Marlborough Productions presents A Queer Night at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

Queer Heritage South returns to Brighton Museum & Art Gallery for a party like no other on Friday, 6 February, celebrating the opening of groundbreaking new exhibitions Gender Stories and The Sussex Lancers: Tailor-made Leather Lovers, with a thrilling night of live performances, DJs, dancing, fashion and art, all in the stunning surrounds of the exhibitions themselves. 

Presented by Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Gender Stories sensitively examines the intricate world of gender across cultures, eras and personal experiences, inviting visitors to engage with the many ways gender is expressed and understood around the world. The Sussex Lancers: Tailor-made Leather Lovers traces history from the early 1960s to the early 2000s, charting the spirit of defiance seen in bold and unconventional menswear across Brighton nightlife and the Sussex countryside, with new photographs from Antony Edwards documenting this cultural legacy. Gender Stories and The Sussex Lancers: Tailor-made Leather Lovers will both run from 31 January - 12 April 2026.

Giving audiences a first peek behind the curtain at the new exhibitions with an opening night party like no other hosted by Queer Heritage South, guests will be treated to live performances, workshops and tours, brought together by the evening’s compare Rhys’s Pieces, award-winning queer performance artist, drag performer and cabaret and burlesque artist who has been making waves on the scene for the past 10 years. 

The iconic Shelly Grotto - aka The Drag Files - and her assistant Bob Chicalors will clock in for the night shift to conduct a place-based audit for the G.E.N.D.E.R Dept, imagining up the ultimate Brighton drag performer in collaboration with the audience, inspired by the Gender Stories exhibition. 

Curator Alf Le Flohic leads a tour of The Sussex Lancers: Tailor-made Leather Lovers exhibition, piecing together the history of the men in leather often seen wandering Brighton’s St James Street in the 1980s and 90s, using history from private collections and archive material from the Bishopsgate Institute and Alf’s private collection. 

Art installation, event dressing and costume makers Odd Fabrication lead a once in a lifetime workshop where guests can create their very own accessory with maximalist, colourful and textural fabrics, inspired by their surroundings, before strutting down the museum runway at the centre of the Gender Stories exhibition. 

Further performances will pop-up through the night, including collaborative performance artists Eve Staiton and Florence Peake; trans bodybuilder Cairo Nevitt; aerialist Zaki Musa; and a selection of contemporary artists’ short film and video from Videoclub, exploring personal histories, cultural memory and lived experience of queerness and selfhood. 

Queer Heritage South is a cornerstone of the work of Brighton-based LGBTQ+ cultural producers Marlborough Productions, and is made possible thanks to National Lottery Heritage Fund. QHS has a decade of experience in curating dynamic LGBTQ+ heritage programmes in Brighton & Hove which honour the history and rich cultural life of the LGBTQ+ communities within the region.  

The first QHS History Club of 2026 will take place on Sunday, 1 February, in partnership with Queer Bloomsbury, celebrating the histories of Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun at Charleston in Lewes, two central figures of mid-20th century British art. 

QHS are also building an inclusive archive of LGBTQ+ heritage and history in Brighton & Hove, future-proofing these stories for future generations and honouring and preserving a community that has been uniquely and intrinsically connected to the city for decades. The archive builds towards a major exhibition in 2027, 60 years following the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK.