We are a collaborative, community-based effort devoted to documenting, preserving, and researching the history of queer and trans culture on the California Central Coast. Our project values the specificity of individual lives, and so we mean the terms “queer and trans” to encompass not only the recognized range of historically marginalized LGBTQI+ identities, but also the lives of those that do not readily fit into intelligible categories of gender or sexuality.
When not simply overlooked, queer and trans lives have been actively excluded from the records preserved in institutions of official public memory. However, much of the historical information pertaining to queer and trans culture survives in the memories of people. For that reason, oral history interviews serve as a major focus of our work.
The Archives
The links below will take you to our two completed projects.
The Vintage Gala Interviews comprise a series of oral history interviews conducted by members of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of the Central Coast (now the Gala Pride and Diversity Center) in 2006 that we made available to the public between 2018 and 2020.
The LGBTQI+ Elders Project consists of a series of original oral history interviews conducted by our team and made publicly accessible between 2020 and 2021. This work was made possible by support from the California Humanities.
Latest News
- CCQAP Participates in SLOPride 2021, Featured on KCBX
- Central Coast Queer Archive Featured in GALA Pride & Diversity Newsletter, Highlighting Contributions of Student Interns
- CCQAP Earns “Quick Grant” from California Humanities for Oral History Project Featuring LGBTQ+ Elders of the Central Coast
This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit: www.calhum.org
Fiscal Sponsorship provided by the International Documentary Association