Happy Birthday RVT was a Re-Dock creative research project I managed celebrating the Royal Vauxhall Tavern’s historic importance as a site for LGBT culture, innovation in entertainment and influence on wider British popular culture. Framed around the venues 11th birthday the project was an opportunity to share, reflect on and learn about the last 60 years of social change for LGBT+ people and how this has affected attitudes and changed lives in the UK.

The project took a number of forms, through oral history, archive footage, performance, artworks walkabouts and film.

As the project finished the RVT was sold to property developers and the collected material was used to help kick start a campaign to save it and it actually became the first venue to be listed by English Heritage as a building of historic importance.

The project website is here.

The continuing campaign to save the RVT is called RVT Future