Queer West Arts Centre
Art - Culture - Music - Politics - Community Events
Proud to be Ontario's first Queer Arts Centre - First
in Canada - First in the World
We produce Toronto's annual Festival of Queer Culture
"We allow our ignorance to prevail
upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches,
alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders" - Maya Angelou
Our Purpose is to produce performing arts festivals for the purposes
of educating and advancing the public's understanding and appreciation of performing
arts and to educate artists through participation in such festivals and related
workshops. We have hosted and produced the annual Queer West Arts and Culture
Festival every year for the past eleven years New Facebook page
www.facebook.com/ While we don't have a Centre to call our home yet. Our
Festivals are held in various locations in Toronto's Art and Design district.
Main events are held in the Parkdale Masaryk-Cowan Community CRC when needed.
Queer West's focus is on the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Trans communities in West Central Toronto neighbourhoods of Dupont,
Parkdale and Trinity Bellwoods and beyond; integrating all arts communities,
genders and sexualities.
Why we call yourselves Queer
- Queer is an umbrella terms designed to be inclusive of a broad range of self-identifications.
Within the gay and lesbian community, there are those who identify as bisexual,
transsexual or transgender as well as those who do not want a label at all.
Rather than use the more cumbersome acronym LGBTTIQQ2SA' (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transsexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer/Questioning, 2 Spirited, Allies),
we find the word 'Queer' to be a more inclusive term for sexual minorities and
simpler. The term 'Queer' is also used by a number of organizations for this
reason and is well-recognized."
We produce Outexpression
Newspaper An online Toronto newspaper for culture queers, covering the hottest
happenings in the coolest places. A publication of Queer West Arts Centre.
We produce the Annual Queer
West Film Festival. Toronto is a city where queers come from different spaces,
converging and diverging to create their own sense of community, and the Queer
West Film Festival emphasizes that sense of connectedness.
We produce the Annual Toronto
Queer West Arts and Cuture Festival Now firmly established as a major event
in Ontario, after 11 years within the city's lesbian and gay social calendar
the TORONTO FESTIVAL OF QUEER CULTRE in AUGUST has something for everyone; from
a film festival to spoken word to a political unConferences to art shows to
classical music concerts, from a ramble in the ART AND DESIGN DISTRICT to a
QUEER CABARET whether you're gay, straight, lesbian, bi, trans, queer or confused
there's something to inspire, challenge or entertain you. The largest of its
kind in Canada. The tentative festival dates are: Thursday August 9 to Saturday
August 18, 2012.
We produce Smash
Words Poetry Festival Our mission is to build audience participation, stimulate
creativity, awaken minds, foster education, inspire mentoring, encourage artistic
statement and engage communities worldwide in the revelry of language.
"You may not aware, but there are some people in the city that don’t
like us, and guess what? There’s nothing we can do about it. When people don’t
like us, nothing actually happens. The world does not end. Why should we attempt
to please people who don’t care for us, in the first place? We’ve adjusted to
the fact that most people in the world are barely aware of our existence; it’s
true we don’t have 12,000 Facebook Followers, like another Toronto gay festival
organization. We’re also conscious of the fact that those who don’t like us,
are in the obscenely small minority and don’t actually matter. They want us
to fear them, we don’t. We walk where you want to walk. We don’t accept false
choices. We don’t let these people dictate to us how we should run our organization.
Our greatest focus on people that do, and nothing else."
Update Monday January 17, 2012.
The arts festival committee meeting range of dates (Feb 1-11open ). Volunteers
welcome too. Michael will try and coordinate date, time and location for first
festival committee meeting. Write Festival Committee Chair Matthew Drobnich,queerwestartsfestival@gmail.com
if you wish to attend meeting, let us what date is good for you? Seven have
confirmed they would like to attend, but more the merrier Matt Says.
