Weston Park 27/10

I arrived at Weston Park Museum to meet my friend Natalie with her four children to gain a child’s perspective. They’re all 9 or under not an easy feat to keep everybody occupied.
I met fellow students Nick and Tom later, the venue was rammed because of half-term.
Lovely venue I have not been since I was a child and had great fun looking at all the galleries from ancient Egypt, history of animals and other histories.
I’m going to concentrate on the histories of Sheffield as these were the galleries that interested me more with my own fascination with nostalgia etc.

Annie, Russ, Natalie, Stella and Charlotte
Picture by Rose.

I got the bus into town and walked to the venue in the opposite direction of students with their mobiles in their hands whilst walking. After a refreshing coffee I met Natalie and others and we began our tour.

Sheffield history was the first exhibition we navigated through.
There is a small section dedicated to LGBT+ history in Sheffield.
In one of the cabinets was an array of badges, cards, leaflets, booklets on gay rights etc.
Interesting footnote on one of the placards:

Before the rainbow flag became a universal symbol, pink and black triangles were used as symbols of LGBT identity reclaimed from their use in Nazi concentration camps.

There was also information that in the 1980’s it was still possible for people to be sacked from their jobs because of their LGBT+ identity which is unthinkable now.
I lived through the eighties and I remember the hysteria concerning AIDS crisis and the adverts of that era.

There are cabinets that have items that concern themselves with same-sex marriage and gay icons mentioning Beth Ditto from The Gossip.
One of my favourite bands of the nineties are Faith no more which among their lineup is keyboardist called Roddy Bottum who happens to be a gay man and wrote the song “Be aggressive” about male on male fellatio.
At a time when rock music was male-orientated and sexist these bands along with Nirvana were a breath of fresh air.

There is some mention of non-binary and Trans within the context of movies. I love movies and shifts in attitudes are constantly evolving and changing to reflect that.
What was once seen as progressive can seem anything but these days; just check out this review of Pedro Almodavar’s-All about my mother (1999) on Letterboxd for evidence of that.
https://letterboxd.com/fuchsiadyke/film/all-about-my-mother/

Some images are framed upon the wall of Tank Girl etc. who is a lesbian icon and a weaved fabric of Edward Carpenter.

Around the exhibition were displays of Sheffield protests such as the Miners’ strike, household interiors with appliances and mock-ups of butcher shops.

A focus on Sheffield sport teams such as SUFC and SWFC and sportsmen such as the black boxer Lloyd Stewart.

The spaces within this exhibition are inclusive and informative and represent everybody’s walk of life.
There is even a section which is dedicated to the homeless charity Ben’s charity.

The section on park Hill at 60 was a series of photographs from the residents which was interesting and I visited Park Hill S1 Artspace for a painting workshop it still has the old brutalist architecture on half the building that needs to be modernised.

The next room concerned itself with stories of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s so pictures of old nightclubs, nightlife, buses, record players etc.
There was a mock up of a living room which Natalie et al. kindly offered to demonstrate:

Joe Scarborough’s Sheffield through the ages is an ambitious city panorama chronicling some of Sheffield’s iconic landmarks throughout the decades. Spanning an incredible 30 feet, the work took six years to complete and celebrates many familiar city sites, from the Tinsley Towers to the Town Hall. What a painting it is something to look at all the time.