The Pink Singers are Europe’s oldest LGBT community choir, and to celebrate it’s thirty years of entertaining Londoners an exhibition has been established in London at the 3Space charity’s venue in Blackfriars – Singing The Changes, which opened last weekend.
Although the choir features throughout, the 32 metres of text, artifacts, video footage and audio tracks that make up Singing The Changes cast a much wider net, looking at the changing landscape of civil rights and equality over the last three decades with a particular focus on the experiences of Londoners.
There’s a great deal of sadness in the part of the exhibition that focuses on the 1980s as it recounts the emergence of AIDS amongst men in London’s gay community, and the Section 28 legislation later in the decade which left many young people vulnerable. The eighties weren’t all bad however – if you pop along you’ll learn that Chris Smith came out as the first openly gay MP in 1985, and by the end of the decade both Stonewall and Outrage had been established to further the rights of LGBT people in the UK.
On into the 90s and the stigma surrounding HIV abated as major stars revealed their positive status, and in 1997 Angela Eagle became the first openly lesbian member of Parliament. Of course the 1990s were to end on a terrible note for Londoners – the exhibition spends some time looking at the victims and survivors of the 1999 Admiral Duncan pub bombing, where neo-nazi David Copeland planted a device which killed three people and injured seventy nine others…
Singing The Changes then moves on to look at the far more positive developments that have continued at speed throughout the last decade including the introduction of adoption rights, Civil Partnerships and looking to the near future which will see equal marriage go on to the statute books.
Attending the official launch of Singing The Changes last Thursday night I had a great deal of time to look around at the exhibition, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about the history of LGBT rights in London over the decades. Take the time if you go along to check out the iPads which carry video interviews with current and past members of the choir. Many of these are really heart-felt and touching, particularly those conducted with the older members of the choir (two of the current active members have each been in the Pink Singers for over twenty five years) whose experiences show exactly how much the gay community has gained in London over the last three decades.
The Pink Singers’ Singing The Changes exhibition is open each week from Thursday through Sunday until 12 July at Audit House, 58 Victoria Embankment, when it transfers to Kings Place in Kings Cross until 18 August. Opening times are 6pm until 9pm on Thursdays and Fridays, and 10am to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays, and entry is entirely free of charge.
Here’s the exhibition trailer which will give you a taster of what to expect.
If the above has whetted your appetite for live performance, the Pink Singers are leading a massed choir concert at Limehouse’s Troxy venue on July 13 alongside a day of workshops – more details here.
The exhibition’s hosts, 3Space, are an innovative charity which unlocks the potential of empty commercial property by making it available for temporary community use. They work in partnership with landlords and leaseholders to offer organisations that benefit the community temporary free of charge access to otherwise empty properties. These spaces are made available to other charities, registered community organisations and social enterprises for temporary, pop-up projects.