In a collaborative effort among LGBTQ+ Island residents, Out on An Island signifies the first ever project dedicated to local LGBTQ+ oral history on the Isle of Wight. Created in remarkable circumstances, it celebrates a close-knit community surviving together in the face of exclusion, prejudice and misrepresentation. The result is an inspiring collection of interviews from LGBTQ+ people concerning their lives on the Island.
Each interviewee has been skillfully captured through photographic portraits by Jon Habens. Each portrait sought to capture a character snapshot of the interviewees in familiar settings, either at their homes or local areas. Each case was approached from the starting point of listening to the interview and trying to create an image sensitive to the mood and tone of those words.
Visitors can listen to these oral histories gaining a new perspective of what was/is to be LGBTQ+ on the Isle of Wight, where expressions of non-normative sexualities and genders have always been present.
Out On An Island is a project produced by StoneCrabs Theatre with support of the National Heritage Lottery Fund. The project has researched and unearthed 100 years of LGBTQ+ History on the Isle of Wight. The research, alongside the Oral Histories, are available in book format published by Medina Books available online and all major bookshops.
