Glasgow Sunflowers celebrate heritage and local community actions

Over the past year, members of the Glasgow Sunflowers Baseball Club have been working with us through the Our Heritage, Our Future  programme to create a scrapbook capturing the ethos of the club and its participants and showcasing how identify, sport and heritage intersect.

The scrapbook will be entered into national archives to ensure community voices are part of our national heritage collections.

At a celebration event on 29 November in the Govanhill Neighbourhood Centre, members of the southside community baseball team, which is a team for women, non-binary and all trans people, were presented with one of Archaeology Scotland’s Bronze Heritage Hero Awards.

Additionally, three individual Bronze Awards and two Silver Awards were presented to participants who were particularly active during sessions held with a variety of local and national organisations, including OurStory Scotland, National Library of Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland, Glasgow Women’s Library and Glasgow Life.

The project, which started in August 2024, supported participants to engage with, explore and discuss how identity and heritage intersect and to learn about archiving and conservation processes.  Members visited a variety of internationally important archives and heard from those working with amazing collection items focused on marginalised groups and resistance – including 19^th and 20^th century photo albums and expedition records from the Ladies’ Scottish Climbing Club; items from the Lesbian Archive at the Glasgow Women’s Library and early 20^th Century suffragette banners at Glasgow Museums Resource Centre.

Lisa Snedden, Our Heritage, Our Future Coordinator, said: “The value of our places and their heritage is so important in shaping our identity, and it has been wonderful to work with members of the Glasgow Sunflowers Baseball Club to encourage interest in existing heritage collections and inspire action to record and produce a resource that will tell the story of the Glasgow Sunflowers in 2024 to future generations.

“The awards we have presented today celebrate the achievements of the team and individuals who worked closely with us and OurStory Scotland, who have been collecting, recording and archiving LGBT+ history in Scotland for over 20 years, to capture and create the scrapbook which we look forward to submitting to the national archives.

“Through the Our Heritage, Our Future programme we work with communities to protect natural, built and intangible heritage for future generations – and this is just what the scrapbook will do.”

One of the project participants commented, “I hadn’t realised how much of recent history has been recorded and how easily accessible it is. The idea that the story of the Sunflowers (and those who comprise it) could be stored in a large institution legitimises our history in a way that floored me. I have seen library archives as something the studied academics to pore over - not as a touchstone for a curious individual or community group. It felt surprisingly reassuring to know that this will be accessible to whoever chooses to look for it.”

Our Heritage, Our Future has been made possible with support from Historic Environment Scotland and The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with thanks to National Lottery Players.

The project supports the ambitions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with a focus on Quality Education, Gender Equality and Sustainable Cities and Communities.