, Artistic Director of Women & Theatre states, ‘We are delighted the HLF are supporting this project, and are excited about working for the first time with Birmingham LGBT and The National Trust and their volunteers. The project is bound to be a flagship project for the company in 2011.’