The Quilt: An audio archive for the future!

A collaboration between Queer Britain – the UK’s first and only LGBTQ+ museum – and Aunt Nell (The Log Books), new podcast The Quilt is a collection of living memories of queer Britain & Northern Ireland. The first episode was published at the beginning of November and we recommended it as our New Pod of the Week in newsletter #242, so we reached out to hosts and producers of The Quilt, Tash Walker and Adam Zmith, to find out more about the podcast…

Who are you and what’s your new podcast about?

BOTH: We’re Tash Walker (they/she) and Adam Zmith (he/him) and we’re the hosts and producers of The Quilt, and also co-founders and directors of our production company Aunt Nell.

The Quilt is a documentary podcast that captures living memories of LGBTQ+ people across the UK, made in partnership with Queer Britain museum.

We’ve been travelling across the UK to capture these living memories outside of the big cities – trying to recentre how we understand and look at history, specifically queer history. Each episode focuses on a different region across the UK, with 3 to 4 different stories. We like to think of it as an audio exhibition open to anyone, at any time of day – an audio archive for the future!

Tash Walker (they/she) and Adam Zmith (he/him), hosts and producers of The Quilt. Photograph: India Latham

Can you tell us a little more about Queer Britain, your partner for this podcast?

BOTH: Queer Britain is the first and only national LGBTQ+ museum in the UK. Its mission is to reclaim and preserve queer people’s stories and objects, and to inspire by celebrating and educating about LGBTQ+ lives, impact, and culture. Since opening in May 2022, over 100,000 visitors have been welcomed to the museum. It is an essential place for all regardless of sexuality or gender identity, to find out about the culture they have been born into, have chosen or seek to understand. In 2022, Queer Britain won the Museum Association’s Best Small Museum Project Award. The museum is located in Granary Square in London’s King’s Cross.

How did the idea for The Quilt come about?

BOTH: The idea for The Quilt came about initially because, although Queer Britain is a museum for LGBTQ+ history, stories and people across the UK, it’s based in Kings Cross, London. And we approached Queer Britain to talk to them about exactly that, that if they were to be truly representative of the UK, they needed to travel outside of London to where LGBTQ+ people are across the regions, rather than expecting people to come to London. What better way to do that than a podcast! How can you be truly representative of an entire nation’s LGBTQ+ community and stories if you are based in London?

Working with Queer Britain we found some funding, applied, and were granted it! The podcast was one output of a wider project, Stories + Strategies: Diversifying our national LGBTQ+ heritage funded by Mindsets + Missions. The core of the project was to help ensure that queer stories are preserved and respected as important parts of the UK’s history by challenging the narrative of whose stories qualify as “history” and whose don’t. We then travelled across the UK to eight different places. In each region we partnered with a local institution, GLAM (gallery, library, archive, and museum) alongside a community partner. We held workshops inviting people into the GLAMs as a first step to try and integrate LGBTQ+ stories and people into these spaces, whilst holding those people within those spaces on behalf of Queer Britain, as queer facilitators. The inputs from those workshops, alongside surveys, all fed into a toolkit that was written by Queer Britain for GLAMs. An additional output of the project was the podcast. To demonstrate how we can use oral histories to capture people’s lives and memories. The importance of the everyday as much as those big moments in queer liberation.

We each then went back to four of the regions and recorded people we had met, or those we had been directed towards. It was a truly amazing experience.

The idea for the name came from one of the first workshops we ran in Norfolk at the Millennium Library in partnership with Queer Norfolk, in Norwich, home to the Trans Joy Community Quilt. All these different stories, each one a patch to be sewn together as one big, and ever-expanding quilt, with a nod back to our history too, with the AIDS quilts of the late 80s.

The podcast also features folk music composed exclusively for the series by Rhiannon Takel, who we met at a workshop in Wales. Rhiannon’s music has heavy roots in folk, and really helps to enrich the stories in a beautiful, transporting sound design.

Beau (they/them) and Alice (they/them) with the Trans Joy Quilt, which is the inspiration for the name of the podcast (episode 1)

Do you have a favourite episode of the podcast – one you’re proudest of or most excited for people to hear?

Tash: We produced four episodes each, but we both ran the workshops across the eight different regions. Adam will tell you how emotional and attached I became to everyone we met, so this is a difficult and impossible question for me to answer. Of the four I produced each one taught me something new. The episode set in the North West looked at faith and queerness, which I found particularly affecting having been brought up Catholic, but no longer part of the church. The people I met were amazing and rethinking how you can hold queerness and faith together. In the North East I was shown the power in being proud of where you come from and I met many amazing young trans people there. The people in Northern Ireland taught me so much about Irish history and made me realise how hidden so much of that is in our wider history that we speak about across the UK. Then the last place I visit in the series is the South West. This was a very personal one for me, as it is where I grew up. Returning to this region and finding myself submerged in its beautiful queerness, made me fully ecstatic but also heartbroken for what I didn’t have when I was younger. So long answer! And of course not answering your question at all.

Adam: I really love the episode about the people in Wales doing the work to make sure the Welsh language includes LGBTQ+ people and their experiences. From an activist in the 80s through to a trans poet performing his work today, their stories really touched me, and I think language is often something forgotten about in the fight for rights. Perhaps people forget because language is like wallpaper, but really it’s the building we all live inside.

Tash: The Wales episode also features a bonus segment with our composer Rhiannon – who reveals some of the secrets of the sounds of The Quilt music!

Left: Steve (he/him) at Norwich Pride (episode 1)
Middle: Serena (she/her) at home in Norwich (episode 1)
Right: Adelaide (she/her) in St James and Emmanuel Church, Didsbury (episode 2)

Did you learn anything that surprised you when making this podcast?

Tash: I think just how touched and moved I’ve been in making it. I really felt enriched by visiting all these places and hearing everyone’s stories. But it’s also made me readdress a lot of my own history, and the importance of capturing it in the words of those who’ve lived it, everywhere.

Adam: I didn’t know queer people were writing and singing queer sea shanties in Cornwall – that was a revelation. They sound sexy and cosy and so much fun!

What are your plans for the podcast moving forward? Do you have a set number of episodes in mind or will you keep going as long as there are still stories to tell?

BOTH: Yes we have 8 episodes, so they are coming out weekly all the way through to the end of the year. In terms of a second series, I think this is something that we’d be really interested in doing if someone wants to fund the project… we’re all ears!! There are so many more patches to collect!

What is it about podcasts that appeals to you?

Tash: I’ve been listening to podcasts for years, and I love the intimacy of them. How it feels like a dialogue or something between you and what you’re hearing. It also allows for a lot of imagination, not having visuals, the listener is invited in to play with what they’re hearing as part of the experience. I think when you are making podcasts, or conducting interviews, people maybe find the microphone less invasive than a camera. You get real intimacy in those moments, and you really hear that in the audio.

Adam: I agree with what Tash says, as a listener. But as a maker, I love them because it’s affordable and accessible to produce them, when you’re small independent makers like we are. We couldn’t make a TV series like this, but the podcast is just as rich!

Saha (she/her) with her favourite butterfly at the Butterfly House in Williamson Park (episode 2)

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?

Tash: My all-time favourite podcast that started in the early days was and is Short Cuts, which of course has recently been discontinued by the BBC. A decision that I just cannot understand, and it’s been great to see the audio community rise up in support of such a wonderful project. Short Cuts by nature is an incubator for creativity and play, and there was no hierarchy to it, many people had their first audio pieces broadcast on it, myself included. And I learnt so much from listening to the episodes, not only about the worlds of audio, and all the creativity but also what it feels like to listen. Thankfully there are 12 years’ worth of episodes for us all to dip back into. In addition to that, I think Making Gay History, Blossom Trees and Burnt Out Cars, Call Me Mother are all favourites of mine. And if anyone is into sound, then I’d recommend Field Recordings. Oh and Press Play Turn On, made by a certain someone that won Best New Podcast at the BPAs 2024!

Adam: Haha, thanks for the plug, Tash. Press Play Turn On was one I co-produced, along with Leeanne Coyle. I just wanted to give a shout out to Operator (by Tina Horn) and The Bachelor of Buckingham Palace – as you can tell, I’m biased towards documentary podcasts.

What advice would you give to someone just starting their own podcast, based on your experiences?

Tash: Just go for it. That’s what we did. Adam and I met in 2019, and shortly after on a shoestring budget, started making The Log Books (with our third producer Shivani Dave). Easier said than done, I know, especially in such a competitive market but if it’s a good story or strong idea, people will start to listen. Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there! I’d also say listen – listen to podcasts, radio shows, and audio and try and hear what you aren’t hearing. What is it you can bring that is different? What can you say that isn’t being said already?

We’ve heard that there might be a book based on The Log Books podcast in the future, are you able to tell us anything about that?

Tash: Yes there will, we’ve just handed in the second draft…! It’s going to be published by Faber but we’re not sure exactly when yet. And the writing of that has been an incredible experience in itself, especially alongside the making of The Quilt.

Adam: It’s very much a book, as opposed to the podcast. I love both mediums, but books do give you the space and scope to say a lot more, to construct your thoughts and express them in a deep way. That’s what’s happened with the writing of this book, with us reflecting on the impact that making The Log Books had on us, as middle-generation queer people in the UK who work in history. It’s been fascinating to dig into the history again, but this time while also thinking about who we are within that process…

Where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about you?

We’re on social media @TashWalker85 (Instagram / X) and @Adam.Zmith (Instagram / X) and also our production company is @auntnell_ (Instagram / X) and there’s our website too but if you really want to find out more about us – give The Log Books and The Quilt a listen! 🙂

Listen to The Quilt on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other popular podcast apps >>