By Gabriel Moran
Liverpool’s cultural identity has long been shaped by its ability to turn the personal into the political. Across performance, film, and open discussion, Homotopia’s recent programme of events demonstrates how queer culture continues to shape the Liverpool City Region’s creative life. From intimate artist conversations to exuberant spectacle and radical history, these events offered a multifaceted portrait of LGBTQ+ culture in Liverpool today.
Rather than existing as isolated moments, Homotopia festival has used various events like: an evening with Dross, Mr Blackpool’s Seaside Spectacular, the Queer Arts North Open Forum, and the Rebel Dykes screening collectively to highlight the importance of visibility and community within the city’s cultural landscape.
An Evening With Dross
Among the festival events, An Evening with Dross offered a reflective introduction. Known for their uncompromising approach to drag and performance, Dross spoke candidly about creativity within queer art spaces. The discussion framed drag not simply as entertainment, but as a process shaped by resistance and lived experience. Using lip synching as their tool, they brought the performance to life with culture references, political speeches and visual extravagances.
Rather than presenting a polished narrative, Dross emphasised the realities of making work from the margins, resonating strongly with an audience made up of artists and community members alike. The event underscored how queer creativity often exists in tension with institutions that celebrate diversity and how Dross was redefining what drag means within gay culture.
Mr Blackpool’s Seaside Spectacular
If the conversation with Dross was intimate, Mr Blackpool’s Seaside Spectacular embraced unapologetic excess. Drawing on the aesthetics of traditional British seaside entertainment, the performance transformed familiar tropes through a queer lens. Glittering costumes, exaggerated humour, and camp musicality created an atmosphere that was deliberately irreverent.
Beyond the spectacle, the performance functioned as an act of cultural reclamation. By queering a format so closely tied to British working-class leisure, Mr Blackpool, aka Harry Clayon-Wright asserted that LGBTQ+ lives and histories belong firmly within shared cultural memory. The result was entertainment with a subtle political edge, reminding audiences that camp has long been a vehicle for critique as well as celebration.
Queer Arts North Open Forum at Bluecoat
The Queer Arts North Open Forum shifted the focus from performance to collective conversation. Inviting guest speakers like Dross, they brought together artists, organisers, and audiences. The forum created space to discuss the practical and emotional realities of sustaining queer art in the North of England. Topics ranged from funding precarity and regional underrepresentation to burnout and the importance of mutual support.
What stood out was the emphasis on collaboration over competition. Speakers highlighted the need for stronger networks that nurture emerging artists while protecting existing queer-led spaces. In a cultural climate marked by uncertainty, the forum reinforced the idea that queer art ecosystems depend as much on care and dialogue as they do on visibility and output.
Rebel Dykes Screening
The Rebel Dykes screening and after party provided a powerful historical anchor within the Homotopia Festival. The documentary, which explores lesbian activist cultures in 1980s London, foregrounds stories of protest and resistance. Watching the film in a collective setting gave these histories renewed urgency, particularly as many of the issues explored continue to shape queer life today.
The screening highlighted the importance of intergenerational memory within LGBTQ+ culture. It served as a reminder that the freedoms and spaces enjoyed now were hard won through sustained activism. The after party that followed transformed reflection into celebration, echoing the film’s emphasis on radical joy as a core component of resistance.
Queer Culture equals cultural infrastructure
Attending these events offered insight into the wider festival and the other events Homotopia had to offer like: Young Homotopia & QuuerCore showcase, No Pride In Genocide film screening, All The Devils performance and Rest as Resistance, an interactive art exhibition. Taken together, these events demonstrate Homotopia’s commitment to presenting queer culture in all its complexity. Audiences were invited to move between vulnerability and spectacle, history and futurity, discussion and celebration. Crucially, these events were rooted in Liverpool itself, drawing on the city’s traditions of collective activism, creativity, and solidarity.
For Liverpool’s LGBTQ+ communities, Homotopia operates as more than a festival or programme. It functions as cultural infrastructure: creating space for connection at a time when queer lives are increasingly politicised.
While Homotopia 2025 festival has come to an end, the impact continues to resonate across the city. They will return this year, bringing new conversations and performances.
For more information visit homotopia.net.