Friends of Queer History’s grants awarded to grassroots actors

Friends of Rainbow History awarded grants to ten grassroots actors to promote queer history related activities and build networks. The decisions emphasized the importance to queer history, locality, concrete feasibility, community work, and the breadth of impact, timeliness, and transience.

On 5 October 2023, Friends of Queer History (Sateenkaarihistorian ystävät ry) opened a call for grants for grassroots actors who wanted to organise activities related to queer history. With these grants, the association wanted to support activities that highlight local, lesser known queer history.

We decided to award ten acceptable applications 500 EUR each. Applicants could be associations, communities, working groups or individuals. The grant could be awarded for scientific, artistic or community activities, but not for commercial purposes. The application call also encouraged consideration of ethics and good practices in promoting equality and safety.

In advance, we dared to hope that we might receive the full ten applications that could be awarded the money. The final result exceeded our expectations: within the two and a half week application period, we received 27 high quality applications from individuals and associations of all sizes and from a variety of groups and community actors, with a wide range of sizes, focuses and sectors, presenting interesting and important project ideas. Grants were sought for activities such as commemorative events, artistic work and its presentations, events and gatherings of minorities within minorities, discussions and informative events, documentation and archiving of community activities and activism, etc.

The Friends of Queer History board, which considered the applications at its meeting at the end of October 2023, had to really consider the criteria and priorities for the grant decisions. The pivotal criteria were the project’s relevance to queer history, locality, concrete feasibility, communality and extent of impact, topicality and transience. We also considered the importance of our grant to the successful implementation of the project and prioritised applicants who would benefit significantly from our small grant. 

Some applications that were not chosen to receive a grant were only indirectly related to history and hoped for support for generally queer-themed artistic work, peer-to-peer workshops or cultural events, for example. While such applications were not considered to fall within the remit of our association, they were nevertheless identified as valuable and worthwhile projects.

It is noteworthy that funding of just five hundred euros can enable significant activities and events that benefit the wider community and the field of Finnish queer history and culture. Especially for volunteers and small associations, even a small amount of support is important.

We hope that larger and more established organisations will be inspired and see here an opportunity to bring more diversity and queer history into their own activities, and consider their own possibilities to provide support and resources to small local actors. The knowledge, vision and content ideas of these experts, activists and artists are invaluable. In what ways could organisations – museums, libraries, archives, municipalities, larger-scale organisations – join forces with them to collect, produce, store and present the lost and hidden knowledge of queer history?

Friends of Queer History awarded grants to the following actors:

Feministinen sarjakuvatoiminta (Feminist comics action): cataloging of their queer zine collection for the use of researchers and others

Marja Valkama: commemorative event of 1990’s hlbtq restaurant-bar Nice Place

ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS (Chris Gylee & Aslan) with Nadja Leham and Helmi Räisänen: a monthly queer history reading and research group in Outokumpu

Pinkkimusta Helsinki -kollektiivi (Pink & Black Helsinki collective): recollecting and gathering documentation of collective organizing

Queerfeministinen kinky-yhteisö (Queer feminist kinky community): a workshop and zine documenting the community’s activities

Regnbågsallians Svenskfinland rf: the 20th anniversary of the association; interviews with founders for a history publication

Stella Massa: a Karelian culture themed event for queer people

Trans Library Helsinki: a pilot event for the new Trans Library Helsinki initiative

Transpolitiikka-aktivistiryhmä: a zine workshop and event for trans encounters 

Wanda Holopainen: documenting ballroom events in Helsinki

Further information:

Sateenkaarihistorian ystävät ry

info@sateenkaarihistoria.fi