The Cork LGBT Archive was founded in 2013 and hosts a vast collection preserving and displaying the rich queer history that the Rebel County has to offer. Run on a voluntary basis, the project has relied on grants from the likes of the Heritage Council to sustain its existence and grow to higher heights. Trailblazer, activist and Corkonian, Orla Egan is the founder and driving force behind the collection, bringing to life a part of the city’s heritage that is often overlooked.
There is no better person to head the archive, not just due to Egan’s dedication and drive, but also due to the fact that she lived much of this history. Growing up in Cork, she explains that she’s been involved in its LGBTQ+ scene since the 1980s.
“I was hanging around in the Quay Co-op in Cork as a teenager, in Loafers Bar, at lesbian parties, at the Cork Women’s Fun Weekend, so I was very much part of that really vibrant community.”
She remembers the feeling of coming out into the space, explaining that it “was just such a positive experience and really counterbalanced the negative in terms of people’s attitudes to being queer in the 1980s”. From then on, Egan became more and more active within the scene, working in the Women’s Place, and the Other Place (an LGBTQ+ community centre), all the while becoming an influential activist crucial to many historic moments.
Queer history
Her professional background expands to being the director of the Higher Education Equality Unit in University College Cork, and also being involved in women’s studies within the same institution. She went on to work across community development and research and training, always maintaining a focus on marginalised communities and social justice education and inequality.
Combining all of that with a keen interest in historic accounts of international queer history, it made sense that Egan would be the one to kickstart the process in her much-loved city.
“Knowing that there was such a rich history of LGBT activism in Cork and of LGBT community development, but that it was a hidden history, I was really inspired to want to work on that, to bring that history to light,” she said.
“And I suppose for me as well, there was that motivation around adding to our understanding of national history and our understanding of how social change happens. Because for me, the history of the Cork LGBT community isn’t just a local history, it’s part of our national history,” she continued.
“I think too often our versions of LGBT history, in particular, they tend to be capital-centred. You know, if it didn’t happen in Dublin or New York or London, it’s not important. And I think we really need to move beyond that and create a more inclusive and nuanced version of our history.”
Egan started the project by acquiring the Arthur Leahy Collection, which forms the core of the archive. Leahy, a fellow Cork activist, had the foresight to start collecting and storing material – accumulating a treasure trove of fascinating historical documents. Although, according to Egan, his collection was being stored in a damp basement in his house, and was quite frankly “chaotic”.
After extracting the material from their unsavoury storage facility, Egan began to organise and curate the archive, and almost a decade later she is still working tirelessly on the project. Since then, people such as Sara R Phillips, who runs the Irish Trans Archive, have been sharing more material with her and Egan encourages contemporary organisations to collect their own history – to preserve it as they make it.
Cork has been the location for many milestones in the fight for LGBTQ+ equality. The first National Gay Conference happened in Cork in 1981; the first Irish Aids leaflet was produced in Cork in 1985; UCC was the first NUI college to recognise a gay society in 1989; the first Lesbian and Gay Film Festival happened in Cork in 1991; the first LGBTQ+ float to take part in a St Patrick’s Day parade was in Cork in 1992. The list goes on and evidence of these groundbreaking moments are just a fraction of what you can expect to see in the archive.
Along with the big occasions, there are also smaller, more personal stories to discover. “Some of them are really exciting, and some are heartbreaking,” Egan said.
Leeside Lezzies
The archive can be explored in multiple ways. The physical collection is currently housed in the Cork Public Museum, which has also committed to including a permanent LGBTQ+ exhibition among its offerings. The archive can also be perused digitally on corklgbtarchive.com, or alternatively through the Digital Repository Ireland, or Europeana.
But it doesn’t end there, as Egan has gone above and beyond to bring the archive to audiences in new and innovative ways. She has curated exhibitions such as Queer Republic of Cork, which travelled to Belfast and Berlin, and published a book in 2016 by the same name. She wrote a theatre piece called Leeside Lezzies, which was performed by the LINC Drama Group, and has led walking tours around Cork. “It’s much more than just going in and poking around in boxes,” she said of her work, “it’s trying to really bring it to life and make it accessible for people”.
She continually repeats this point of making the archive as accessible as possible and explains that she wants to make Cork’s queer history “impossible to ignore”.
“We were agents of change . . . we fundamentally changed the lived reality for LGBT people in demanding equality and respect.” This statement rings true when looking at the recent milestones hit, such as achieving marriage equality and gender recognition. “They didn’t happen out of the blue,” Egan said. “They were built on decades and decades of activism and of bravery.”
The impact that the Cork LGBTQ+ community has had on the fight for equality has been instrumental and through Egan’s work, there are resources available for people to learn about the triumphant journey. With no core funding for staff or operational costs, Egan must volunteer her time to the project, while also seeking out grants to allow for further development. She received her first grant from the Heritage Council in 2016 and it has continued to support the project through various offerings since. It is clear from Egan’s account that no money goes underappreciated.
“I remember when we got that first grant from the Heritage Council back in 2016 and it was to buy acid-free boxes for safely storing the collection. I was so excited to see a stack of grey boxes – I was mortified with myself!” she said, laughing.
“For me, it was just so symbolically important. It was like stepping in from the margins. The [National] Heritage Council was acknowledging that Cork LGBT history and heritage were an important part of Irish heritage and that we were welcome, and that we were included, and that we were acknowledged. I think for a community that has experienced marginalisation and discrimination and exclusion, and whose history has been denied for so long, it was really important.”
The latest grant the archive received from the council allowed Egan to employ two temporary part-time staff members, Patrick Egan and Mira Dean, which has enabled a significant increase in productivity. The team has been working hard to develop the digital collection and curate the new Cork Queeros exhibition, which showcases 45 members of the community, varying in age, gender, sexuality and lifestyles.
Her two co-workers’ four-month stints are almost up and she will be left once again to her own devices, admitting that, “there’s so much work to be done and it’s impossible to do this solely reliant on one volunteer”. That being said, the resilience that Egan continues to display in order to sustain the archive was no doubt in some ways crafted during those pivotal moments in history that she is now so keen to preserve. Where there is a will, there is a way, and her passion will certainly lend itself well to continuing the development of this invaluable project.
To find out more about the Cork LGBT Archive, visit corklgbtarchive.com.