Tackling homophobia

Homotopia is the country’s foremost LGBT arts organisation, the only Arts Council England national portfolio organisation for LGBT people and the largest employer of LGBT artists in the UK. Every November the Homotopia Festival takes place across Liverpool commissioning and presenting art that celebrates a queer aesthetic. 2013 marks our tenth birthday.

Back in 2004 when Liverpool City Council was preparing its bid to be European Capital of Culture the idea of a combined arts festival that reached out to the gay community was born. Exclusively funded by the council, the first Homotopia consisted of ten events at six venues attracting 3,000 people.

Homophobia and hate crime are rife and we aim to use art to tackle that injustice

This year’s festival will take place throughout November with 45 events including an exhibition of early work by David Hockney at the Walker Art Gallery, film director John Water making his only UK appearance, a year-long exhibition about the life of April Ashley and an exclusive exhibition of original visual art created for us by Boy George and TradeMark. We estimate that 60,000 people engaged with the festival last year and this year our target is 75,000. Homotopia has also presented international work and tours existing elements of some of the programme to partner organisations overseas.

But Homotopia does not exist in an artistic bubble. Homophobia and hate crime are rife and we aim to use art to tackle that injustice and promote social cohesion so we also run a social justice campaign 365 days of the year. Working alongside community organisations and Merseyside Police we established a young person’s project called Project Triangle in 2009. This educated local gay youth to recognise when they had experienced hate crime and what action they could take. We travelled to Krakow and Auschwitz, and met young gay groups in Warsaw. The participants developed a greater awareness of their human rights, forged strong links with the police and went on to script, film and produce a documentary film that was invited to be screened at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, followed by local youth centres. Homotopia produced an education pack for schools that linked bullying and hate crime and which won a community safety award from Merseyside Police Authority.

More recently, we have established good working relationships with social landlords who have legal responsibilities to their minority tenants, as defined under the Single Equalities Act. It also makes sense for landlords to address potential sources of conflict on their estates such as racism and homophobia.

Through our ‘Lavender Days’ programme we take performers into sheltered accommodation. We are developing these relationships to create a large-scale participatory performance in the future with some of the older people we have met through this scheme. This work not only allows us to pursue our social justice agenda but also attracts funding from non-arts funders which is increasingly important when we are all being told to diversify our funding streams.

We are a lean organisation, with only one full-time member of staff, and this year-round programme stretches our resources, but we believe it is vital to reaching new sectors of the community, enhancing our profile and promoting diversity.

Gary Everett is Director of Homotopia.
www.homotopia.net