After last year’s sell-out event, Queer Media Festival returns for the festival’s fourth year, to commemorate fifty years since homosexuality was partially decriminalised, by celebrating the amazing range of LGBTQ stories in all forms of media. During the day hear from inspiring guest speakers who are creating LGBTQ stories using the new digital platforms of virtual reality, gaming or mobile filmmaking. Meet storytellers in legacy media like theatre making, performance, playwriting, and poetry. Enjoy a creative mix of engaging talks, performances, and workshops aiming to refresh the way that LGBTQ voices are heard.
Explore the queer rainbow of diverse stories and discover how to tell your story!
Queer Media Festival is a one day event on Saturday 18th November at HOME, Manchester’s £25 million combined arts centre with tickets starting from £10. Click here to buy tickets.
We are proud to announce our full schedule of guest speakers for 2017:
John McGrath, our keynote speaker, is the Artistic Director of Manchester International Festival. Appointed to the role in 2015, John was previously Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales which he launched in 2009 achieving an international reputation for large-scale site-specific work, digital innovation, international collaboration and extraordinary community involvement. John has worked as a theatre director in New York, London and was Artistic Director of Contact Theatre in Manchester from 1999 to 2008. Awards include the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Cultural Leadership Award (2005) and an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University (2015).
Erinma Ochu is Creative Director of Squirrel Nation, which she co-founded and runs with Designer and partner, Caroline Ward. They design immersive concepts, often blurring fact and fiction to speculate on how we might live in the future: from a pop up urban farm, farmlab, to The Purring Chamber, which encourages folk to explore our relationship with cats and other species we’ve loved, lived with and lost. Recently Erinma was a Jerwood Fellow with Manchester International Festival, attached to Yael Bartana’s What If Women Ruled the World.
Her foray into queer mediamaking began with an interest in amateur photography, saving up £1 a week to buy a £13 camera only to accidentally take pictures of her left ear. Expelled from sixth form, Erinma has been breaking rules and pushing boundaries ever since. Originally she trained as a neuroscientist before turning to broadcast and digital media as development executive for London based creative agency, B3 Media. Erinma is a Lecturer in Science Communication and Future Media at Salford University. She is indy curator for Sheffield Doc/Fest and volunteers for The Proud Trust.
Deirdre Mulcahy
After a successful career as a BBC Camerawoman, Deirdre has spent the last 11 years training BBC journalists. She has trained on a variety of cameras and edit systems and has recently developed a training programme to deliver these craft skills using a mobile phone. Her workshop will enable Queer Media Festival delegates to shoot professional looking interviews with quality sound and give the foundations of how to build up your story visually
James Kavanagh
Dublin native, James Kavanagh, is Ireland’s Snapchat King. Not only is James a social media aficionado, he also runs Currabinny, a food brand and catering service, with his partner William. James uses his social media platforms to spread awareness on LGBTQ issues and erase the stigma surrounding it from society in his distinctive witty style.
Lucy Dusgate produces and leads the digital art programme for The Lowry and the outdoor Quays Culture public realm art programme at Salford Quays. This includes new commissions and presentations across the galleries, theatres and public spaces in the building and outdoors. Local, national and international artists are invited to perform, exhibit and respond within the spaces of The Lowry. Artists have always used technology in their practice, and we see the inclusion of digital as an acknowledgement of some of the best quality art being integrated into the artistic vision at The Lowry.
Ella Otomewo is a queer performance poet from Birmingham, living in the North West. Most recently, Ella was part of a small team of poets who wrote and performed in Young Identity’s sold out performances of Hatch at Contact Theatre. Ella was also a member of the Manchester International Festival’s Creative50 team, and was commissioned to create poetry in response to pieces at the festival. She facilitates creative writing workshops and has performed at numerous spoken word events up and down the country. Ella’s work is feminist, personal, and candid.
Adam Zane, Artistic Director of Hope Theatre Company
For the past two years Adam was dramaturg and director of Gypsy Queen, working with writer/performer Rob Ward on his new play. Gypsy Queen has since toured to Leeds, Sheffield, Doncaster, Liverpool, Brighton Fringe, Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival, Kings Head Theatre, London, Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester and received 5 Star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe. Adam’s new play Jock Night premiered as a short play (the first of a trilogy of Jock Nights). The play deals with a number of LGBT+ issues including PrEP, chem-sex and the search for love and friendship in a world of sex and drugs. Jock Nights Part 2 and 3 will be performed as ‘a theatrical soap opera’ before touring as a full-length play in 2018.
Tim Brunsden is a film and video maker creating films with a focus on community and outsider culture. He is an Associate Artist with Duckie and lead on digital output for Homotopia Festival in Liverpool. He is also Co-Director of Re-Dock, working alongside artists and film-makers Sam Meech, Hwa Young Jung and Neil Winterburn. Re-Dock is a Community Interest Company that combines our interest in digital media, participatory mapping and storytelling in research-led arts practice that engages with communities.
Richard Franke is founder and director of Magic Notion, developers of ‘Kitty Powers’ Matchmaker’ the YouTube sensation arcade dating simulator. Richard worked in the games industry for over 20 years on award winning titles such as The Burnout franchise, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, and Tearaway before creating independent studio Magic Notion. He stars as his drag alter-ego Kitty Powers in Magic Notion’s first title, as well as its upcoming follow up ‘Kitty Powers’ Love Life’ as well as doing live appearances at events around the world. Kitty Powers spreads a message of love, acceptance, diversity and gender fluidity.
The Nightbus is a drag terrorist; Europe’s Premier Bearded Muslim Drag Queen with a busload (geddit lol!) to say on oppression, hatred and marginalisation that will shake your core beliefs. After touring Europe and the US, a successful run in Edinburgh and Arts Council commissions for Manchester International Festival, this vehicular beacon of awfulness knows no limits. More sensitive passengers are requested to take several seats, strap the fuck in and enjoy the ride.
Jacob Engelberg is a Film Programmer based in Brighton, England where he runs the queer film strand Eyes Wide Open Cinema. Jacob has an academic background in Film Studies and Queer Theory; his masters degree in Sexual Dissidence looked at the representation of bisexuality in the films of Gregg Araki. Taking a ride with Jacob through his talk on cinema’s invocations of bisexuality, from well-known Hollywood neo-noir thrillers to underground queer filmmaking to the extremities of European art cinema, let’s take a moment to consider representations of bisexual desire on screen.
Kate O’Donnell is a transgender performer, activist, theatre and cabaret maker. She is the Artistic Director of Trans Creative a newly formed trans theatre company who aim to be trans led and trans positive. Kate’s work is autobiographical, entertaining and political showing pride and strength in being transgender and includes; the award-winning Big Girl’s Blouse and several well received cabaret performances; Hayley and Me, A Short History of My Tits and No Pride. Kate is currently touring her critically acclaimed one woman show You’ve Changed following its preview at the Edinburgh festival. This year Trans Creative initiated and curated Manchester’s first trans arts festival and was part of the Manchester lnternational Festival opening event ‘What is The City but the People?’. Currently working on a project to trans up Manchester, working to make the city, its buildings and its people more trans friendly.
Queer Media Festival – Saturday 18th November 2017
HOME, Manchester – 11am to 5.30pm
The festival will have gender neutral toilets and be BSL interpreted
BOOK NOW: Click here to buy tickets!
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