Queer Up North Digital Archive

Welcome to the Queer Up North Digital Archive – a celebration of an extraordinary decade in Manchester’s queer cultural history.

Founded in 1992 by Tanja Farman and Gavin Barlow, Queer Up North grew to become one of the most pioneering and influential LGBTQ+ arts festivals in the UK and Europe. At a time of enormous social and political change, the festival created a space for queer artists, audiences and communities to be visible, provocative, political, joyful – and unapologetically themselves.

This new digital archive focuses on the festival’s remarkable first decade, 1992–2002, bringing together photographs, programmes, posters, flyers, film, ephemera and personal memories, alongside oral histories from the artists, audiences and people who made Queer Up North happen.

At the heart of the project has been partnership and collaboration. Manchester Histories has worked with Queer Up North’s founders, Manchester Archives and Archives+, Manchester City Council, artists, cultural organisations, volunteers and LGBTQ+ communities to preserve, explore and share this important history. The wider programme has also been supported by partners including HOME, Contact, Manchester Literature Festival and Factory International.

The project has been made possible with funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players, with additional support from The Granada Foundation. Their support has enabled us not only to preserve and digitise this important collection, but to gather new oral histories, memories and material so that the story of Queer Up North can continue to grow.

But this is more than a record of a festival.

Queer Up North brought artists and ideas from across the world to Manchester, challenged perceptions of what queer art could be and created spaces where LGBTQ+ lives and experiences could be seen and heard. Its story is intertwined with Manchester’s changing cultural identity and with a generation of people who used art, performance, nightlife and activism to challenge, connect and create.

More than thirty years later, these histories still have something to say.

The Queer Up North Digital Archive invites us to look back, listen, remember and rediscover, but also to think about what these histories mean for LGBTQ+ communities, artists and queer culture today and in the future.

Explore the archive. Discover the people, performances and stories. And celebrate the extraordinary legacy of Queer Up North.