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Well, a very brief background. I mean, I grew up in the country, so I'm used to a number eight wire mentality of fixing things. II. I went to school. I went to night school and then to university and trained as a psychologist. So you have to be fairly creative doing, um, therapy. I got ill left that. And, um, I became an artist, which I had done Art. I was intending to be an art teacher back in my very early days. So, [00:00:30] um, art And so that gave me an idea about display and so on, things that were useful for the museum. And then the museum came about because I went to the outlines conference in Wellington and I had this quilt that I'd made out of t-shirts and a great big badge collection thinking Gans would be nice down there. They could display it and introduce people to Lagan with it. Um, everybody loved the two pieces, but they said, Oh, no, no, no. We can't take objects, not objects that big. And so I came back to Auckland and I had a small [00:01:00] group of people that I was trying to encourage to do things for Gans. I'd been on the trust of LA Gas for a while and I won't go into that. But it's a bit personal, um, arguments with a certain person. But, um anyway, I was encouraging people still to send stuff because Auckland is not good at sending things to like. And so I talked to this group and we said, Well, well, maybe we need a museum of lesbian objects. There's all these things, what's gonna happen to them? He [00:01:30] tossed those ideas around, and that's really how it was born. And then we thought about what would we call it? Um, very naive, totally ignorant about the requirements of a museum. I have to say, um, and we spent ages discussing. We wanted an old fashioned name and somebody said Charlotte and I said, Charlotte, that's great. There were two Charlotte's involved with the KG Club, the first lesbian club in Auckland. So that's how we became Charlotte Museum Trust. We've, um, applied to the [00:02:00] charities and got registration. That was a bit slow, but we got there. Um, I think it was probably sitting on some legal officers desk who was having a bit of a problem with the lesbian part of it, but anyway, we got it through. So, um, and we've had no problems since. Let's just rewind a wee bit, because you you've covered some of the some really big things. Um, in the establishment of an archive or a museum, can you just take me back? And just first of all, describe [00:02:30] what is, um, is the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand and they collect books, magazines, papers and personal private letters and any information regarding lesbian, gay transgender people? Um, in New Zealand and so they weren't able to accept your subject. And what what's an object encompass? What is that? [00:03:00] Well, an object is a three dimensional thing, which, of course, does have certain requirements in terms of storage, and they are basically a paper archive. Really? Um, they do have a few badges and, um, posters of paper. Anyway, um, there are probably a few maybe T shirts or something that are significant that they may have from the very early times, but not the sort of things that we envisaged that would be lost in the realms of time that families would move into when a lesbian died [00:03:30] and probably just dump it all in a secondhand shot and have no idea of the meaning and significance of, you know, the first tea gay, liberation t-shirt or things like that that people have kept because they are significant. And they were. They represent a significant time in gay and lesbian lives in New Zealand. So prior to the Charlotte Museum, was there any other institution in New Zealand that was collecting specifically, um, queer objects? No. And in fact, the opposite was occurring [00:04:00] that when people mention people like Frances Hodgkins, they never mentioned her relationship with Dorothy Kate Richmond. Um, the relationship of, um, Catherine Mansfield. It's the same. So there is absolutely no L word mentioned in New Zealand museums until just very recently when there was a display in Papa and they managed to say the L word and mo. But what did do They were doing something on the 19 fifties, and they put the murder, the [00:04:30] Christchurch murder, uh, Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland. And we felt a bit incensed about that, that we are only represented as murderers or, um, or part of the homosexual law reform, which we didn't get any rights out of that until much later. So, um, there are lots of other, particularly the lesbian culture, and people have often said, Well, why isn't there a gay men's museum? [00:05:00] What about gay men's culture? And I said, Well, it's much more accepted mainstream than lesbians there. There's a certain, um, allergy, I think, in the mainstream for lesbian, uh, some well known artists who are, in fact lesbian hide their lesbianism in the art world. Um, so it's yes, it's difficult, I think to. And for instance, if you want to see some, uh, some [00:05:30] gay men's work or art relating to gay men's lives, you in Auckland, you can just go to the homestead. Um, there's lots of falls there. There's, you know, there's a whole um, the collector obviously has a bent in that direction, and, um, whereas there's nothing like that for lesbians, Uh, I can't think of anywhere. I could suggest people go other than to somebody's Irish Irish garden, perhaps, is about the only thing around [00:06:00] that one could suggest might have an inkling of lesbianism. So, um, there there was nothing, and there is so little about our lives that it makes it very hard for young people to see any. Um, positiveness, like many lesbians have been because they didn't marry and they didn't have Children in the old days and often had a female companion. They did amazing things, but it's not recorded. We never [00:06:30] knew about, for instance, Amy Kane and Daisy Isaacs, and they set up the first professional theatre in New Zealand. But we didn't know that no one's pulled that information out until we did some research on early Lesbian Theatre, Um, and the same with music, where you discover this very, very avant garde composer musician who's a, um and she lives in America now. I think she was probably too avant garde for New Zealand who recorded drowning [00:07:00] pianos and burning pianos and near Lockwood, um, amazing, um, stuff she has done even recording the Danube. Now we didn't know she's very open as a lesbian, but we didn't know that until we did the research and found her. Um, and so one of the things that I feel that the Charlotte Museum has done is actually find things that were already being lost that had barely made the surface and [00:07:30] were going back down again. So prior to the establishment of the Charlotte Museum, were you personally collecting objects material? I did, Yes. I think my initial collection was really I was involved in lots of activism, so I had lots of badges, and I used to delight in working in the Mount Eden prison and wearing better gay than grumpy to work. Um, particularly because most of the prison officers were so homophobic that it wound them up a treat. [00:08:00] And they really had, uh, they were busy trying to do other things to us. So it was my counter. Um, but the objects I, um I I tended and my Children have tended to buy me things that are womanly like statues of women. And, oh, Mama like this and even my grandchildren. I mean, they were busy out shopping one day, and my, uh, she was only about five or 60, get that for me, Miriam. Get that for Miriam. She says to her father, because it was a It was [00:08:30] a, um a drink bottle that had a a nice dancing woman on. Um, so I suppose some of that was not really intentional. in the early days, I would just see something and like it and and But when I started to have a little bit of money, I for a long time I was really poor rearing five Children on my own and and not having much paying off a house, you know, the usual thing. So when I could buy a few nice, like a nice plate [00:09:00] or something that had a, uh, a woman on, I tended to do that as a little treat for myself for the few years that I was working full time. And that didn't last very long because of my health. So, um so I had these things. And then I thought, You know, um, everybody must have things and you go to women's houses and they are. They're full of bits and pieces and and some lesbian art. They tend to buy other lesbians work and so on. And I thought, that's all there's a whole There was a whole [00:09:30] era of seventies and eighties where we even had a dyke directory where you can get a a lesbian electrician, things like that, plumbers and so on. So all that's gone now we sort of so called assimilated and and, you know, incorporated into the great big world of society. But people still don't like the L word, and I think that era would be lost. No, no one would realise. I had some students come to the museum just the other day, and they were amazed that [00:10:00] women and it was just things about women that that there were no women in the ambulance service until 1982. Uh, my girlfriend at the time was trying to get into the ambulance service and waited for two years to get in. Uh, and of course, there was the whole controversy over the fire service. They upped the the physical fitness thing so high that even the men couldn't do it. I mean, they got ridiculous. Um, so there was all that going on in the eighties that people [00:10:30] didn't realise that, Um, and we're often asked, why did the lesbian clubs close down? And because the police raided them? Why did the police raid them? Lesbianism wasn't illegal, but women couldn't hold a licence to sell liquor. If you didn't sell liquor, you didn't get enough money in to pay the rent. So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Um, and nowadays, there aren't any lesbian clubs. Anyway, the rents are too high. Um, and mostly they have nights here and there using bar staff, [00:11:00] um, that are on the establishment, and the money all goes into the establishment and not to the lesbian community. Um, and people say, Well, why is the museum so poor? We don't even have a coordinator at the moment because we only got a 4000 grant and can't pay a coordinator with $4000 for a year. It's just stupid stuff, and and it is because we don't We're not a rich, commu community at all. People talk about the pink dollar Well, I think the lavender one is a bit tatty. And and [00:11:30] another thing right. The lesbian community itself, because it's poor, it's a third of them are rearing Children at any time, and often they're looking after elderly relatives, so they'll often give up full time job to do that. So there's, um yes, there's a whole lot of factors. Not only just the equity, uh, issues of, um, getting less pay for the same job. The outlines conference that you were talking about that kind of first sparked [00:12:00] the idea. When when was that? I think it was 2003 from my memory. And can you remember your reaction? Um, at the conference when you were wanting to present this material and and and suddenly found that you couldn't, I could understand, um because I had been to the old archives when they were in Bull Cott Street, you know, And that was fire bombed. And that's how it became involved or taken over really by the Alexander Turnbull Library. Made a space for the archives [00:12:30] because they were valuable. Well, someone was persuaded the government that they were valuable. I'm not sure that the whole government was behind it being considered valuable at the time. But, um, enough people were behind it and it got involved in the National Library and incorporated under the umbrella of the National Library. And so I could understand that there would be restrictions and so on, and I could see that we collecting paper is much easier than, [00:13:00] uh, objects. And then you have to have to keep just objects for their sake isn't quite as meaningful as displaying them. So that was really a museum. And I really didn't know what a museum needed. And so it's a bit like ignorance is bliss. If I sailed forth with this idea, then I could set it up and, you know, we could get some funding and someone would run it. And so that whole idea of of coming from the the conference in 2003, coming back [00:13:30] up to Auckland. What kind of idea did you have in your head? What was the initial thought? Oh, just maybe we could have a room somewhere. And I did put some feelers out to te papa, and I started to ask questions all around about what was involved as you do. I sort of was doing a bit of research and a papa visitor. You know, one of the visiting officers came to my house to see what sorts of things I was talking about, and and I made a little bit [00:14:00] of an inventory of what sorts of things that I could see go in it. Um, and I really felt that I was under scrutiny, that I might have some Maori artefacts or something. I felt that their focus was not on lesbian culture at all, but that I might somehow be transgressing some museum rule or something. Uh, that's how I felt at the time. I mean, it might not have been valid way of thinking, but it didn't [00:14:30] feel I didn't feel too welcomed. I think so. The person from te Papa was coming. There was two of them. They were coming to look at your collection with the eye that you were going to set up some kind of museum rather than deposit this material with Papa. Yes, that that had never occurred to me because many of the lesbians who had done work, um particularly like a ceramic volver or something, would be loath, perhaps to have them in a [00:15:00] public institution where there's no control over how they might be displayed. The other thing is when the sets of things, they will often break them up. And just so if ever the museum was taken over like by an institution like Auckland Museum or te Papa, they would put it in storage and they would fish out maybe pyro Cornell's stuff, which they were interested in. The the worker that I had of hers. Um, and just display that. And they wouldn't necessarily say that she was lesbian, of course, so it [00:15:30] would be lost and the whole meaning behind it, the sense of pride that young people get when they come to the museum. And wow, you know, they made that then and you know, it's you know, this and that. They lived like that and and, you know, they suddenly realise there's a history for them and that it really helps with their sense of pride and identity. You don't get that in institutions that are heterosexually based, and they won't interpret. The best thing I've ever seen [00:16:00] in Papa was a hint when they had a display of Frances Hodgkins work, and there was a hint that they had taken a piece of one of Francis's Hodgins letters where she was saying about it. They were going over to Europe, and she was so excited that she was going with Dorothy Kate Richmond, and now they've taken that snippet out of the letter. They could have taken other bits out of the letter about going to Europe, but they took that bit and I thought, Well, that curator is in the know and they've left that little bit. So it's a hint [00:16:30] that if we know we can pick up, but a young person wouldn't necessarily make that connection. They would have to know the history of Francis Hodgins to make that connection. So these little pieces then they might be small actually are enormous to a young person growing up. So for you, thinking about establishing the Charlotte Museum, where you was that large in your mind, it wasn't just about collecting objects. It was about how they were displayed [00:17:00] and how they were curated. It was much more about getting information out to young people. I did not want young people to be like I was without totally ignorant. And I think I've told you before, looked in the Encyclopaedia and saw that homosexuals had arrested development. So I thought they were all short. You know, that sort of, uh and it led to, you know, suicide attempts and things, So I don't want young people to be going through that. I certainly don't want to see any young Children, not even [00:17:30] not just my grandchildren, because they have plenty of, uh, models around them. But other Children who don't who live in small towns like I small country places, they don't have role models and they don't necessarily have information. And some of the information on the Internet, for instance, is too much based on sex and not really about living a life, Um, and and not so much about love. Even so, sometimes that misses the point. [00:18:00] So do you think it's really important at the start when you're even considering doing something like this to actually have a very strong idea about what you're actually wanting to achieve in terms of, you know, I'm collecting these objects? Why am I collecting them? What's it all about? For you? It was about it was to have it for future generations, that it wouldn't be lost and that there was a story there that would be helpful to the next generation, the next generation and so on. And that would have that [00:18:30] one would add to it as we went along so that it had so you would end up in 100 years time without, you know, 100 and 50 years of lesbianism in New Zealand, which would be marvellous because we don't have that currently we have bits and pieces. Did you have any national institutions like te papa, um, trying to bring your collection into their collections, or were they open about you having a separate space? They were quite open. They didn't offer for anything, because I don't [00:19:00] think it was meaningful to them. They saw bits of, you know, some nice glass pieces. And, um, we've had, of course, since we've had lots of some very special stuff donated to the museum like rep because of, um, the goddess figures from, um, the Natural History Museum in Vienna. So we have other things, Of course, that once we set up that have been added that people have donated some beautiful, um, pieces from Crete from the museum there. So, [00:19:30] uh, some lovely silverware that, um, uh, lesbian brought back when she was right into the sort of goddess movement and so on. And she has since moved on to something else and busy climbing the Himalayas. I think these days, So, uh, you know, she donated all this wonderful stuff, but, um, and we all are able to share it, so, um, it's grown since that first, the first bit They probably thought, Why did I have maybe 70 things? [00:20:00] It wasn't very much, really. But now you know we're up in the hundreds of of things and and one of the things that came out of it was the collection of music that we have all these vinyl records, and we don't just collect lesbian music. We have many, many women's records because most of the lesbians collected lots of women's. But then we've got Fleetwood Mac and so on. And we held these Lizzy tune nights and people said, Oh, you know, pull out, play this I fell in love with So and so then and you get all [00:20:30] these stories wonderful stories of of, um, you know, love and and And I guess lesbians are very romantic, Really. They are about love. I mean, that's that's what's most meaningful. I mean, we have a thing that was last night, actually, which is why I'm with the time dykes on mics. And so I mean, I often tell them a story and and, um, And last night I was able to just say about the passing of a musician [00:21:00] who died last week in, and I thought no one's heard her play this song. I heard her play them in the seventies and and they were just They are so lesbian. I mean, she was told at the time, You can't send those. They're too sexual. Um, and one of them goes, Never put your finger in a dike. Never put your finger unless you want to linger. You could be stuck there all your life because a dike don't run, roll over and say, That's it, baby, be on your way A dike. He will turn the other cheek. Baby, [00:21:30] you could be there for a week. Now that is a very, very lesbian song. There's no two ways about it. Um, and and it's lost in the real time. Because when I I interviewed her with Andrew Whiteside two years ago for a film we made on lesbian music and she couldn't really remember the words until I reminded her what they were because I had fortunately written them down and I had written down another song about It's been a pleasure. Come again, Come, come around for afternoon tea or something. [00:22:00] But I haven't got all the words to that. And she couldn't remember that one at all, and she couldn't really. I did try and remind her of the tune of it, but she did remember the Put the finger in the dark one and she sang it for us. So we do have her singing it on at the end of that film, which is just stunning, that we have that, um, but there's a lot, a lot of other things that we will have lost. Many of the lesbians who wrote music in the seventies and eighties and there was a and Hazel actually said that it was [00:22:30] like a rallying call for the community. And it was, I mean, you just went everywhere where there was a concert or where someone was playing, who was lesbian and all the lesbians would turn up, you know, wherever it was. And it was a bit like a rallying call for a community at the time, and many of those songs are lost. You know, people have moved on. They got proper jobs and, um, they, their scraps of paper or cigarette boxes that they wrote their music on ha ha are lost, and it's [00:23:00] a bit like the top ones. So much was in their heads and working with the SYMPHONIA, they had to learn that someone had to write the music the script down so the orchestra could play it. Um, so I think the top ones are very, uh, are a good example of actually how much of our music could be lost and probably is lost. So things like dykes on mics does that, um, that that's another way of passing down history, isn't it? Through [00:23:30] oral traditions, does the Charlotte Museum have any part of of of that kind of thing? Well, yes. Um, our Sy Tunes night do that in a different way by using music that's recorded, um, and people talking about why it's significant for them. And you know how they played a a lesbian, like when the word lesbian was first on a recorded music. The gay women, the sporty sort of dikes who didn't ever use the word lesbian? No, no, no. [00:24:00] This is in their seventies. They were shocked to hear someone like Alex Dogan raunch out the word lesbian. Any woman can be a lesbian. I mean, they they drank their beer rather quickly. I noticed, um, so even. I mean, we were homophobic ourselves, and that internalised homophobia means that even today, there are lesbians who do not like the word lesbian. So it wasn't just the female companions that we often call [00:24:30] women who lived with other women. In the early times it was many, many other women, and still, today, they they slide around that word. It obviously doesn't necessarily have the positive connotations it has for me because I discovered it and, you know, with feminism. So it was sort of together with feminism, and I both liked the both the words, so it had no negative connotations for me at all. I know I also had a background, of course, that my parents are into [00:25:00] Greek literature and stuff, so that probably helped elevate the word for me. But I think for many others, it's not such a grand word. Just getting back to the the whole National institution coming in and looking at your collection. Do you think if I was a small uh, or or if I had a small collection of material, do you think there is a benefit from a large national institution taking on that? It [00:25:30] only would be if they had a vested interest in it. And most large institutions don't have vested interests in gay and lesbian issues. Um, or our history. Um, they might have a vested interest if it was a criminal museum. Of course, I'm focusing on all that aspect or or a criminal display, for instance, and they would use us as, um as part of their display. But it wouldn't necessarily, um, be like one of the functions of a museum [00:26:00] is about identity, national identity. But it's also about personal identity, which is tied up with national, your sense of national identity. And, uh, a large institutions only concentrate on the national identity and not on anything personal. And I think that's where we still have high suicide rates amongst our young gay and lesbians. Because we have overlooked that, that we have not provided them with mentors and with a sense of history. So I still feel quite strongly [00:26:30] about that. Unfortunately, I'm probably be singing it to my grave. So after that visit from te Papa, What What happened next? What? What was the next step for for you? That must have been around about 202,006. I think. And I was already in the process of writing, uh, some policies and and documents and getting a trustee and getting I belong to. I was on other trusts. So it was fairly easy for me to get a lawyer who was on the trust board of another trust [00:27:00] to run over my trust deed. I just taken one off the net. That was, uh, had lots of, um, you know, I'd had the titles in both English and Maori, so I felt it was a good enough. Trusted. And I just changed the principles to what I thought we needed that we our core values, should have been collecting lesbian things. Um, maybe a bit of feminist stuff, but the emphasis is really lesbian and protecting them, conserving them, [00:27:30] classifying them, you know, recording history about them, um, for future generations. And basically that vision stayed the same. It's it's, um So I suppose I didn't really consult with many people at all. Um, because I just looked up things on the net for other institutions. And interestingly, I think it might be a Melbourne museum. Somebody over there. I. I think it was a gay man. Definitely [00:28:00] the way it's written, wrote a beautiful piece about challenging music museums to display gay and lesbian things with gay and lesbian sort of titles and so on to make it clear they were lesbian or gay. And I thought that was a wonderful piece, and I started to write up some stuff about feasibility and and so I did a feasibility sort of study and an assessment of what we would need, and I could see that at the lower end of the scale, all we needed was actually a room to put [00:28:30] displays on and a little bit of storage space and maybe a maybe even operate only once a month that it was open so you could start on that scale. I mean, currently, we're open for the public two days a week, but it's also open by appointment so people can come and visit any time. They just have to ring the phone number and and, uh, I usually go and open it up, or I arrange for somebody else to go and do that. So and that's without any coordinator, because we lost our funding for the coordinator. As you said [00:29:00] before, 4000 doesn't last for a year, and nobody can live on it. So, um, we're still So we're operating very much at this point in vol. As volunteers at the startup. Was it just yourself, or were you opening it up to kind of some kind of community involvement or community discussion? I certainly I invited people. Um, I talked about it with lots of my friends. I selected carefully selected trustees who would [00:29:30] be good at governance. There were lots of trustees or lots of potential trustees who were very interested in the concept of a museum and saw lots of possibilities of different things that they were interested in. But I felt that they didn't have the skills and governance that I was looking for. Um, and I wanted someone with, um So I chose someone who was a a teacher in a private school but who had had experience in England, [00:30:00] Um, in negotiating that whole the whole lesbian world in a in a much more homophobic environment. So I thought she would be good to counter me being out front, you know, lesbian all over me to something a bit more moderate. And I used my daughter because so much of the first part of the collection was my own personal things. Um, and I thought if I dropped dead in the first [00:30:30] few years, I needed to have a trustee and I'd lent my daughter some money. So the arrangement was that if I dropped dead, she could pay someone to do what I was doing so that it wasn't lost because of that period of time, so that there would be enough money she would pay back to the museum instead of to the dead meat or to her brothers. So that was the arrangement, Um, so that we could get it established. Um, so she's [00:31:00] on the trust board and then, um, another friend of mine who's good with governance, who had been a public servant for many years, Um, who also is fluent in German, which is useful because we do have a number of German magazines, and so on part of my collection, um, Paula Wallace. And then, um, we have someone who's got a a PhD in archaeology. Um, and since then, we've got sissy on board and Denise Yates, who is the chair of the local board. So [00:31:30] we've expanded our trustees, but always with the sight of good governance. Um, and sadly, Christine went and worked in Australia. And so she did stay on the board for another year or so and then decided she was permanently going to be over there. So she went off the board. So what makes good governance? People who understand the necessity to do things on time that particularly with the charities, the charities, um, trust [00:32:00] is, um, very strict in terms of how you're getting your annual audited account. And that's quite difficult when you have no money to pay an auditor and you're leaning on the good will of some accountant friend of a friend of a friend. It it's tricky to get those things done on time. Also, that that we needed to have a lot of policies and they needed to be, Um, yeah, they needed [00:32:30] to be really clear what the policies. I think we've written something like 65 68 policies altogether. What did that cover? They cover, Ah, enormous number of things. There's health and safety. There's security, there's financial. There's a whole lot of governance policies like, um, finance about acquisitions, about de acquisition and things. You know, if you've been given a whole lot of things and you might actually fill out an acquisition sheet for them all and then you realise Well, no, This has no relevance to lesbianism. So you [00:33:00] want to de aquisition it? Um, in fact, it's better not to acquisition it in the first place. So, um, rules around those sort of things. Um, conservation rules, cataloguing rules. We even have a lesbian policy to make sure everyone understands what we mean by a lesbian. Um, we also have, uh I think the library and the knowledge policy are now we join those together. I think we've got an education policy. We've got a I don't know, it just goes on and on. [00:33:30] So, hospitality policy, You know that that bank of policies, where did they all come from? Did you realise at the start that you would need those many? No. I didn't realise we needed that number. Um, the te papa standards is a good guideline. Um, but by the time we started to work our way through the standards, we actually had most of those other policies in place. Because as soon as I hit a problem, I would then think, Oh, we need it. And we need a policy on this because so that if I have to tell someone something, [00:34:00] then I think, Well, we probably need a policy. We need to have that written down. And you call that if you write something down the instructions for something, you call it a policy. Fortunately, um, one of our trustees is the chief policy advisor for the Historic Places Trust. So that's been excellent in terms that I would lift policies off the net, change it for the Charlotte Museum. Um, you know, take out Melbourne Museum, put in Charlotte Museum, that sort of thing, tidy it up, make sure it was more appropriate to New Zealand and then whisk it off to [00:34:30] to, um, the trustees to read over and check and see what they thought. And they improved the English because my English is not that good. And then we'd have it in in place, and then they we rechecked those when we employed. We managed to get some funding to employ someone to go over the standards, and she checked all our policies. She had a law background, and so she tightened them up even further with some of the legal issues that we could have been a problem. So do you think in hindsight, would you have got [00:35:00] all that material in place before you establish the museum? Or is it OK in a valid way of just doing it as it kind of comes up? I think it's better to do it as it comes up because you've got it's more practical. Otherwise, you'll have a whole lot of theory and no one will read it. But if you've had a problem and you've written something about the problem, then it's practical. Everybody knows why that policy is there and what it covers and why we need [00:35:30] it. Basically, you know, when I first when we first started and was in the first building, we would get boxes left at our door full of broad sheets. We could have drowned in broadsheets, but no, we systematically went through and tried to keep two copies of every broadsheet and one or two. We kept three. The very early ones. We kept all that we were given. We were not given a lot of those, but the middle range. There were boxes and boxes of them. [00:36:00] And so we had them free to go to home. We gave them to students and and so on. So we sort of banded them around. We never threw any out unless they were very badly damaged. Um, but we've kept pretty much two copies of every broadsheet, and they are a great resource. Even though it was a feminist magazine, there was enough lesbian stuff in them on a regular basis to, uh, be of interest to us. And and also, lesbians advertise things. So, like the lesbian ball. Um, whereas the lesbian magazines were hit and [00:36:30] miss apart from circle that ran the longest, and we pretty much have a full set of circle, I think we might be short of one. Somehow, I think we might have got a photocopy from of one of one, on the very early ones. So do you think a lot of the initial success of the museum was down to selecting the right trustees for the trust? Was that a crucial thing? I think that's crucial. Um, because [00:37:00] you don't want to have, um Also, the other thing might have been my influence in terms that I was the driving force. I had the vision and none of the others really had the vision of what it would even look like. When we first started, they weren't quite sure they had come to my house. Of course, they knew my house was full of stuff. And so it was a bit like a museum itself. So [00:37:30] after that, when I first set it up in this lovely white room, it was 100 square metres. It was a big room, and we sealed off part of it with the, you know, the resources behind out of sight and made a display wall at the back of the bookcases. So we bookcases facing that. And that idea. I mean, they were all creative ideas that I came up with because of this number 81 mentality. I have. So, um, though I did meet an Austrian who [00:38:00] solved one of our problems, he was as good as me. Don't, right wine. And we used wire to hang up a carving on a pipe. Um uh, so, yes. Um I think because I had the vision and the driving force that stirred them along and they tended to leave the displays to me. They just concentrated on on the governance and what we needed to do. And to start with, it was a little bit like rubber stamping. They trusted me that I wouldn't run foul [00:38:30] of anything because it was so much my vision to do this. And I think that probably helped it gave them confidence. Um, one of the problems in, uh, like, for instance, leasing a space because you're a charitable trust. No one will lease a space to you unless you have a guarantor. So I personally went guarantor for the rent each time, and I'll probably still do that in the next place. Um, even [00:39:00] though my resources are are dwindling. Um, but so there's those sorts of things that people who still got mortgages and so on would be very loathe to put their hand up to be a guarantor. So, uh, there are some governance problems that could arise for a group setting up. If someone was sitting trying to set up a museum, Why did you think trust? Why trust you need less people, incorporated societies. It's very hard. I belong to a trust. It's now a trust [00:39:30] that was an incorporated society and a AG MS are a nightmare. When, uh, the first year I was at the museum, you asked me before about community involvement. I talked to many, many people around that time, and I had a small group that dwindled away once works wasn't required. Um, and another other people came on, and people have come and gone. I've had a range of volunteers over the time, and each each of them have learned a lot about museums in that time. Um, but other things crop up, um, [00:40:00] and they move away, but the community involvement. But I decided that we should have a sort of, like an a GM, maybe and and invite the community to say, you know, what do you like? What do you don't like? What could we be offering? More? Because we we're holding two or three events a month. A lot of events, Actually, it exhausted me. Um, and nobody came. I think one person, [00:40:30] one meeting, Certainly. Only one person came from the community. She goes to most things, um, and she writes for the local lesbian newsletter so that I thought people and most people said Look, we like what you've done. We we we're quite happy. We don't have the only suggestions that people have had. So we've done market surveys. We've surveyed people. Uh, we've, um We put a lot of effort into surveying. I mean, the only thing they came up with that they'd like was a cafe. [00:41:00] Well, it was a bit beyond us, but we've got five tables folding tables. So we we've got chairs, so we're working on that to get the furniture. And I looked up how much it cost to train a barista, But then there's a jump. You need us to pay someone you need a certain amount of. So I suppose we could train a coordinator to be a barista and serve coffee on the side. That's probably how it would come about, and that's a possibility that it's still out there. [00:41:30] So, um, so the community has made some suggestions, but they haven't made a lot of suggestions. They've been quite good at pointing out spelling mistakes on the wall. And that's good, because I, I don't see them one. But dyslexia had a stroke years ago, so, um and, uh, but sometimes they don't realise they can say, Oh, I'll prove stuff, but you send it to them and they'll take two or three weeks to proofread what's only just 400 words? [00:42:00] And we've got a deadline with a printer or something to get the money spent so that we can do the accountability and a certain amount of time for the funder and they don't realise those things. And it's really hard to say. Well, look, you know, I'm sorry. It has to be done very quickly. So, uh, that that sort of poses problems. Was there any other, uh, alternative to being a trust or a incorporated society? Was there any other option for being some other kind of structure? [00:42:30] Not really. Not to get funding. The crucial thing about a trust is that that, um you needed to have a trust and a worthy trust board with nobody with bad credentials so that, um, you could get funding, particularly from a lotteries and gaming trust and so on. Um and while on the one hand, you know, because we have a political arm of lesbians who think it's really bad to use money from gaming gambling, on [00:43:00] the other hand, I see lesbians gambling all the time, and I think, well, other people are using that money. Um, if they don't want to put it into the to the lesbian community, well, at least we can claw some of it back for lesbian community A things. So on the one hand, I don't like gambling, and I hardly ever buy a lotto ticket. Even the odds are just dreadful. So, um, too much of a scientific background, I think. But, you [00:43:30] know, there is very little other money around for, particularly for us. And one thing I suppose we have done is educate all the middle aged white male businessmen in the country who sit on the boards of gaming trusts that we're out there and we're surviving. And, um and some of them have given us money for various things. And so and we've been very good at doing the accountability and returning any money we didn't spend because it came [00:44:00] in cheaper than we quoted. And, um so they they have been educated that we're out there. So could you take me through the the the kind of timeline you've You've had the idea of the museum you've developed a trust is that when it becomes a charitable trust, is that and how long did that take to apply for? Um, I think we did it in 2006. Sent it in, maybe at the end of 2006, and [00:44:30] we got it in May 2007. Uh, at the beginning of 2007, we had our first exhibition. Um, and I just pulled all the posters that I had around in my house, unrolled them, put them into frames that I also took out other things out of, uh, framed as many as I could and hung them at at, uh, down the passage way of the gallery. Who was putting on a thing called the D thing for hero. So that was our first exhibition to make us put us on the [00:45:00] on the planet. Really? And that was before we became the trust. So we did the exhibition and then became a trust. And then I concentrated on applying for funding. So the initial idea at 2003, 1st exhibition in 2007. How did you keep the momentum going? Between 2003 and 2007. Well, it wasn't really going. It was smouldering. Um, I was busy. 2003 cleaning up [00:45:30] my house. Um, I then proceeded to put everything up I had in storage, sold the house because the money was crazy and went to Greece. And so I travelled. Yeah. So really, 2006, I was back, bought a house with my son who's bought a bit of my house. Um, And and that was when I unpacked [00:46:00] everything and I had all this stuff out. And that was, of course, when came to visit and so on. And so it's probably when I unpacked everything I probably that was the momentum because I've only just got, uh Well, I think I'm at the bottom of the boxes that some of them were packed up in 1994 when I sold the family home where the Children had grown up. So they've been lugged around. I'm good at lugging stuff around. In fact, I've just retrieved some books that were stored under [00:46:30] the stairs of a friend who's just got her house on the market down in Hamilton. So I lugged all those back home, you think? Oh, they're all about sexual abuse. So I've got to distribute those. And they were many lesbian. Oh, there was a complete set of Naomi Jacob that somebody had collected. And I'm looking for somebody who wants to read Naomi Jacob to see whether there's a lesbian subtext in her books, because she was openly lesbian in England but not she didn't seem to write. There's been stories at all so and in that time, of course, [00:47:00] there was a lot of censorship and stuff. Um, so I've got lots of interesting projects for other people to do because I haven't got time. I'm running out of running out of life, running out of time to do all them myself. Do you think having like a number of years between having the initial idea and actually having it kind of form is actually a really useful a useful thing so that you can actually kind of just kind of meditate on the idea of actually what you're forming, or is it better to have, like, a very short [00:47:30] burst of energy to get it up there and get it established? Well, that's interesting, because you often think as a particularly working as an artist that you you get an idea, and suddenly you've got all this energy for this idea and you work day and night because you just can't leave it alone. You wake up at night and I've got to put the paint in there and there. And you know, that sort of frenetic often is quite frenetic behaviour of, uh, not all artists work like that, but certainly a number that I know do. And I tend to be [00:48:00] like that. Um, I don't know that one could ever give advice that you should mull over it for a long period of time, or you go with the energy and the flow that you've got because basically, you do have to have energy, um, and enthusiasm and And I've had a lot of that, and, um, I've worn out probably a few volunteers because I've been so energetic. I don't think I'm probably the easiest person to work with because I've had the vision and I also want to work quickly. I am not a not [00:48:30] really a plotter. I can plod, but I really like to, um, get stuck in and get things done. So I get frustrated when people keep having morning and afternoon tea breaks and stuff. So I'm not a good employee. Yeah, really. And that's an interesting point about the whole kind of, uh, personal professional relationships you have when you're first starting out in terms of, you know, uh, like I'm assuming with this museum because it's it's very [00:49:00] much driven by yourself. The idea to get beyond one person's vision or get beyond yourself. I mean, were there any kind of conflicts with people wanting to support a museum? But maybe not wanting to support you? No, There's never been any conflict the conflict has been for me to. I did not want it to be out there and New Zealand's full of one people bands. That's how things happen in New Zealand. One person has a vision and they go off and do it. [00:49:30] And then when they die, the vision pulls over. We've seen it so many times, and I didn't want that to happen. Um, and I wanted to. That's why the whole thing with my daughter about the and my will is to try and make it sustainable, and that's why I want an employee. E. I want some driving force who has it as a job who So we've got enough money to pay a coordinator who then has a vested interest in keeping the job someone who who has a passion [00:50:00] about history and museums and is lesbian. Um, and there must be people out there. Um, but there are also the ups and downs of employment that's we've had somebody who was who's right into archives and history and so on. But we couldn't keep her on because of the funding. And that's the tricky part, really. I think we could sustain a Sunday afternoon thing [00:50:30] possibly. But then again, you would have to have one person driving because or maybe two or three or a couple, that sort of thing and that's a possibility. I hope we don't end up down that track, but we could do because of the funding situation. But I really I it makes me cross. Sometimes when I think that Auckland City two or three years ago spent 14 million on museums, we should get 5% [00:51:00] of that if we're 5% of the population and they won't count us So how can we argue anything different? Um, so there is a lot of inequality that and it would be different if, uh, all these other museums were had bits and pieces about lesbianism, but they don't. They would trot it out for one little silly one little simple display and then pack it away again because it might upset somebody. It might upset one of their benefactors. [00:51:30] That's what people worry about, that it upsets a benefactor to have too much lesbian stuff around. If you can find a more difficult topic and set up like a lesbian museum, let me know I'll switch. I've gone from hard topic to, you know, I get harder and harder all the time. I think I might have come to the end of hard topics. I think I need to retire. So what are some of the other tips you could give [00:52:00] me? Um, for moving something from a one person set up to a broader thing that will be sustainable. We're trying to involve more people from the community, and that's why I persistently, um, had lots of events of different sorts to try and get a range of people coming to the museum, not just to pay one visit. And now I've been to the museum, and that's it. But to come back again, to see new displays, to see, um to take an interest [00:52:30] in some aspect, whether it's music or art or poetry or reading or or film or whatever. Yeah, we've never done any research on lesbian film in New Zealand. I mean, that's a big topic in itself, and it would be great if we could get some funding. But the burden of funding and following it up, making sure you tick all the boxes, the accountability and so on are very stringent. And I didn't realise how difficult it was when you [00:53:00] apply. When we did the music one, for instance, I had to use my own money to get that money released for us. I had to put my own money in to say that we had them to prove that we had enough money to for the project to go ahead because they allocated the money to us. But they wouldn't release it until we had all the money for the project. Well, it takes time for, and I was busy trying to run things rather than be out there running raffles or doing buckets on the street and so on. [00:53:30] So in the end, I put I think it was about 2.5 1000 I put in to make it happen to release that other money. Well, that shouldn't shouldn't be like that. It should not be tied to getting the whole amount, because, especially in a research project like that, there are often ways that you might be able to reduce the costs a little later on when you see that. Or as we found out, there was no point in going to Dunedin and the person wasn't there, so that was an air flight that we had thought about. And and we changed [00:54:00] all that and the travel. They were still arguing over travel to Hamilton. And so I had all these petrol vouchers. So I photocopied all the petrol vouchers and sent that down as proof that we had money for travel. I just an enormous waste of time, Um, particularly when you feel that you're running out of life and that you need to get these things set up and done. And as it was in that project, two people died. And since making the film, [00:54:30] two more have died. We're running out of time and and they seem to make it hard for us. And whether it's because of their lesbian word or not, it's difficult to know. I'm not sure how hard they make it for others. You don't have time to we network a bit, but you don't have time to network enough to get the difficulties that people have with certain funders, whereas other funders it's very clear cut that they apply. It might be the whole amount of the grant, but they don't care [00:55:00] whether you've got the money for the rest. As long as you spend the money on what you said and return back. And I like that sort of system, I don't like the sort of almost feeling blackmailed into providing the whole amount of money before you can even start. I mean, that's bureaucracy, Bo. So how much time would you be spending on funding applications when I, um in 2008, 2009? The amount of time I actually spent on the museum was probably about 70 hours a week. [00:55:30] I've whittled it down now, and I probably am doing possibly a 20 hour week, but I don't want to be doing that, but I don't have anyone else to do it. Um, and that's the problem. Um, so it's still still weighing on me, and I'm going away to Berlin. I've fallen in love and, um, very, very happy. And I'm going to spend some time in Berlin from May to September. [00:56:00] So it has to function without me pretty much I will arrange for the GST either to be delayed, or I can get someone to do that. Probably. Um, I will do some work over the Internet, of course. I mean, with my email. Um, because I certainly don't want any difficulties on governance issues and so on. So, like, GST. Or if we're paying someone, um, then there's PAYE that has to go in every month, and that can be tricky for people to weigh their way through that. So, [00:56:30] um yeah, and paying bills and things like that. So all that has to be organised that I Currently I do all what the treasurer would normally do in an organisation as well as the the secretarial work so the trustees really depend on me to keep all that and just report back to them. We've spent this much and we need to cut back on whatever. We need more money, most as the call. So, [00:57:00] um, yeah, it's it's difficult to move it on to having, um because when I look at other trusts, I'm on, um, the CEO or director. And I mean, basically, they're just like a coordinator. We just use the word coordinator because the emphasis is on coordinating volunteers. Um, whatever you call the person who runs the place, they tend to be one people places because you can't afford any more staff you might have if [00:57:30] you're lucky. They've got one in the office, um, part time in the office, and, um, and a director. And mostly that's all you have and all the organisations that have a one person, a paid person. It tends to be one person, or you might have an education officer, so you have two more, and that means it's very fragile, a very fragile organisation, because if you don't do the funding, if you don't, if you lose that [00:58:00] person, then you fall over and you you can see that happening with lots of gay organisations. What's your ideal situation in terms of staffing? In terms of compliment of people, the ideal would be probably a part time coordinator, not necessarily full time, But I would think at least say, 30 hours a week. And maybe a researcher paid for, um, either [00:58:30] for a set project, but probably just, um so many hours a week. You know, um that so possibly say a 30 If you had a 40 hour a week salary and you spend it on 30 hours for a coordinator and 10 hours for a researcher who was possibly retired or at, um or had health reasons, maybe was on sickness benefit and couldn't do very much, but was interested in doing some research and fossick around and, uh, over at the Auckland [00:59:00] Museum on things like that, that sort of that that that would be quite good. And some volunteers that would be the minimum, really, to to make it sustainable, I think I suppose the ideal would be, um, a person, maybe a 40 hour a week coordinator and a, um uh, maybe a 30 hour a week research slash education [00:59:30] officer or maybe 21 researcher, one education officer, like three people in the office. And, um, you lose time with the talking and discussions around the tasks and so on. But then again, you gain from more input. But usually this. We've had a few cataloguing days where we've had a number of people and they worked in peers cataloguing one, taking out the works with the gloves on and one doing the cataloguing. So all working all on different laptops and so on. And we managed to get a lot [01:00:00] of the things catalogued. Um, and I was interested to find that, you know, Auckland museums miles behind on cataloguing what they have and so on. They don't even know what they've got in some places. So we don't feel so bad that we haven't done all our C DS and because we've got massive cassettes and we haven't started on them. But, um, we've got all our almost all our posters catalogued. It's only a few that have come in recently that are not and, uh, all the objects are catalogued and also numbered, and they've got little numbers on them with the special [01:00:30] paper and the special glue. So we've gone to our workshops and we've done all that. So, you know, we're we're feeling quite good about that. And to get it this far and then be stuck with no funding for a person to run, it is a bit sad. That's one of the issues I'd like to take up with the City Council. We don't not asking our budgets. 50,000. We're not asking for a lot of money in Super City when they can spend so much on rugby. Just drive nuts. [01:01:00] But I won't go there. So is it important for you to have volunteers to have that community involvement? Yes, I think so. I think that, um and there's lots of things, like one of the things that you know, just having some people to help out at events, to do the hospitality, make a pot of tea or pour the wine or whatever you know that you're doing. Um, that sort of thing we might, you know, bring along a plate. All those sorts of things give a sense of being involved in community, and it [01:01:30] it gives people an opportunity to be involved in something because so often you know the old bring a plate. You know, ladies, a plate sort of stuff's gone down the Googler. Now people pay big money to get little canopies that are worth nothing. I just I'm just amazed at how much is spent on catering that, you know, a can of chickpeas was down in the kitchen with, and a few crackers would have done the trick. So can you describe some of the other [01:02:00] events that you've used to kind of pull in community and get them interested? Well, we've had, um, Deb Filler, who comes over to see her mother regularly. So we've had her come to the museum a couple of times. She opened the new premises. She also talked about the theatre, and she did a bit of a prelude. Um, some of her own work. Um, we've had So we've had people like that who speak. We've done. We always on ANZAC Day. We've [01:02:30] done something. So we've had someone who was in the Air Force military police before she came out. Um, she talked about, you know, working there and having to search people's underwear, drawers and so on looking for photographs. And she found that so distasteful that it wasn't very long before she resigned, left her marriage and came out as a lesbian, you know, So that whole you know, that was really a fascinating oral [01:03:00] story that she gave us. And we were people are still talking about it. And she was searching for some for evidence of lesbian relationship and getting and destroying it. Well, no, they they she was ordered to find it. She found that so distasteful that it was very difficult. But of course, what was that? That would have been in the seventies. She's trying to think how old she is. It might have been actually in the [01:03:30] eighties. We have her jacket. It's interesting that, uh, on display, we usually have Daisy dressed in an Australian uniform because, um, the Australian government has gladly given us a Australian majors uniform for Major Lee Easterbrook, who they chucked out the Australian army for being a lesbian. And then when they changed the rules, they wanted her back again, but she wouldn't go back. She only joined the Territorials, but she does do a lot of training in that [01:04:00] in the territories, but she's very highly regarded by the Australian Army, and they were very happy to give us a complete kit. Um, I wrote to the museum hoping that they might have some stories about lesbians down there. It took them a year to answer my letter. I think we've got a little bit a way to go with the forces here. We have visited the Navy Museum. We have a good relationship with them, but they haven't sort of uncovered any thing. I do know lesbians who were in the Navy, but nothing has been coming forthcoming, [01:04:30] but, um, but we offset that for ANZAC Day, too. But also, we've had, uh, a talk about the praises who taught who went from to Gisborne pushing prams with their musical instruments on the prams, Um uh, promoting nuclear free New Zealand. And that was in 1981. So we've had them, and lots of people from the peace movement came at what some of those are ways of getting the public to come to an event. The public will come on an open day occasionally, but [01:05:00] lately we haven't had many because we're a bit hidden where we are. Um, but some of those open events they'll come like the historical societies we had. Uh, we gave a talk to her and invited all the historical societies to come about how we collected information. Um, but halfway through, uh, some elderly women got up and said, Oh, we didn't realise it was just sort of a museum and left, um, so it shows where where people are at. It's still a process and so on. So, um, but they missed out on asparagus rolls. It's a bit sad. We always [01:05:30] make asparagus rolls at every event because they're easy to make. They're popular, and they're a bit nostalgic for people. I can't even eat them, but I make them because I can't eat wheat. So other events Oh, we've had we've run a clown workshop. We've, um, other things. We we've, uh, done a graphic draw. We've done a life drawing class. That was more difficult because we couldn't use the museum, but we just snuck into a room that was empty next [01:06:00] door. So that's how we got around that, because the graphic dust would be too difficult to deal with the museum. So, um, we did learn from that that there are limitations to what we can do in terms of workshops. I would like to do a button making workshop, sort of to celebrate activism. People could come along and make buttons, but we need to raise some money to buy a button maker and, you know, a badge maker sort of thing. Um, so that's one of the one of the things in the pipeline. It's really interesting because a lot of those events [01:06:30] are taking, um, historic objects and then doing a current contemporary activity around that that that that that's what we try and do. You know, um, to make it sort of a little a little more relevant, but with always some historical background. And And we celebrated, for instance, T who We've taken a song of hers, Um, which is, um, a song to [01:07:00] her female lover. Um, we've taken that as our and we celebrated her Centenary. Um, and we and I think a bit of over in, um, Bay were the only people who sort of recognised her Centenary, which I thought she was. She was a composer of songs for the Maori battalion, and she also won the golden shares when she was 51. and so 1961. I think it was 21. And [01:07:30] she is so, you know, a remarkable woman. And, um but people don't emphasise. We have a beautiful photo of her with a hat and a man's coat on, and it's just stunning. Um, and it's those sorts of things, you know, People just hone in on that photograph. They see her in a Maori, um um dress and so on. But it's that photo where she's with other friends dressed a day at the races or something that she wore very much male clothing to the races. Uh, appeals [01:08:00] to people about, um and of course, um, we have a quote from who wrote about her And so, um, as one of the aunties and sort of, um so we quote that as well, so pulling those pieces out, but it all takes time. And that's why you need a researcher, really, all the time to to look for things and so on to make to all your displays have to have a lot of research. And, um, and most of them I've done, um, I've had [01:08:30] somebody doing research on theatre in a book sport in a book. And, uh, theatre music and sport are the three that we've had, Um, some research money and people, but, uh, they're still the main display. I've, um, not the sports display. The other woman did that, uh, Jan Brown did that. So it's still quite time consuming to to get it down to less than 400 words. I sort of aim for now because the I think [01:09:00] the poor papa visitor came and then he found out that he found that he was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of, uh, words on the wall. I think it is a bit too wordy you mentioned just before about bringing general audiences into the museum. And I'm just wondering, are there any restrictions on who can actually visit the museum and access the material? None whatsoever. Unless someone has deposited something, [01:09:30] um, that they would not want anybody else. So everybody signs a form to say that their name that they agree that their name is next to the object they've donated. Um, and that they don't mind if the say a television crew came in and I put it on TV one news because of some reason We haven't been so lucky to get that publicity, but we're working on it. Um, so that sort of thing. So people don't, um when people will have letters [01:10:00] or something, we suggest they send those to LA And I have some stuff that I've collected now from two women who've died, Um, that I want to send to LA Gas. But until they've set up again, I thought, it'll just be sitting down there. I'll just keep it and add to it and so on, so that I've got a good package when I send it off to them. Because I'm sure when I get to the bottom of some of my last boxes, I might find some more bits and pieces that have been going, you know, letters. I've been going through all the [01:10:30] letters that I've kept kept letters for many years. I'm a bit of a hoarder. What about in terms of the community reaction to the museum in general when it was first put forward as an idea, How did the community respond? People thought that's a good idea. Um, and to to start with when we asked [01:11:00] for money. Um, from the community, some people were very generous and wrote out checks for hundreds of dollars. Um, and other people, Um interestingly enough, some of the people who were more, more, well healed gave us 10, which is probably why they were more well heeled. But overall, it's, um you know that there's been a positive response, but because I'm so well known in the community, and I do have a certain respect because of the difficult [01:11:30] issues that I've dealt with and the support I've given people who've been raped and and, um, sexually abused and so on. So I think that I don't tend to certainly not in Auckland. I don't tend to get that flat. I get some political flack in Wellington for not crossing TS and dotting I's and and doing things that aren't quite PC, I suppose. But, um, I don't get that from Auckland because of my involvement [01:12:00] in the community and what I do. And I worked for a long time in the AIDS Foundation as a uh as a trustee. Um, and there wasn't a real like people questioned my input in that as a lesbian. Why was I and I said because if it gets in the heterosexual community. A lot of Children will get AIDS because a lot of Children are raped and we don't realise how many. Um, but if it's something like one and three before the age of 16, [01:12:30] that's going to be a lot of Children that could be at risk. So that was one of the reasons I as well as the whole the thing, that it was the sort of disease that was going to be get out of hand very easily if we didn't step in. And I thought in New Zealand we had the chance of doing something, Um, because we were a small enough country. I also sort of thought we could do something about child abuse back in the seventies because we were a small country. But I failed miserably, and I often get very despondent about that. [01:13:00] The awareness and all the work that I did in the seventies and eighties and nineties has been for naught, really, that the figures have not reduced, even though I think the middle class have improved their child rearing the bottom hasn't so, um but that so I think because I've worked in those difficult areas that I do engender a certain respect and there might be disagreements with the whole idea. Um, there [01:13:30] certainly was mixed feelings about having a memorial pole. And we've since moved that out of the main viewing area and decided that a memorial booklet. So that was one idea I had that I liked, Um, that didn't work quite so well because it was too raw for some people. Um, their own ideas, their own feeling of their own mortality was sort of staring them in the face when there were too many cancer [01:14:00] deaths on that post. Um, and that's another thing that we could be bitter about, that all the money that was poured into gay men's health. And we've got nothing. And we do have probably a higher death rate from cancer because lesbians are notorious for delaying going to the doctor worse than straight men. And that's really bad. So we did the research, but we haven't got any. We had a I think Health published a couple of pamphlets, and that's about all we've had. So [01:14:30] we do feel a maligned in some areas, and health is one of them. And so we've tried each year to have a health sort of seminar at the museum with a few health things, and that's mostly because of my interest. And I did that health research back in 98 99. And so, yeah, I've sort of tried to keep that going with having some health in there as well, which is not so related to museums other than homophobia and the history of homophobia so we can [01:15:00] tie it in that way. And we often, um, we've had a display at various times about the media, how the media looks at lesbians and gays, and we did a study. I think I did the first study back in 78. We did another one in 82 or was it 80 82 and then we've done one. We had a look at more recently in 2000 and eight, it might have been, and we put that together for a display. So and we talked about that and so on. So we do sort of try and bring in some [01:15:30] things that are really topical, but looking at it from a historical perspective as well. What about, um, donations from the community in terms of objects or artefacts. Was that right? From the get go, people were were giving you material. Yes, yes. Oh, people were. Oh, great. I'm moving house. You can have all my broad sheets and lots of lesbian books. We've got about 1800 I think. Lesbian books. Now, some of my older [01:16:00] nonfiction books I have put in the, uh but I also already had somebody else's collection who'd left New Zealand. And, um so her collection really started the Charlotte museum collection. And then I added to it, I in my catalogue, I haven't got them all in my house now because I'm at the museum. I think I've got something like 2900 something books, lesbian books. So it's an enormous collection, and some of them are very, very rare. Those ones are still at my house because I was worried [01:16:30] about, um, having rare books unless they're very secure. And I think probably some of the rare books possibly need to have a lock glass cabinet. Um, because they'll be the only copy. Someone in Australia and New Zealand know if they were. There's one book. I think it was a print run of maybe only 1000 books in the whole of the United States. So yeah, and it's a novel, but it's set after the Second World War. So it's actually very poignant because it's really [01:17:00] she only wrote one novel, So it's pretty autobiographical, and I think it tells you the situation of women coming out of the forces then and the and the pressure to get married to have Children, really to breed. The next lot of warriors breed the canon product is how you feel after you. You look at those sort of historical situations. And of course, the emphasis after the Second World War was was of that. Lesbianism was a mental illness that wasn't emphasised in the twenties [01:17:30] at all, not even in the thirties. If you look at files of lesbians in Oakley Hospital, but when you look at the fifties, it was, you know, treat them, change them, make them straight, get them out there to breed the the types of donation. Can you describe for me? Um, things like, you know, the size and the kind of scope of the stuff that you're receiving? Well, we get, um, T-shirts. [01:18:00] We've had a little bit of jewellery donated to us. Um, carvings. We've had had a carving. We're still trying to trace down who did the carving. Um, we've had, um, little bits of memorabilia, travel things, posters. Um, in fact, we've got two capes pink pink flight capes from the pink flight from last year. I think it was, um uh, he various hero, but lots [01:18:30] of posters over the years, posters, magazines from all over the world and in different languages. We've got japanese. We've got spanish, We've got Italian. We've got books in different languages as well. Um, we don't all read all of them. I mean, I have some in French and in German, which I have read, but, um, I I can sort of read a bit of Italian, but mostly because of the French. Um, and [01:19:00] I've got very rusty. So what else do we get? People give us? Sometimes they give us a whole assortment of things, and some of it's not really, um it's just a bit junky. Um, And when we've asked Oh, I just thought through, You know that. And they don't. Those sort of people will tend to drop a box by the door. It's the end of their moving out, and they just put things aside that they didn't want. But mostly it's been appropriate [01:19:30] stuff. Some have given us books that are more that are not lesbian but are feminist one or two health books about women, and we've tended to keep those. If they were, um, if they were feminists, but if they were just an ordinary health book, we wouldn't keep it. So we have a list of categories for keeping things, and, um uh, and so they have to be pretty much lesbian for us to keep particularly objects on that would would be [01:20:00] unlikely to keep any object. We have a chair that was made by a lesbian, and it has an interesting history that it was part of a set of chairs, beautifully made, beautiful woodwork. They were made for creative New Zealand around the board table, and that was very, very thin. If you were big, I think you might have broken them. Apparently they did have some problems later on, but this one wasn't quite perfect, which was why she had it. And she's gone back to England now, and so she, um [01:20:30] so yes. So we have the little story about this chair, Uh, and that's sitting in the museum. So that's a bigger object. Lots of LP S People have kept their LP S, but they have long since no, don't have a turntable. So we have the turntable and so they we have a lot of those, um, given to us. We've, um C DS. We inherited the lesbian radio from Christchurch C DS collection. So that's good. But we haven't catalogued them all. Um, that's a long [01:21:00] process cataloguing LP S and C DS because you've got to write down the, uh, who wrote the song the You know, the music, the lyrics, the Who's singing it, the band and so on. So it's a lot of information to put in, so that's slow and tedious, and we don't get a lot of volunteers doing that. We did have one person work really solidly for a year. Every Sunday she did an hour or so. She was very, very good on that. [01:21:30] So then her circumstances change and she lost her job. So things become much more stressful for her And and you were saying that you have a specific lesbian policy for defining, actually what you mean by lesbian, And is that because of what you're collecting? And so you refer back to that saying, Is this actually a lesbian object or don't usually have to refer back to it? I've just about forgotten what's in the policy, but it's nicely to emphasise that we are a lesbian [01:22:00] museum, and that's what we're there for and we're not. I mean, we do have some gay stuff, of course, because the pink flights both, um and lots of her hero stuff. And of course, we've got a certain amount. But we don't have boxes of condoms around and things I mean, there is, I suppose a, um a a good thing, maybe, for um, the AIDS Foundation to have the range of how they've advertised condoms over the years. You know, there's a whole lot of history or health history and that, But no, [01:22:30] we don't do that. And I can't think of the things on display are pretty much lesbian. You know, there's a a beautiful, but it is very V in its shape and so on, and it was designed that way by a lesbian weaver. So so that's sort of the and appropriate. I feel, um, are the items in the collection which maybe the artist [01:23:00] wouldn't see as lesbian or wouldn't particularly want to be in a lesbian museum? That might be true. I I'm just trying to think whether that I think there's a little dish that shows a woman's part of a woman sort of bottom and hips or something. It's not naughty or anything. It's just, um that's really pleasant. Well, I, I don't [01:23:30] know who they are. We don't know who made that. There are a number of things that we don't know who made, but a lesbian has owned and like them because they represent some aspect of of a loving woman. Really? So trying to think whether this anything that, um, there there probably is the odd, um well, I, I know one thing. We've got a couple. I think of Jar. I think there's a jar and a tin [01:24:00] with lizzo on it. That apple, uh, tea. I'm sure the Turks who made that did not expect it to be in a lesbian museum. But lots of women don't even drink the stuff, but they have a can on them on their, um, cover them up with their tea caddies and so on. So we've added that to our sort of domestic wear. You know, we we have hers towels and that sort of thing. Um, yeah, so I suppose there are a few bits and pieces around [01:24:30] that could be queried, and we could have problems with the artist. And that's always a problem that the artist has one idea in mind. The person who purchases had another idea in mind, and a curator might even have another idea. So you can have three different points of view about an object. And who's to say who has the deciding factor? Um, in terms of a. Then you would think that the artist would probably have the most [01:25:00] important decision. But then the person who owned it and had a different view about it and who deposited it with the museum would possibly have certainly a stronger one than the curator who came in from the cold and had not lived with the object and the artist who makes something and doesn't live with the object. You know, you do start to wonder about who has the most um, input in terms of how that is representative because it might be [01:25:30] quite representative of this person's lesbian life, for instance, um, and it is very significant for them. It's so all of those issues are very kind of managed or contained within your policy documents, because I'm thinking, well, who who actually decides how things are catalogued, how things are framed, how, what's collected, Who, who, who does that the, um, the people receiving things So it's usually the coordinator or, um, [01:26:00] myself or another volunteer? Um, and the guidelines are fairly. It's fairly clear cut, um, or everybody who works there as a lesbian. Um, so we don't have to argue about what's lesbian and what's not. As a general rule, Um, I can't think of anything that we have had a few queries about certain books. How lesbian is it [01:26:30] now? If it's an older book, we usually tend to rely on the bibliography. But she was an American woman, and there are some English books she might have missed. She was a librarian, and she did an enormous bibliography in 1980 I tried to update it a bit with a new lesbian literature bibliography. Um, but I missed a lot because in New Zealand you didn't. And the Internet wasn't as big as it is now. Um, so there are probably some [01:27:00] that we might like. Elizabeth Bowen. I know two of her books we have, and somebody gave us a whole. I think there were six books of hers. Well, I don't think they're lesbian, and I don't think we should probably keep them because we're fairly We're becoming short of space. And where we before we tended to collect, if we had two copies, we kept two copies and gave the third one away. Now, we're sort of reducing that back. To think one copy is quite sufficient. Really? Um, because of space [01:27:30] and so on, you know, there is a limit. Can you take me through the process of If I was depositing some material with the museum, what would happen? How does that go? Well, you would probably send us an email and say that you wanted to drop something off, and then you would, um, arrange a time when you were when we were open. They call in on Wednesday afternoon or something like that. And that's happened um we've had [01:28:00] a number of people do that, and then they show us what they have. Um, for instance, a woman who's no longer lesbian, who came in with a whole pile of stuff, Um, from her lesbian phase, so to speak. And she was a musician. And so she had some beautiful big backdrops that were painted by a lesbian. Um, whom we think is still a lesbian, Um, and also [01:28:30] gave us some VCRS which she wanted back, but she didn't come back for them, but we carefully copied them onto because we have a reporter where we can copy them on a DVD. And so we went through and made a long list of things and she was in a hurry. So we she did have a couple more things she wanted to bring back. And she did come back with those and we had the list then all down for her to sign. Now all those were related to Les to lesbian band, and so or a band that had lesbians playing. And it was predominantly [01:29:00] seen as lesbian. And she was seen as a lesbian at the time. So we took all that because we could see a fabulous display and exhibition with her, that stuff representing the music of that time and and because we've made the film and we've got a big already a display up on, uh, which she's mentioned on display, um board. So another person came in with a pile of books and said, [01:29:30] Oh, well, if you don't, you know, just chuck out anything you don't want to pass on to the Women's Centre or whatever. And other things come from the Women's Centre. They're always dropping off books that as to their requirements, And so we go through and, um, we've got we were one area that's a bit problematic. Is poetry women's poetry? Um, because we don't always know how lesbian they are or whether the person was a lesbian. And so we've probably got some books that we've [01:30:00] actually catalogued and kept that are not particularly lesbian. Um, well, for instance, Sylvia Plath's books Now, while I think one of them is recorded in the Greer catalogue from memory, um, I think we've got all her collected poems, probably some that are probably read widely by lesbians. So there's some a bit of that creeps in. Uh, it's a bit hard. I could see that we could get stricter later on. Um, books [01:30:30] are easy enough to de acquisition. Really? It's not a major. Like, what do you do with an object? If you've changed your mind, we would be much stricter about objects. Um, we don't want a whole household lot arriving on our doorstep that, you know, that someone had carved I love you on the dressing table top or something. No, no, we don't go quite that far. So when somebody donates something, are they gifting it completely to you? Do they retain ownership or [01:31:00] are you acting as a guardian? How does that work? No, they give up ownership. Um, and the trust is really the guardian for the lesbian community. We believe the objects are really once they're in the museum, belong to the lesbian community. Um, and whatever that is, you know, a nebulous form, really. But it means that our whole group could in fact get together and say they didn't want something in the lesbian museum because it was, uh, they thought it was detrimental [01:31:30] or something like that. They could come and debate that with us. that that would be fine. Um, and in a way, several people made comments about the memorial post, which was why we then moved it and thought, Well, yes, it could be sensitive if you've just lost a loved one or that you've just been diagnosed yourself with cancer. Um, we've had a number of people sort of feel a bit not so good. Whereas other people are just spend all their time. They hardly look at the rest of the museum. They're busy looking over who was there, and they [01:32:00] have almost a morbid interest on who's on our dead list, Really? So you can't You can't win them in some of these instances, but I think a a nice memorial book and then building up. And when we've got so many people, then you do. Another one is possibly the best way to go. That's very time consuming, trying to get the information, but even just the birth and the death dates and preferably something where they lived or what they did or something. It's quite difficult. We've got a couple [01:32:30] of women who suicidal in the early days, and we have photographs of them, but we have so little information. Um, so I'm a bit loath to know what to do. But I, I think we need to keep them there and have them in the memorial book. But I guess if someone comes up with some information, at some point, we might be able to add it in anyway. You could just paste it in. So, yes, there's plenty. There's plenty of problems. Every project has more problems. What happens if [01:33:00] the trust dissolves or stops? Is there any contingency plan for this material to go somewhere else? Yes, it would be, Um, one would ask around for an appropriate museum. And it probably the Auckland Museum, Um, would be where it would be deposited. Um, and it would probably be weeded out. Certainly all the books and papers would go to LA Gas. That would make sense. Um, all [01:33:30] the bib biographical stuff. A lot of that will go Gans earlier. Anyway, we will only keep photocopies and copies of photos, Um, eventually, because we don't have the best storage facilities. Um, so that makes sense for all that to go. But until it's in some decent order, um, it's no point sending muddly bits down to LA Gas. I mean, it's volunteer run, too, And so it's no good just passing on things that are only half finished. [01:34:00] And so it's a case of getting something complete and then sending it off on why it's significant. You know what? It needs to be someone who did something in the community. Um, and who was out? Really? I don't know. There might be a case for someone who was very closeted for some particular reason, but I think that's the safest way to to have biographical stuff. But we often see bits and pieces in the newspaper and cut [01:34:30] out and think, Oh, she's a lesbian And she got a you know, uh, Ovation for doing something good in the community. We'll cut out that newspaper clipping and file it away, or whilst it's filed in a box under that alcohol or ageing or some other thing we have. All these boxes with labels on, too, are full of bits of paper, and that needs sorting. You mentioned, uh, right at the very start of the chat that the choosing of a name you didn't realise [01:35:00] the kind of implications of, of choosing a name and I'm assuming that's because you choose chose something like museum. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. What are the implications of like? I mean, if I'm not quite sure what the differences are between, like, say, an archive and a museum or a library. What? What? A library suggests that it's either a research library or a lending library. Um, we only have a research library we don't lend other [01:35:30] than to a bona fide researcher who's usually paid by us who can sometimes borrow books. Um, we, um, an archive we have You have to have really good, good, um, conservation requirements of temperature and humidity for, um, looking after paper. And I knew that as an artist about the problems with foxing on prints and things because I was a print maker for a long time. And all my early prints are no good. [01:36:00] Um, so you learn the hard way about acid on hands and things. You can see where people have touched them early on top of me as well as anybody else, um, and a museum. What I didn't know was the connotation. If you set yourself up as a museum that suddenly sticks their head up above the power of it and takes a big interest in what you might have. Um Also, Auckland Museum was [01:36:30] also interested that we had somebody's work, Um that they would be interested and I knew what they would do. They would put it out in some display, but nothing about lesbian. So, um, that made me more determined that it needed to be a separate entity. Um, it would be a shame for it to fold, because I see a large number of lesbians who are middle class who are reasonably well off who will be coming up to retirement [01:37:00] age in another 15 years. And it's a nice little hobby for them to be involved in. Um, they'll all need an interest. They'll live a lot longer than they expected for those that have maintained health. And so I think at the moment we're in this difficult phase of not probably having enough people in that category, a lot of still because they took a long time to even get a house because you had to have a you [01:37:30] know, even Lindsay Ray was saying the other day her father had to guarantee her mortgage when you were, and that was 1982. So we're on the back foot in terms of when we get to retirement. We don't have big funds, and so many of them will continue to work on or take on contract jobs and so on, possibly until they're closer to 70. But then we'll have a bigger population who will in fact be retired and will be wanting something to do. And he may have an interest in research or books or some [01:38:00] aspect of perhaps organising events, like whether it's a book club or discussion group or something on a regular basis. I think we will see more of those things happening again like we had in the early days. Perhaps. I mean, I'm hopeful that that will, uh, and the museum will fulfil that function. Certainly, Um, there's been lots. Lots of people have enjoyed the number of events that we've held in the wide variety of events and felt that it's brought the community back together a bit [01:38:30] and given more opportunity for older lesbians to get together. But now it seems it's very hard to attract younger lesbians. They museum seems old, and, um, not of interest to them. But when they come, they are completely overwhelmed by all the information and go away very happy. And and there tends to be a few more come after them. After we had about 12 from Unitech came. Then there was a A regular, uh, student sort of came [01:39:00] and wandered in to, um, check out the museum so the word of mouth sort of helps. We give out lots of brochures, but we don't get a big return from the big day out. I gave over 1000 brochures, and I haven't had anyone from who picked up a brochure there, um, that I talked to who's come in since then, So it's takes. It's a long trickle effect. Lots of people know about us on Facebook, but that's all they do. They they want. Oh, put [01:39:30] put up some more pictures on Facebook, and I'm reluctant to put too many pictures up or go online and just have a virtual museum because it's not the same as seeing an object and seeing all around an object of two dimensional three dimensional is quite different. And there's the whole atmosphere and the information on the wall. You can't put all that on Facebook or Twitter. We do do tweets, too. We have a Twitter account, so we're sort of up to speed. For some old people, [01:40:00] it sounds quite interesting. Uh, I, I mean, I suppose coming into this chat, I was thinking Oh, gosh, um, the idea of continually progressing continually growing is the kind of optimum, but actually on reflection. Now, after we've chatted, I'm thinking, is there anything wrong with an organisation that contracts and expands and contracts and expands depending on what the community wants? As long as it keeps going [01:40:30] in some form, it might take different forms at different stages. But if you wait 15 years, you'll get another surge of people coming through. Yes, I think it can vary. And also, um, there's nothing to say that the whole world won't swing to the right. Um, in times of poor economic times, fascism looks really good. And so, uh, lesbians and gay men will be more at risk, but particularly lesbians will be much more vulnerable in those sort of times. So they'll need some [01:41:00] sort of have some sort of where we can plot and plan into the middle of the night, so to speak. Um, so yes, but as well as that it could retrench so that, as I say, just just a small display of the collections and even rotating them if you haven't got enough display space, you know, I've thought about that. And while I'm looking for premises now, well, we all of us, four of us looking for premises, Um, we all have that in mind that we could That's seen as going backwards. [01:41:30] But it's also a way of the big thing is sustainability. And that's what my pledge is, really. And I think I think the trustees have got the general idea of sustainability, but they haven't quite seen. Partly because I've done so much work. They haven't realised how much work has gone into, you know, all the funding applications and so on. And I think, um, [01:42:00] it's a bit harder to get over to, um, people. I mean, certainly one or two people on the trust probably know that how much work I do, because they are also involved in organisations that do a lot of funding, and they know how difficult some departments are when you're trying to get funding from them. So, uh, yeah, I guess just to wrap up, could you bullet point the key things that somebody just starting out with [01:42:30] an idea like this, um, would be useful and and kind of giving to them some tips. The first one, they need a lot of energy. Um, you need to have an organisation that is set up in such a way that you can receive funding. Um, and you need to be able to account for all your funding Very well. So you need good governance. Um, and it needs [01:43:00] to be a project that has a community that, um, would, um, either use it or respond to it or favour it or something. You know, it's like, um I guess the ceramic museum that's being set up out at newly. Now, you wouldn't set that up on because there's no history of ceramics. And but there's a big history and crumb brick from [01:43:30] the very first brick works at the beginning of the establishment of anything out in newly, um, from colony colony times. So, uh, that makes sense. So you need to have a look of why you're doing something. You know, where you've come from, You know, it's like a canoe. Really? Yeah. You need to know where you paddled from to know where you're going to paddle to that sort of concept, I think is important to have it clearly in your mind. Um, and and lots of willing workers, willing [01:44:00] volunteers. Really? Um, and some good benefactors would be even better. I mean, that would be amazing. To actually own the ultimate would be if someone leaves us a building of either a flat that they've lived in, that either we could turn into a museum or that you could rent out and make yourself sustainable. Those are the things that are on the back of our mind. And we do have on our website about bequests. And [01:44:30] we've had a couple. Well, I see the radio lesbian radio as a bequest in terms of all the cassettes we got from them. And we had a small bequest from Bronwyn Dean. So, you know, we do say bequests are very nice. Very nice. Um, if, uh, you know, people remember us and our will and their wells, but, you know, it's, uh, again, people are nervous about mortality. I've discovered more [01:45:00] so than practically I am, I suppose. So, uh, having lived past all predictions, I, I, um I suppose I don't worry so much about it. And I can't think of anything else I do think you have to have. You do have to develop, um, rigorous, um, policies and ways to call it policies, like rules. Really? Um, about how your organisation is to run and [01:45:30] so on so that you don't end up with difficulties. Um, either with someone with their hand in the till or racing off with all the petrol vouchers or things like that. I mean, those are little little things that but they give an organisation a bad name if you have to, you know, catch someone doing things like that. Um, yeah. And that you don't break rules in terms of that, you don't do things out of [01:46:00] ignorance. Like one of the problems we have, For instance, in the conservation area that you really need the temperature fairly even. And, of course, in the winter time you come in and the building we're in now it's nine degrees. So basically, I said, do what you have to do with your coat on and everything and go home and do other things on the net. Um, otherwise, you are heating the room up and letting it go down again. And [01:46:30] that's really bad for things. It's better to stay at nine degrees over the whole day or slightly go up and then down to 12 and down again, then to you. Come and boost it up to 20 with all the heat is on and the big electricity bill and, um, for what you know. So we tend to, uh, last year I think we closed in July and August, and we will probably do the same this year unless we've got a very insulated or automatically heated space. [01:47:00] So, yeah, I can't think of anything else, really.
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