I love museums, not just Manchester Museum, all museums. Going to a museum is like unwrapping a Christmas present and finding all the wonderful stories contained inside.

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For me, museums are places to find out about different people and cultures. Inclusion often involves reaching out to communities and finding ways to tell their stories. This got me thinking, what is my museum story? After all, the things in museums that I relate to most have always been the mythical creatures…

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Two years ago those mythical creatures would come to life, quite literally, in the form of the Family Gorgeous. The people behind the ideas hosting a drag show in the Museum were Michelle and Deborah from the Visitor Team. As a volunteer, I have the privilege of working alongside the Visitor Team. For visitors, they are the heart of the Museum, bringing its stories to life on a daily basis; each bringing their own unique knowledge, imagination and caring perspective.

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An Afternoon with the Family Gorgeous brought new LGBTQ+ audiences to the museum, queer stories to museum objects, and an unforgettably fabulous day to the Museum’s family visitors. Beyond a traditional idea of drag, as pantomime, parody or cabaret, or even what you might see on Rupaul’s Drag Race, drag can be a creative, disruptive and political artform. And it has become a very visible way to disrupt the traditional, male heteronormative museum narratives. An Afternoon with the Family Gorgeous and The Museum Menagerie were collaborations with Cheddar Gorgeous, by day, a university academic with a PhD in Anthropology. Take a look at Cheddar’s ‘TEDx Talk’ about what drag can be.

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The Family Gorgeous are a perfect fit with the Museum’s vision; their commitment to inclusion is obvious, they have imagination in abundance, and with that they bring care and kindness – just watch their Channel 4 series Drag SOS and you’ll see what I mean! This care is reciprocal, they have been well and truly welcomed into the Manchester Museum family, with the Visitor Team and Curators giving their time and passion for the collections, working with the drag queens on their artistic responses.

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For a long time, I have understood that gender is not binary, and I have never been comfortable being assigned a gender. Before last year’s Museum Menagerie show at the museum, I met with Lill, who would be performing, and we discussed all things drag over coffee. I guess you could say it was a ‘lightbulb moment’; talking with her about gender and identity felt like a permission, that it’s ok to be me, that I don’t need to conform to someone else’s norms, and that I can exist happily somewhere on the gender spectrum.