Chardine Taylor-Stone - Museum of Youth Culture

alternative subcultural voices

Collected by Chardine Taylor-Stone

"As an outreach champion I wanted to capture the voices of those in subcultures who are often marginalised but have the most interesting stories.

The stories I captured explore gender, race and sexuality and how fashion, music and sub cultures helped people develop a sense of self in a world that tries to render them invisible.

I took an informal conversational approach to oral histories, interviewing participants and allowing them to just talk about themselves and the pictures they have submitted to the archives. This allowed participants to talk about what was significant to them rather than to me as an interviewer which is far more insightful into the meaning of one's style, taste, presentation in one's life. To self-define rather than be defined."

Chardine Taylor Stone is an award winning cultural producer, writer and feminist activist. She was featured in The Voice newspaper as one of the Women Who Rocked the World in 2015, Diva Magazine’s LGBT Power List 2016 and Buzzfeed’s ‘The Most Inspiring British LGBT People Of 2016‘. A regular on the Pride Power List, in May 2017 Chardine won the British LGBT Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to LGBT+ life’.

Chardine's research project was part of Setting the Record Straight, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

listen to the stories

Atalanta Kernick

Atalanta talks about her experience growing up as an army brat being born in Singapore, living in Germany, Denmark, East Anglia and South England. She rebels against her army background and explores her Lesbian identity by joining the green anarchist/animal rights scene and becoming an anarcho-feminist in the mid-late 80s and ending up at Greenham. Moving to London she became part of the squatting scene in Brixton which is very queer and highly politicised. Atalanta mentions the intersection between her sexuality and being punk and the sort of fashion that went along with this and how a lot of it was about D.I.Y. experimental clothing. She also discusses the 90s London clubbing scene, from Kinky Gerlinky to the Leather Dyke Scene.

Bishi Bhattacharya

*Contains multiple swear words.* Bishi was born to two Bengali immigrant parents in Hammersmith. At the age of 14 she became a bassist and backup singer for the art performance band Minty which was formed by club kid legend Leigh Bowery. She talks about her her experience as a queer teenager in the late 90s in the post-Britpop scene where she hung out in basement venues with YBAs club kids and drag queens in Soho before moving out to Shoreditch in 2000. She discusses launching a queer club night called ~Cash Point, and DJing at various queer clubs and on the fetish scene. Bishi describes the dangers of being queer during this time with the threat of gay-bashing on public transport. She also discusses her struggle in the music industry as a South Asian woman having to compete with white female artists and the continuing issues around South Asian representation.

Jaye Ward

*Multiple swear words, contains mention of drug use.* Jaye was born in Hackney to a family that’s been in the East End for generations. She talks about her early experiences with clothing and tribes explaining how she started out as a Casual in the late 70s. Jaye talks about her attraction to the New Romantic scene in the early 80s and finding this to be a place in which she could explore her trans identity and how she continued experimenting with her presentation by becoming a Goth, which connected her to the Punks and Crusties. Jaye describes her experience as gay trans woman and how she favours continuity through returning to old environments and maintaining friendships after her transition. She also talks about her pre-transition teenage experience dating Goth girls who were into transgressive gender non-conforming boys and how the Goth scene provided her with a safe space during her youth.

Peyvand Sadgehian

Peyvand describes how she was born and raised in Canning Town to parents of Chinese Malaysian and Iranian heritage. She talks about her dad being a Goth and playing 80s records from that scene which influenced her relationship with fashion and how as a teenager she experimented with reconstructing clothes and Punk style. Peyvand describes her teen experience flitting about between the Skinhead Punk Oi and Mod scenes and how she was into Garage music listening to pirate radio. She talks about her teen years in the early 2000s hanging about on the canal and the bridge in Camden before being old enough to get into pubs, she also mentions going to gigs and massive squat parties around London. Peyvand describes her experience as a woman of colour feeling marginalised on the Punk scene and encountering with racism, she then explains her transition to the Skinhead scene and how she felt more at home there.