‘People came out of the closets and into the streets’: How a photographer captured Nottingham’s 90s gay revolution

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A man dancing in a nightclub

Linden's 90s work has since been exhibited at the Grundy Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, and the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum as part of the Museum of Youth Culture

In 2020 a professional photographer started digging through his attic in Harrogate. Bored during the first Covid lockdowns, he began to leaf through thousands of pictures he’d taken over the years – many of which he’d forgotten existed. After posting a few online to try to connect with the past, Stuart Linden Rhodes began an online reunion which captured the hearts of members of Nottingham’s gay community. George Palmer-Soady looks at how an unlikely social history project is reviving the story of how Nottingham came out in all the colour of the 1990s.

‘Out and About with Linden’ was a popular magazine column capturing the vibrant LGBTQ+ scenes of cities across the North and the Midlands – including Nottingham.

Appearing during the 90s in magazines All Points North and the Gay Times, the stories saw a roving reporter named only as ‘Linden’ spend time in different clubs and pubs, photographing and reviewing each city’s nightlife.

By day, Stuart Linden Rhodes worked as a teacher in a further education college in Yorkshire. However, due to Section 28 – a law passed in 1988 by the Conservative Government which stopped councils and schools “promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” – he used a pseudonym for his photography work.

Stuart regularly visited Nottingham to cover gay events, pubs, and clubs, capturing the city’s vibrancy and colour. Now 67, ‘Linden’ will return to showcase his photo library and tell the stories behind them at an event at the Nottingham Central Library on February 6.

Two men in a nightclub smiling and dancing
Stuart regularly visited Nottingham to cover queer events, pubs, and clubs as a roving reporter, capturing the city’s vibrancy and colour (Image: Stuart Linden Rhodes)

And for Stuart, there are plenty of fond memories of Nottingham’s nightlife in the 90s.

“It was a really vibrant scene,” he says.

“It was vying with Birmingham for who was going to have the bigger scene. There was so much going on – a slur of venues right across the city.

“In terms of support groups and services, Nottingham was way up front. It had a specific Lesbian support group, a transgender support group, and a Christian movement very early on.”

He would regularly visit and review pubs and clubs such as the Admiral Duncan, on Lower Parliament Street, the Forest Tavern, on Mansfield Road, and Gatsby’s, on Huntingdon Street – which have all since closed.

Stuart would also cover monthly one-night club events such as Nero’s at the Deluxe nightclub on St James’s Street, which he said would see thousands of people coming into Nottingham from nearby towns on coaches.

Stuart began digitising the thousands of photos due to boredom in the Covid lockdown (Image: Stuart Linden Rhodes)

He even captured the moment fledgling boyband Take That visited Nottingham when they played at the Astoria (now Ocean) club in 1991.

“What happened in the 90s was incredible,” Stuart continues.

“In the 1980s most of Britain was still three or four years behind London. In cities like Nottingham, the only real places people could go were little seedy backstreet bars.

“The breweries wouldn’t put any money into the pubs because the consensus was ‘it’s only the gays, they don’t matter’. But in the nineties, they started pouring money into the gay community and everybody was talking about it.

“I always say it’s like queer people came out of the closet and into the streets – they were more visible and that was partly on the back of the AIDS epidemic. That’s when you started to see places like Nottingham flourish and venues open up.”

Stuart even captured the moment fledgling boyband Take That visited Nottingham when they played at the Astoria (now Ocean) club in 1991 (Image: Stuart Linden Rhodes)

As the 90s faded and many of Nottingham’s gay venues closed, Stuart put his largely undeveloped 35mm film photos away in the attic. More than 9,000 images sat collecting dust until the Covid pandemic in 2020 when “out of sheer boredom,” he began digitising the photos and posting them onto Instagram.

That account now has 13k followers, with many of the subjects of the photographs finding themselves and their friends in the images. Stuart says it has reunited old friends who’d previously lost contact, by people finding each other in the comment sections.

Linden’s 90s work has since been exhibited at the Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, Manchester Art Gallery, and the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, as part of the Museum of Youth Culture.

With many of the clubs and pubs Stuart used to frequent now closed, Nottingham has a lot fewer specific LGBTQ+ venues compared to the 90s – although many other venues have long since become more welcoming and tolerant.

Two men smiling to the camera in a pub
Stuart says his Instagram posts have reunited old friends who’d previously lost contact (Image: Stuart Linden Rhodes)

Stuart argues the loss of some specific gay venues is positive and reflects wider acceptance.

“I’m 67, and my generation – we sneaked off when we could and went to the next town to go to a gay bar where we might not be seen by anybody that we knew and could stay safe.

“These days, young people fortunately are by and large able to turn around to their friends and say ‘I think I’m queer,’ people will reply: ‘that’s great, are we all going out on Saturday night’.

A man standing by a sign
Now 67, ‘Linden’ will return to Nottingham to showcase his photo library and the stories behind them at an event at Nottingham Central Library at 6:30pm on February 6 (Image: Stuart Linden Rhodes)

“They don’t need the refuge of an exclusive queer environment that I needed. I think there will always be a need for those places because there will always be people who need them and want them.

“Now queer people can go into ordinary bars and clubs with their heterosexual friends and nobody cares.”

The event at Nottingham Central Library will take place in collaboration with the Notts Queer History Archive.

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