When Nasir Montalvo moved to Kansas City in 2021, they wanted to connect with the Black queer community here. But their Google searches came up more or less empty.
The Gay and Lesbian Archives of Mid-America proved a good place to start. But the Archives had no plans to digitize any of its materials. So Montalvo decided to do it themself.
The result is "{B/qKC}," which explores the history of the Black and queer community in Kansas City. It's an archive that lives digitally and in installations around Kansas City.
{B/qKC} is a part of Stories For All, a digital storytelling project based at the University of Kansas that centers on gathering "marginalized and suppressed histories," according to its website. The project, which is hosting a free festival in Lawrence, Kansas, this week, has more than 40 community partners.
Also among them is Rachel Schwaller, a multi-term lecturer at KU whose "Unsettled Lawrence" project tells a history of Lawrence through the lens of encampments and houseless populations.
"All of these different groups, they're thinking very locally in terms of community stories — the stories that have not been valued, and groups that have not had the resources to preserve the stories," said Giselle Anatol, the principal investigator for "Stories For All" and director of the Hall Center for the Humanities at KU.
The Stories For All Festival runs April 18-20 in downtown Lawrence. More information is available on the project's website.
- Giselle Anatol, director of the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas and principal investigator, Stories For All
- Rachel Schwaller, "Unsettled Lawrence" project
- Nasir Anthony Montalvo, "{B/q KC}" project
