This Pride month we are celebrating ten years since the V&A launched regularly-scheduled, free, volunteer-led drop-in LGBTQIA+ guided tours. Since the launch, the first of its kind the UK, we have won many awards and thousands of people have joined the tours to share our joy at uncovering millennia of queer stories nestling in the object collections.
The tours were established to uncover and share LGBTQIA+ history and have themselves become a small part of that history. In this blog, some of our guides share their reasons for doing the tours and what they have come to mean to us.
In February 2025, to mark LGBTQIA+ History Month and the 10th anniversary of the LGBTQIA+ volunteer tours, the V&A acquired two new prints by artist Gemma Curtis.
The prints were generously donated to the V&A by the LGBTQIA+ Volunteer Guides, using part of the prize money from one of their awards. The acquisition of these prints serves as a wonderful way for us to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the LGBTQIA+ volunteer tours, which launched in 2015. This was the first time a major museum in London had added a volunteer-led and guided LGBTQIA+ object tour to its permanent tour schedule. Until recently, the lives of LGBTQIA+ people were largely invisible or overlooked in museums, and our volunteer tours have helped to spotlight the untold stories of this community throughout history.
From the start, the project was supported by the V&A management team, and the long-established LGBTQ Working Group. To create the new tour, a team of volunteers met in early 2015 to select objects. Once chosen, they were then woven into an accessible tour that would take visitors on a journey through the V&A’s vast collections, uncovering the hidden stories of diverse gender and sexual identities across time, place and culture. Objects on the tours range from sculpture, paintings, photography, jewellery, ceramics, furniture, fashion, costumes and posters, all the way to postage stamps!
We hope you will join us on a tour soon. Tours run on the last Saturday of each month at 4pm (except in December), with occasional extras for special events. Search ‘LGBTQIA+ Tour’ on this page for more information.
Jack Shoulder
LGBTQIA+ Guide and V&A Guides’ Committee rep Jack Shoulder:
“LGBTQIA+ people have always existed; across time, across space, and across cultures. Our stories, our achievements and our presence can be found all over the V&A; sometimes a whisper in a quiet gallery and sometimes with all the flash of a theatrical performance. Our tours give us space to share, celebrate and remember as we explore the museum with our tour-goers.
“Being a guide on the V&A’s LGBTQIA+ tours has helped me to connect to my queer ancestors, open up the museum more and more to the LGBQTIA+ community and encourage those who have come along on our tours to see things from a new perspective.
“Alongside sharing better known people from queer history, like the drag queen Divine, artist Gluck or Queen James I/VI, we explore queer possibilities in more familiar figures; could we consider Artemis, who actively rejected romance and relationships as potential ACE/ARO? Once we learn that Narcissus had no idea what he looked like, is his a story of unrequited queer love?
“For me, these tours are a celebration. Of course we admire the artistic accomplishments of our community, but also our strength, resilience and perseverance. We have always been here. We thrive. The tours acknowledge and bring to light queer figures from the past who had their stories hidden and find those moments of connection that bring our community together.
“There is an incredible power in sharing these histories; discovering a tiny golden coin showing the Emperor Elagabalus, a trans figure from thousands of years ago, bonding over a Princess Diana commemorative mug and remembering her allyship during the HIV/AIDs epidemic and reflecting on the history, meaning and symbolism in our progress pride flag, which is flying in the gallery all year round.
“We have always been here, and we always will be.”
Sara Stewart
LGBTQIA+ Guide Sara Stewart has found personal meaning through sharing on the tours.
“The last eight years as an LGBTQ+ tour guide have been full of so many amazing moments. The excitement of finding new objects; seeing parents coming along on tours with their kids to support them; wearing our most colourful and sparkly outfits for the emotional first tour back after lockdown. I couldn’t hope to volunteer alongside a more brilliant and supportive bunch of people than my fellow guides and I’m inspired everyday by their dedication and generosity with their time and knowledge.
“We may be the ones spreading knowledge, but I learn so much doing these tours! On a personal level, one of the things I was missing in my own life when I became a guide was a sense of history and belonging around being asexual and it has brought me so much joy to bring that into my tours. I’ll always remember the times ACE and ARO visitors have come to talk to me afterwards, so excited to have finally heard stories that related to them.
“One of my favourite objects is the Bodhisattva of compassion, Guanyin, who can be read as gender fluid and is able to transform their appearance to reflect the experience and identity of each person they meet. I always think of Guanyin when I start a tour because I hope we can do something similar – transforming the V&A for our visitors so that they can see themselves in the collections.”
Tony Mollett
Tony Mollett is one of the founders of the tours. Here are his memories of the start of it all:
“Soon after joining the V&A as a front of house Volunteer I went on Bird-la-Bird’s 2014 ‘Swoosh’ around the ‘Queer People’s knick-knack emporium’ during LGBT History month. This opened my eyes to the many queer stories existing in the museum, but which were often hidden, and the need to look at objects from a LGBTQ perspective. I was inspired by ‘Swoosh’, by the V&A’s ‘Out on Display’ trail and by our museum’s LGBT Working Group meetings to become one of the first four volunteers on the V&A’s LGBTQIA+ guide team.
“June 2015 saw my first tour and, with peer guides Dan and Morag, we had over 100 visitors join us that day. In at the deep end but with help and advice from the Chairs of the Working Group afterwards, I soon settled my nerves! The enthusiasm from tour visitors and the active support from V&A Management over the last 10 years has supported the initial aim of the tour to give a greater sense of identity and ownership to LGBTQ visitors.
“The tours also gave me confidence and personal development to become a regular weekly V&A tour guide.
“My particular memories are of us winning the London Museums Volunteering Award, the Kensington & Chelsea Volunteer Award and the Regional Marsh Award for Museum Learning. Perhaps my highlight was the Facebook/i-Newspaper live event during 2017 LGBT History month with over 11,000 views of our tour that day.
“Since moving out of London I’ve stopped being a regular LGBTQ guide but have continued to support the expanded group by mentoring and assessing new guides.”
Cas Bradbeer
LGBTQIA+ Cas Bradbeer just cannot get enough of guiding.
“I am so grateful to the LGBTQIA+ Guide team for welcoming me while I was still a student. I had been hunting for museum experience but had struggled to find opportunities that allowed me to research collections and share my interpretations. With my mentor, we began exploring objects’ queer stories and I knew immediately that this was the place for me.
“Several years on, now in a full-time museum job, I love guiding so much I’m still coming in on my weekends to give V&A visitors a taste of queer history.
“I enjoy exploring narratives about objects, and it’s particularly rewarding to do so when you’re there to witness people’s smiles and hear their thoughts as they react. My interest in others’ perspectives led to one of the most exciting experiences I’ve had as a guide – running a personal project to document and share trans people’s responses to the V&A’s displays. Such examples say so much about how queer histories lie not only in the objects themselves but also the associations we draw from them.
“Bringing research together with personal responses, LGBTQIA+ tours are a brilliant platform for learning about our past and exploring what we make of it today.”
