Save Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive

Aim

Lavender Menace, the only queer books archive in Scotland, needs your support to continue protecting queer history - and to create more!

Lavender Menace needs at least £5,000 by the end of June 2026 to keep our space open. 

Our archive, events and community have grown rapidly, answering the increasing demand from the queer community, researchers and organisational partners - in Scotland, the UK, and beyond. 

But with competition for funds becoming ever more fierce, and rising costs across the board, we’re at a critical juncture. 

Help us ensure decades of queer lives, voices, stories are not lost, forever. 

"All over the world queer people are losing ground, and those of us with a freedom vision do not have satellites. We don't control media conglomerates - it is through sharing our history and making new records that we communicate with and inspire each other for the long road.” 

Author, activist and AIDS historian Sarah Schulman, speaking about Lavender Menace in April 2026

You’ll be funding:

• the only regularly accessible public space in Scotland dedicated to LGBTQI+ cultural heritage
• the existence and protection of a growing physical and digital collection of queer books, ephemera, and objects documenting LGBTQ+ lives across centuries 
• the welcoming of a steady stream of visitors who come to research LGBTQI+ history, develop creative work, and build connections across generations (our numbers increased by 56% in 24-25, compared to the previous year)
• a programme of regular free events, exhibitions, book clubs, discussions, readings, cultural interventions…
• a rewarding and inclusive volunteer programme, with 100% of our volunteers gaining new skills, and citing us as providing a vital support network

“As the only queer book archive in Scotland, it is an irreplaceable resource for our programme, our artists, and our audiences, holding vital histories while creating a space of warmth, safety, and belonging. Sustaining places like this, and the relationships they make possible, feels more important than ever.”

Eleanor Taylor, Curator of Edinburgh Art Festival, April 2026

Okay, but where did this all start?

Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive grew out of Edinburgh’s lesbian and gay bookshops, created and run in the 1980s and 1990s. Open Gaze, Lavender Menace, and West and Wilde welcomed writers from all over the lesbian and gay publishing world – authors such as Armistead Maupin, David Leavitt, Edmund White Jackie Kay, Karla Jay (one of the original New York Lavender Menaces), and Sarah Schulman. 

Thirty years later, Sigrid Nielsen and Bob Orr (cofounders of the original Lavender Menace Bookshop) established the archive to collect the ground-breaking titles published in that era, which were little known and disappearing fast. We moved into our current premises at Edinburgh Palette in February 2022 and have been serving the community since.

We're now facing closure due to the funding landscape. We've been applying for money to keep going and have had no successful bids - it is now harder than ever to request funding from large-scale donors.

"Lavender Menace is such a vital, living piece of Scotland’s queer and literary heritage. As queer spaces face renewed backlash (and libraries new censorship of queer writing) I’ve been acutely aware of how important Lavender Menace and the archive have been to us - both in its people and its space. Having histories of resistance, of literary legacies, of battles hard fought and won available to us in such accessible ways is so galvanising and necessary. 

“Lavender Menace has been a place of community and collaboration for us at Lighthouse for almost a decade - constantly reinventing itself to widen its scope and impact, it's one of Edinburgh's few truly intergenerational and intersectional spaces. We know the archive is beloved and valued and relevant but those things don't guarantee its survival, so we’ll always be ready to support and champion its future.”

Mairi Oliver, owner of Lighthouse, Edinburgh's Radical Bookshop, April 2026.

The figures

Our goal of £5,000 will give us enough of a lifeline to ensure we can keep the doors open long enough for us to work on securing longer term funding. This will only cover the absolute basics - three months of rent/running costs.

Thanks to a National Heritage Lottery Fund grant, we have been fortunate enough to employ a Project Coordinator, Oral Histories Project Lead and Communications Assistant over the past few years. This grant runs out in June, and without further funding, the archive will be needing to pivot to a volunteer-only model.

Below we've specified what we intend to do with the money we raise: 

£1,500 - This would pay for one month of basic running costs.

£3,750 - This amount would allow the archive to stay open with staff for one month.

£5,000 - This would keep the archive open for three more months on a volunteer run-basis.

£22,500 - This would keep the archive open with staff for six more months - and crucially, would show funders that the community is engaged with our work and willing to support us. At this stage, match funding is triggered for any future funding bids.

In an ideal world, we would raise £45,000 - enough to run the archive for a year and pay for some of our incredibly talented staff to continue the work that they do cataloguing the archive, welcoming community groups, and working with partners to amplify our impact.

Why should you donate?

• To protect our cultural and literary history to say to the world that we’ve always been here. With so few third spaces still around, we provide a unique space for LGBTQ+ people to come together, connect and learn about our shared history.
• By conserving out of print queer books, we are preserving queer history and providing access to readers, writers and researchers. 
• By connecting you to queer culture, we are able to show this vital, often hidden, aspect of history and provide opportunities to connect with other communities and encourage them to access our resources.

Ways you can help

• You can donate to our CrowdFunder - even £5 will make a difference.
• You can become a Menace with a monthly donation of £5, £10 or £20. Your support helps us with the costs of book preservation, events, opening hours, staffing and volunteer management.
• You can donate something to add to our list of perks - these will be increasing weekly over the course of the coming month. Anything from a signed book to volunteering a special skill of yours would be incredibly welcome.
• You can volunteer your time and skills to amplify our CrowdFunder. We’re looking for influencers, communicators, fundraisers, social media experts, videographers and campaigning experts. If you have a few hours over the coming month to help us with our outreach, we would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]
• You can support us financially by using Libro.FM, Bookshop.org and EasyGiving. 
• You can share and amplify our ask - if you have a platform, please consider using it to tell our story. 

Lavender Menace needs your help to keep the doors open and continue to provide a safe space for LGBTQ+ people to share a love of books and queer history. As the only queer book archive in Scotland, it is vital that we continue our work to preserve our history and make sure we are not forgotten.

Thank you!

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made