//NEWS//

1 August 2012
>>    OFFICIAL WEBSITE  - In the months from February until now the Project team has digitized all the material from the contributing organisations and has developed the website. On August 2nd a first version of the website was presented during the LGBTI ALMS Conference 2012 which IHLIA organised this year. With the feedback from the participants of the conference we can start to improve the website! To be continued...

2 February 2012
>>    OPENING UP! SO FAR  - Since the last update of the Open Up! page on this website a lot of things have been achieved.

>>    COUNTRIES AND PROJECT COLLABORATION AND PARTNERSHIPS - We are also happy to announce that the LGBTI organisations in the following countries can also Open Up! their archive: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Meanwhile the Project has received new and valuable materials from Háttér Társaság a Melegekért and HOSI Wien. The organisations Kaos GL, Okvir, One World Platform for Southeast Europe and SKUC-LL have agreed to contribute some of their archives to the Open Up! collection and are partnering with us to prepare detailed metadata for those materials.

>>    TO TELL A STORY - With initiatives like Open Up!, IHLIA wants to stress the importance of preserving the cultural heritage of LGBT people:

"When our heritage is collected, when societies see that our histories are a valuable part of the cultural heritage of the places we come from, the society will be emotionally richer and LGBT people can live in peace." (Lonneke van den Hoonaard, director of IHLIA)

By preserving these collections, Open Up! will also give insight into the lives of people who were or are still struggling for the rights of the LGBT community. IHLIA presents two examples in an article for ILGA Europe's Magazine, called Destination>>EQUALITY: one is about gay life and identity in the 80s and early 90s and the other about the evolution of a LGBT organisation. With this article, called From his story to our history, (it starts at page 10) IHLIA highlights the need for telling those stories.

Are you or your organisation interested in Open Up! and want to contribute your story, so you can help LGBT people to find out about their history, their heroes, the struggle for their rights? Please feel free to contact us!

O P E N  U P ? 

The Open Up! Project is an initiative of IHLIA to reveal the history of LGBT emancipation and development in primarily Central and Eastern Europe. It aims to do so by digitising and making accessible via a web interface a wide of range of periodicals and organisational archives: magazines, newspapers or journals and conference papers, leaflets, advocacy letters, newsletters, meeting minutes and press releases  >>

D O W N L O A D S

Project Factsheet updated 31/01/12 (PDF)
Project Brochure October 2011
(PDF)

C O N T A C T

Do you have questions about the Project? Please call the Open Up! Project office on + 31 (0) 20 52 30 757 or email openup@ihlia.nl for more information

P R O U D  T O  B E
P A R T N E R I N G  W I T H