“Redcar Peeps” is a project produced by Tees Valley Arts and funded by Historic England’s “History in the Making‘ grant. History in the Making is a grant that enables underrepresented young people (aged 13-25) to discover, engage, and connect with their local stories and ensure the history that matters to them is not forgotten by using different art forms to achieve this.
Our project, Redcar Peeps, focused on the queer history of Redcar. We realised that our town has a seemingly empty LGBTQIA archive and record. We wanted to question this narrative, and recognise with the ever-changing and open minded demographic of young people how queerness has always existed, especially within working-class coastal communities.
Through Redcar Peeps, we were able to hire 6 talented researchers to work with us to uncover this history. Our researchers on this project were: Cai Watson O’Shea, Matthew Dowell, Connor Kacperski, Zoe Sands, Grace Barnes and Megan Warriner. Using their work, we hosted several workshops with our youth group “Blooming Youth Collective”, including a Peep Board painting workshop with members of the public at the very first Cleveland Pride in Saltburn! The end of this project resulted in 2 seaside “Peep Boards” created by artist Chloe Kacperski, an exhibition at the Redcar Palace venue called “4000 Years: Queering the History of Redcar”, as well as public access to the research unearthed throughout this process for anyone to view.
Our engagement with Blooming Youth Collective and the research throughout this project helped inform artist Chloe Kacperski on the eventual designs of the Peep Boards. These Peep Boards were on display during the “4000 Years: Queering the History of Redcar”, alongside work from Matthew Dowell and displays featuring the research unearthed during this project.
Our permanent place marker is on display in the window of Redcar Palace, and features a scannable QR code to access research from the Redcar Peeps project.