In 1999, Nottinghamshire Living History Archives won a Millennium Lottery grant to produce 90 local oral history projects. The first 30 of these projects appeared in 2000 and amongst them was "Nottingham Lesbian and Gay Switchboard" - a history of a lesbian and gay telephone helpline set in the context of developments since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act. The project was carried out by David Edgley and it produced a book (cover shown above), 20 recorded interviews with people whose ages ranged from 25 to 85 and lots of photographs. As well as being available through Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage, the book and the recordings are also kept in the Nottinghamshire library system and in Nottinghamshire Archives.
In 2005, much of the project was transferred to one of BT's free websites. Once you are on the web, anyone in the world can see your work. The website produced requests from various people and organisations for information and for use of the resources. Early in 2007 UNISON put on an LGBT display at Nottinghamshire's County Hall. They requested that material from the history project should be part of that display. The display was seen by a representative of the Heritage Lottery and she suggested that people got together and developed it into a larger project.
This development took place over most of 2007 and the end product was Nottinghamshire's Rainbow Heritage, complete with a grant from the Heritage Lottery fund - which was received in January 2008.