Preserving Our Stories

With the exciting upcoming digital launch of GCN’s archive - sharing our LGBTQ+ history with the public for the first time - Stefano Pappalardo describes his own journey alongside that of the project.

As someone who wasn’t born in Ireland, for quite some time, I didn’t feel I had a real, deep connection to the local queer community. Despite attending LGBTQ+ spaces and events, despite my wonderful partner of many years and my friends here, I still felt I lacked a full understanding of what it was and is to be a queer person in Ireland.

Moving to Dublin in the early ‘00s, I had no real knowledge of many pivotal moments or key people that helped shape the Ireland that welcomed me: I didn’t know homosexuality was only decriminalised in 1993, who David Norris was (fun fact, we’re neighbours now), Ann Louise Gilligan and Katherine Zappone’s legal fight that led to the 2015 referendum or the importance of Dublin’s Hirschfeld Centre.

It wasn’t until I got involved with the local Marriage Equality group, and two years later, started working for GCN that I began learning more about Ireland’s rich LGBTQ+ history.

Thanks to this new-found knowledge, I developed a deeper sense of belonging and a better understanding our vibrant and diverse community, its current culture, how far we have come, and the issues we are still facing.

This led me to realise the importance of Ireland’s queer history, how it’s something that needs to be preserved, cherished, celebrated and taught, a feeling that was shared across the wonderful team at GCN.

When the 2021 LGBTI+ Community Services Funding call opened, it felt like the perfect opportunity to develop a new initiative that would allow us to preserve our queer history through the pages of our beloved publication. This is how the idea of digitising the GCN archive was born.

As the nation’s queer paper of record, for the past 35 years, GCN has documented changes in our community and broader society, acting as the collective memory of queer Ireland and documenting its journey charted in the print magazine and, in more recent years, gcn.ie.

Our original application focused on two core objectives: To ensure the preservation of delicate, fading, newspapers dating from 1988 onwards, and to make GCN’s archive fully accessible and free to everyone for the very first time, bringing our queer stories from the past to light once again.

This wonderful resource will showcase the tireless work of organisations and support networks that have provided vital assistance, services, and safe spaces for our community throughout the years, the lives and legacies of activists who have played pivotal roles in shaping Ireland’s queer history and the diverse intersections within the LGBTQ+ community, including the most marginalised voices like transgender and non-binary folks, disabled people and migrants.

From pioneering campaigners to LGBTQ+ individuals across Ireland and beyond, their stories of resilience and solidarity that continue to inspire us will be preserved, celebrated and made visible once again.

As well as preserving and celebrating our past, digitising the archive will also bring our community’s history into the future. It will become a valuable resource for researchers, scholars, or people who, like me, didn’t grow up in Ireland and want to learn about our past, our struggles, our victories, the challenges we faced, and how we overcame them.

Now more than ever, with the significant rise in far right movements and familiar rhetoric we have seen before gaining momentum once again, it’s so important we are aware of our past in order to also inspire future generations to keep fighting for equality.

Given the scale of the project, the digitisation of GCN’s full archive will be rolled out in several phases. Launching on June 19, the website will initially include the first decade of the magazine - from 1988 to 1998 - an incredible 113 issues. It will also feature a spotlight section showcasing historic articles from those years and a ‘reflections on the archive’ series with curated takes exploring some of the historical content.

It has been an absolute joy to see the archive taking shape, from the initial funding application and see it evolve into this incredible resource which will be available for the very first time for free to everyone.

A huge thank you to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and everyone involved in this milestone project. It has been a long process, a true labour of love, and we are absolutely thrilled to unveil it to all of you, our beloved readers. We are looking forward to expanding the archive into its next phase to keep preserving our history and our stories for generations to come.