Concordia’s first-ever Winter Pride week
Spread some love and celebrate pride all week long at the downtown campus!
From February 26 to March 3, the first edition of Winter Pride will be held at Concordia. Film screenings, workshops and lectures will take place to help connect queer students and Montrealers to their peers, and to the services available to them.
“We also want to showcase and promote local artists who express, in so many different ways, our differences and common ground,” adds Dorian J. Fraser, the Winter Pride festival director.
One of such artists is Kama La Mackerel, who will give a keynote performance on March 2 at De Sève Cinema. Titled “There Is Enough Space for Our Narratives in the World,” she will question the practices of loving and the politics of belonging, through poetry, storytelling and theory.
The EV atrium will be home to multiple Winter Pride events throughout the week, including a book fair, a drawing workshop and an event called Community Day on Feb 28.
On Community Day, visitors can learn about the local services offered to LGBTQAI+ communities. Representatives from groups such as the Centre for Gender Advocacy, Queer Concordia and Dans La Rue will have kiosks set up.
“The groups will also be calling attention to the necessary and specific needs of the queer and trans community that are often unaddressed in regular Québécois health care,” says Fraser. “Hopefully this event can contribute to the visibility of trans health needs.”
The week will conclude with a screen-printing workshop hosted by the Queer Print Club on March 3. Participants will learn the basics of the art technique of screen-printing, and come away with their own screen-printed object.
Winter Pride was organized by a cohort of students who helped launch the Simone de Beauvoir Institute’s Sexuality Studies program The team aimed to give underrepresented queer folk a place in the events, explains Fraser.
“Often marginalized people in the community are not given space to express themselves and speak to ongoing experiences of oppression they face,” they said. “We also want to open up spaces for those in the community who don’t fit the narrative of upwardly mobile, financially successful, white cis gay men.”
Fraser hopes Winter Pride will inspire other new queer events on campus.
“The energy we have in starting the Minor in Sexuality Studies program can really create some dazzling projects at Concordia, in partnership with other departments, local artists and our amazing scholarly community.”
For full details on the Winter Pride events, visit the Facebook event listing.
Links:
Strategic Direction: Embrace the City, Embrace the World
Critical Feminist Activism and Research Concordia
Media Queer