Grupo Arco-Íris receives certificate for promoting LGBTI+ social memory

The Grupo Arco-Íris de Cidadania LGBTI+, which turned 30 this year, was certified this week by the Brazilian Institute of Museums (IBAM) as a point of social memory. Recognition is given to entities or collectives across the country that develop projects to promote the tangible and intangible heritage of the community in which they operate.

The group has been working for more than a decade to preserve the Brazilian LGBTI+ social memory. The work of identifying and registering the collection has been carried out since 2010. The Memory Center was created in 2018 and, two years later, the project to transform it into a museum emerged. In early 2023, the project was approved, and the official launch of the LGBTI+ Movement Museum is scheduled for September. The first two exhibitions will be one on the trajectories of the LGBTI+ Movement and another, itinerant, on the editions of the LGBTI+ Pride parades in Rio since 1995.

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The itinerant exhibition will spend eight months circulating around Rio de Janeiro in different cultural institutions and museums. Among the best-known spots are the Museum of the Republic, at Palácio do Catete, and the School of Visual Arts at Parque Lage. The idea is to present the collection of the LGBTI+ Movement Museum to different audiences and expand the social reach of these memories.

“There is a traditional view of the museum as something static, in which people have to go after it. We dialogue a lot with the idea that the museum needs to be a living organism, which produces research, campaigns with the collection and builds exhibitions. A place that calls, through various languages, the community to access information from the field of memory and history”, explained Claudio Nascimento, president of Grupo Arco-Íris de Cidadania LGBTI+. “The exhibition work cannot be restricted to a small space in the community, it needs to speak to society as a whole. Everyone needs to access and understand our narratives and processes of resistance. Let them see how none of our conquests were given away. Everything was really obtained through many struggles.”

The official headquarters of the LGBTI+ Movement Museum is the Grupo Arco-Íris headquarters, in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The initiative has a partnership with the Experimental Museology and Image Study Group of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UniRio), the João Antônio Mascarenhas Activism Memories Center of the Federal University of Pelotas and the Museology Company Musas.

For Grupo Arco-Íris, the launch of the museum and Ibram’s recognition are starting points to make the contributions of the LGBTI+ community to the development of Brazilian society better known and respected.

“It only makes sense to talk about a democratic society and the construction of citizenship if we value the resistance memories of the discriminated segments. In the 70s and 80s, for example, the LGBT community directly participated in the fight against the military dictatorship. And there are few studies in Brazilian history that recognize this. We were excluded from thinking. This has implications for building public policies and valuing subjects in history,” said Claudio Nascimento. “Registering, preserving and disseminating LGBT memory is a fundamental commitment that the country needs to adopt in order to build an inclusive and democratic republic”.

Rainbow

Founded in May 1993, Grupo Arco-Íris de Cidadania LGBTI+ is a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The main mission is to promote citizenship for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transvestites, transgender women, trans men and intersex people. This also means defending social justice and human rights policies, combating violence and supporting measures that imply a better quality of life for this population.

In this sense, the organization develops projects in areas such as health, culture, sports and leisure, work and income, education and youth empowerment. The most visible and recognized event is the LGBTI Pride Parade – Rio, organized by Grupo Arco-Íris since 1995 and the first in the country. Other highlights are the actions to prevent Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), HIV/AIDS and Viral Hepatitis developed decades ago. Some examples were the Safer Sex Project between gays and MSM, and the Somos Project for training NGOs and LGBT leaders in citizenship and STI-HIV-AIDS, from 1998 to 2007.

Grupo Arco-Íris also founded the Brazilian Association of gaysLesbian, Bisexual, Transvestite, Transgender and Intersex (ABGLT) and the International Lesbian Association, gays, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex people from Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition, it is affiliated with the International Lesbian Association, gaysBisexual, Trans and Intersex people and is on the executive board of the gay Latino, which defends the rights of LGBT people on a global scale.

Memory Points

The Memory Spots Program was created in 2009 from a partnership between the Ministries of Culture and Justice, through the More Culture and National Public Security and Citizenship (Pronasci) programs. The objective was to identify and support initiatives of memory and social museology that had participatory management, link with the community and the territory.

The most up-to-date regulation of Pontos de Memória is provided by Ordinance Ibram nº 579, of July 29, 2021, according to which, the program “intends to serve the different social groups in Brazil who have not had the opportunity to narrate and expose their own stories, memories and heritage in museums”. And its main mission is to develop a public policy on the right to memory.

The scope of cultural entities and collectives that can request the certificate is large, but there are some restrictions. Public bodies and entities cannot participate in the program; for-profit institutions; foundations, societies and associations supporting public institutions; foundations and institutes created or maintained by companies or groups of companies; and entities that are part of the S System, such as the Social Services for Commerce (Sesc) and Social Services for Industry (Sesi).