By Eden Wilkinson
Founded in 2004, Homotopia Festival returns from 1 – 20 November 2022. The Liverpool LBGTQIA arts organisation’s theme for this year’s festival is ‘Queer Joy Is A Protest’. “We’re tired of being angry. The simple act of living our most fabulous, out and proud queer lives, just the act of being ourselves in a cis-heteronormative world, is a protest.”
The festival will feature a wide range of arts and cultural events happening across Liverpool and online for the next three weeks bringing their vibrancy and inclusivity to the city.
Homotopia 2022 Launch Party
The Homotopia 2022 Launch Party should be a memorable night and one that is long overdue. It will be the festival’s first official launch party since 2019, due to the pandemic, so they’re going big. In partnership with Tate Liverpool and the stunning cabaret collective The Bitten Peach, everyone is invited to the most fabulous (FREE) night of the year.
The Bitten Peach is a Pan-Asian cabaret collective featuring drag, burlesque, circus and variety performers from all over the UK. Expect fierce drag kings, queens and things, comedy, politics, and queer Asian excellence.
Homotopia At Home: Online Content
Homotopia At Home: Online Content will allow people to join the festival online over the three weeks, kicking off on 3 November with an eclectic poetry night, A Lovely Word, that offers a free livestream.
Podcasts also play a big role this year, including an artist in residence Tabby Lamb on the Queer Gaze podcast which is out now.
Check out the Homotopia At Home: Online Content page for all the online content.
Homotopia QueerCore
Homotopia is enriching our local scene with the QueerCore artist development programme which has selected four emerging LGBTQIA artists to receive structured support and professional development opportunities for the next 12 months.
This years selected artists, Kolade T Ladipo, Marcella Rick, Rhiannon May and Rosa Kusabbi, will be performing and exhibiting all around the city during during Homotopia. Find out more about the artists here.
More Homotopia Events
Queer inSIGHT
For a mix of everything Queer inSIGHT on the 6 November at 7pm at the Quarry is a celebration of LGBTQIA, with live music, spoken word, and DJ sets.
UTOPIAN (t&c’s apply)
Supported by the Arts Council England and the National Lottery Grant project UTOPIAN asks if the perfect utopia can exist? It takes circus pop culture and merges it with surrealism. Along with all the fun performative elements of high-heel rollerskating, hula-hooping and strip-teasing the production invites you to ask the essential questions if we are to better our society to be a more inclusive and fair place of “why do people abuse power roles?”
Late At Tate
To celebrate the Turner Prize 2022 and its return to Tate Liverpool, Late At Tate is an evening of free live performances, workshops and talks in response to this year’s shortlisted Turner Prize artists: Heather Phillipson; Ingrid Pollard; Veronica Ryan and Sin Wai Kin.
Queer The City Walking Tour
Homotopia have installed 15 large pieces of public art by LGBTQIA artists in prominent spots and created audio stories queering different areas of the city. Join them for a walking tour, exploring the heart of queer Liverpool, the visible and the unknown, the famous, infamous and untold stories of LGBTQIA life in the city.
This Arab Is Queer
Celebrating the release of a ground-breaking new anthology called This Arab Is Queer, Homotopia’s event brings together editor Elias Jahshan with essayists Madian Alijazeera and Anbara Salam for an evening of readings and lively chat.
Please Touch The Art (itch my brain)
Please Touch The Art (itch my brain) is a textile art exhibition from QueerCore artist Rhiannon May. The exhibition takes the audience inside the workings of the brain on a chaotic and colourful journey.
Sarah-Joy Ford presents Pride is a Protest: Banner Making Workshop
Join textile artist Sarah-Joy Ford for a hands-on craft workshop inspired by queer activism, visual culture and community story telling.
Visit the Homotopia website to view the full programme of events.
Homotopia aims to make queer art accessible for everyone, with fifteen of the projects and events featured over the next three weeks being free and the rest having a maximum ticket price of £12.
Homotopia is set to bring light and vibrancy to our city as the darker days of Autumn begin to draw in. For more information and tickets visit the Homotopia website at https://www.homotopia.net/festival/