This project is aimed to be a hopeful response to a landscape that wants us to dissipate. It is an attempt to celebrate the myriad of voices that encompass the LGBTQIA+ community and hold space to reference those who never had proof of their own existence. This Mardi Gras, as we look towards the future where closing the gap is paramount, our community speaks on what matters beyond the parade for tangible change. The conversations that need to be had 365 days of the year.
“Seeing queer artists come forward who identify as aboriginal which has created such a platform for aboriginal people to talk about aboriginal rights, which is really fundamental to closing the gap and moving forward as a nation.”
Model and PR manager
“What matters to me most is that we all have a safe space to be in. To be ourselves, to express ourselves, to realise equity and to come out in ways that feel safe and authentic to us, to just be.”
“Within the queer community there is a lot of lateral violence that exists amongst us, I’d like to see that dissipate.”
Director, writer and filmmaker
“The number one priority for every human at the moment is to save the environment so that we actually have a community at the end of the day."
"I also hope that we can move towards a more fluid understanding of gender, for people to be free to move in the binary and breakdown traditional expectations.”
“It’s quite easy to get wrapped up in an individualist Pride, when the whole point of pride is to be a community. I don’t really connect to the concept of pride. I think that has to do with the way it is expressed in the community on occasion. For me the important thing about being queer and living this way is to have to think about it as little as possible, every day of my life.”
“Looking forward, I have a hypothetical end goal that queerness is seen as part and parcel to the human genome, like being left-handed. But as for what’s important right now, I’m not the person to ask. There are more important places that we need to be asking these questions, so as much as I’d love to have these conversations I’m not sure I’m entitled to speak on them.”
“What matters to me are the things that I take for granted. My freedom, my agency, my rights: things that people have fought for decades for me to take for granted today matter to me the most, people matter to me the most.”
Sex Worker and writer
“I’d really like to see individual members in our community not become complacent with certain milestones that we are able to achieve. Same sex marriage was such a wonderful thing for so many people, but I think it’s important to hold ourselves accountable as a community and remember that there are still issues of racism or misogyny or femme-phobia that we can continue working on as individuals and as a community.”
Model and creative
“The most important thing for me is not being singled out. A lot of us come from different backgrounds and different minorities, we have already been singled out in our own communities, when we are with queer folks it’s important to feel welcome.”
