Subverting the controversial Drag Story Time format, Youth Reading to Drag Queens is a story time event for the whole family. Youth readers will read from some of their favourite books, to an audience of families, and well, Drag Queens. This is an all-ages event and audience members are encouraged to come in drag or costume! Workshop is FREE and All Ages.
Where: SUN FM Room, Rotary Centre for the Arts
When: 10 – 1045 AM
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New Leaves Festival of Arts and Culture
Inspired Word Cafe has always put the needs of our community first and foremost. After the Fireweed Eco-Fest, we wondered, would we do another Eco-Fest or create something unique? We wanted to continue with festival programming, but we needed to create programming that aligned with our values, listened to the needs and interests of the community, and could change alongside it. The inaugural New Leaves Festival of Arts and Culture takes the idiom “turning over a new leaf” as inspiration to focus on an annually changing theme speaking to expressed/urgent needs of the community.
Responding to a recent rise in anti-LGBTQ2SIA+ sentiment in the Okanagan and beyond, the 2024 New Leaves theme is “Queer Art as Resistance,” focussing on celebrating queer arts through drag, poetry, music, comedy, dance and more. For three days in Kelowna’s downtown core, a host of artists from from the Okanagan and across Canada will perform (in both French and English) and put on workshops.
Queerness isn’t always about gender or sexuality, rather, as scholar Janet Jakobsen writes, it’s also “resistance to norms and normativity.” Following this, New Leaves 2024 will not just celebrate LGBTQ2SIA+ voices, but explore art’s potential for resistance and change. In gathering for New Leaves 2024, we ask: How might art shift long-held societal perceptions of LGBTQ2SIA+ and other resistant communities? How might coming together to celebrate the contrast in our community help grow it into a safe and inclusive space for people from all walks of life?
For more event listings and to check out the full Festival offerings: https://www.inspiredwordcafe.com/new-leaves-festival-of-arts-and-culture
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Accessibility: TBC
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Thanks to our sponsors and funders:
The University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies
Okanagan School of Education
City of Kelowna
British Columbia Arts Council
The Government of Canada’s Department of Canadian Heritage
Espaces Francophone
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Land Acknowledgement
Inspired Word Café acknowledges that this festival is being held on the unceded ancestral lands of the Syilx Okanagan Peoples. For more information, please visit https://www.syilx.org.
