Since 1988 GCN (Gay Community News) has been at the heart of Ireland’s LGBTQ+ community, reflecting the lived experiences of queer people the length and breadth of the island and beyond.
In 2022, GCN pledged to digitise its entire print catalogue, comprising over 300 issues. For the first time ever, this ambitious project will see the pages of Ireland’s longest-running free LGBTQ+ press preserved and rendered in digital format, making them accessible and freely available to readers anywhere in the world.
Co-founded by Catherine Glendon and Tonie Walsh, GCN was launched during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Since then, the magazine has witnessed Ireland’s seismic cultural shift from a repressive church-dominated state to a more tolerant and inclusive society. From decriminalisation to the introduction of civil partnership, the passing of both the marriage and abortion referendums to the introduction of the gender recognition act, GCN has been at the forefront of recording these totemic changes.
As well as ensuring the legacy of Ireland’s LGBTQ+ paper of record for generations to come, the project will create an invaluable resource for historians, researchers, students, journalists, educators and all members of the wider public with interest in the LGBTQ+ community.
Given the scale of this undertaking, the project will be carried out in several phases. Phase one covers the first decade of the magazine, 1988 to 1998. For this phase, 113 issues of the magazine, including supplements (3334 pages in total), have been captured and presented here. The first ten issues are also optimised for mobile, meaning that users can access the magazine in article view and skip directly to the page/article they want to read.
The remaining phases will see: the digitisation and tagging of the print issues from 1999 to 2013; the migration of the existing digital issues from 2014 to the current and the generation of individual article views for the remaining issues.
As a charity organisation with a not-for-profit business model, we depend on grants and donations to carry out this vital work. If you enjoy exploring the GCN Archive, please consider supporting our work by donating here.
Phase one of the GCN Archive has been made possible through the generous support of the LGBTI+ Community Services Fund 2021.
We would like to remind readers that some of the articles featured in the pages of GCN may contain outdated language, none of which is intended to cause offence. We would also like to advise readers that some articles deal with sensitive subject matter, and as such, readers should be mindful of any negative impact this may have before approaching such content.
If you have been affected by any of the content on this website or are looking to reach out to someone for support or advice or just to talk, there are numerous services available for LGBTQ+ people, listed below, and many offer instant messaging support.
