OUTWORDS is the first and only national organization dedicated to recording professional-quality, on-camera interviews with LGBTQ+ elders across the US. OUTWORDS was founded to preserve the histories of LGBTQ+ elders as a priceless record of an unprecedented American social change movement. We share our full interviews on our website, which functions as an online digital archive. To date, OUTWORDS has recorded nearly 400 interviews with LGBTQ+ elders in 47 states and Washington, D.C. We serve a wide variety of people (11.7 mil in 2024) through our online archive and social media platforms, with the majority being LGBTQ+ and between the ages of 25-34 years old.

We use media arts and storytelling to promote social equity, explore and illuminate queer history and address systemic inequities. The Outwords Archive is highly intentional in seeking out and recording stories from marginalized communities within the LGBTQ+ community, including communities of color, individuals with fewer financial and educational resources, transgender and gender non-conforming individuals, the bisexual population, intersex individuals, and LGBTQ+ people living with disabilities. For the past three years, we have devoted 50% of our new interviews to the TGI (transgender, gender non-conforming and intersex) community, and 60% to people of color.

OUTWORDS functions simultaneously as a media production company (for the purpose of gathering new interviews), an archive (for the purpose of organizing and preserving our assets), and a distribution company (for the purpose of sharing our extraordinary elder stories with the LGBTQ+ community in LA and beyond through multiple channels). Our distribution occurs primarily through our website (www.theoutwordsarchive.org) and through an array of public events in CA and beyond, corporate DEI trainings, partnerships with LGBTQ+ organizations, and social media.