The Quilt

Cornwall has a long history of drawing artistic types, for the space, the light, and the rhythm of the waves.  In this final episode of The Quilt, Tash travels to the South West for a personal exploration of how queer creatives especially have been inspired in the region. They meet Veronica the queer pirate created by artist Scamp Niemz and queer historian Sophie Meyer, sing sea shanties with...

Rhaid newid popeth medd hoywon a lesbiaid! How can you describe your desires and sense of yourself when they don’t seem to fit with the language you use? In this episode Adam travels to South Wales to meet Dafydd Frayling, a pioneering activist who disrupted arts festivals and radio broadcasts in the 80s to show how Welsh speakers needed new words so they could make queer people feel more included...

Northern Ireland’s intriguing queer history draws Tash to Belfast.  In exploring stories that are often kept out of view, Tash hears tales of jailed men, a pioneering community helpline, and intersex experience. They speak to Michael Lawrence, a historian looking into the prison records of men who were convicted of buggery, and digs into the archive of charity Cara-Friend looking back over th...

People have moved to The Midlands from all over the world — so how has this migration shaped the region’s queer community? In this episode, Adam meets Ranjit Khutan who tells the story of his parents moving to England from India, and how they raised him with a community spirit. This led him to run the first support group for South Asian men who have sex with men in Birmingham in the 1990s, and do...

If the world has made it hard for your community to keep going, how do you still find the pride? In this episode, Tash travels to the northeast of England, to the old mining town of Stanley in County Durham. They hear about the history of mining and shipbuilding, and what the wake of those industries has meant for queer people living there. There are stories from Sharon McIlvaney, who reflects on...

Scottish history is laden with the sense of loss, from the Highland clearances to... Glasgow’s lesbian bars that closed down in the 1990s! In this episode, Adam takes a tour of those voided queer spaces with one of their old disco dykes, Natalie Wilson. He also hears from archivist Mel Reeve about the missing queer and bisexual elders from our collective past, and Rob Crawford, who reflects on the...

The northwest of England is famous for progressive thinking, from women’s liberation to power for the working classes.  In this episode, Tash meets some of the folks who are bringing this forward-thinking towards faith and spirituality. From Adelaide Harris and the pioneering church of St James and Emmanuel in Didsbury Village, to Saha (Surabhi Kandaswamy), a trans woman who moved to the UK f...

The city of Norwich, in East Anglia, has a history of welcoming strangers and people who are a bit different. In this episode, Adam meets some of Norfolk’s wonderful misfits. From Serena James, an older trans woman who discovered a remarkable photograph from the 1960s, to Steve Peck, who bought a shirt 40 years ago on a memorable holiday. Finally there’s Beau Brannick and Alice Bigsby-Bye, who bro...

From the producers of the award-winning podcast The Log Books, The Quilt is a new queer history podcast featuring untold stories that are rooted all around the UK. In this short intro episode, hosts Tash Walker and Adam Zmith head back into the studio to plan the new series. We’ve partnered with Queer Britain, the UK’s first LGBTQ+ museum, to travel around the UK collecting intriguing, moving, and...