The Singapore Queer Memory Project (SQMP) was launched on 24 December 2024. It was a yearlong series of programmes at Proud Spaces that reimagined collective memory-making - What stories would a library of queer memories hold? What artefacts would belong in a queer museum shaped by the pasts and current lives of LGBTQ+ Singaporeans?
Queer individuals were invited to sit with them for an interview and share: What did they remember about growing up as they did? What would they like others to know about them and the people they cared for? LGBTQ+ Singaporeans who grew up in the 1960s to 1980s were especially welcome to share their life stories, especially those within minority cultures. These stories would form the basis of their oral histories.
Volunteer interviewers were also sought to help bring this vision to life. No prior experience was needed as training would be provided.
Origins[]
The seed of SQMP was an admission by Jason Wee, the Proud Spaces exco lead on the project, which grew into a question: “I only know so much about where we came from and what we’ve done. How can we remember together, when the culture we grow and live in is content to let us forget?”
The Project is an effort to learn, and to learn together, from each other. From the countless others who have kept records, mementos and keepsakes, who have photographed, archived and shared, SQMP will learn and continue these efforts in our its capacities, with current technologies. The aim is to build a library of memories that help LGBTQ+ Singaporeans imagine this island nation as a space where they can live differently. After all, spaces in which we belong are also spaces of history.
Curation process[]
The Memory Timeline is the result of countless hours of work done by its team of amazing research volunteers who combed through the National Library’s newsprint archives, the National Archives of Singapore, both published and unpublished academic research papers, online resources, as well as firsthand testimonies. Supplementary research was also done at British colonial archives. It looked for sources about the social, legal and political forces that have impacted the community, especially the setbacks and milestones of progress that LGBTQ+ people have experienced in Singapore. It tried, as far as possible, to verify each entry we curated with more than one source.
From a larger set of over 200 entries, it selected a smaller number to highlight — around 60 for the wall mural at Proud Spaces and around 100 for the digital version of the Memory Timeline. It acknowledges the incompleteness of their history, and the ongoing excavation and recovery of those memories that still need to be done, to spark both conversations about and contributions to fill any gaps.
As part of this process, it has also begun interviewing individuals whose lives and histories have previously gone undocumented and underexamined. These form a basis for the ongoing revision and expansion of what it has learned thus far, as well as a set of resources that it plans to share with everyone as reels, podcasts and oral history recordings. Stakeholders are urged look out for the subsequent release of these life-expanding materials.
SQMP acknowledges again and builds on the amazing work done by community historians and volunteers who put together resources that they have generously shared with the community. These include, but are not limited to, Dr Roy Tan and the Singapore LGBT Encyclopedia Wiki[1], as well as Olivia Paramour and the Timeline of LGBTQ+ History in Singapore.
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Acknowledgements[]
This article was written by Roy Tan.