OTP 2021 Hub - Charleston

Charleston is a house, garden, art gallery and auditorium situated in the spectacular South Downs National Park in Sussex. The house is a living, breathing work of art, filled at every turn with the creative impulse and vitality of two of the twentieth century’s most radical and influential artists: Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

Decades ahead of the aesthetic, social and moral codes of the day, Charleston was always a safe, accepting, friendly and entertaining space where friends could meet. Famously, it is where the boundary-breaking and pioneering artists, writers and thinkers of the Bloomsbury group could be themselves and found their most convincing expression. Over the years, regular visitors included Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, and Lytton Strachey, among others. It has an incredibly rich queer history and culture that Charleston celebrates to this day.

Charleston took part for the first time in the festival in 2019 with a day long programme of rich and diverse talks. We are so sad not to be able to host real events for the moment, but look forward to coming together in real life for OUTing the Past in 2022.