North East LGBTQIA+ Curious Arts festival returns after two years away

Curious Arts returns with events from Friday July 1 - Sunday July 24

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Daniel HallRural Tourism Reporter

12:11, 30 JUN 2022

Zine Making with Mel Sproates on Curious Families Day (Image: Michael McGuire)

Pride Month may be coming to an end today, but for the next few weeks LGBTQIA+ art will be celebrated across the North East with the return of Curious Festival.

Established in 2016, the award winning festival is an annual celebration of lesbian, gay transgender, queer, intersex, asexual +, with a line up of events running from July 1 - 24. There will be theatre, cabaret and creative workshops, alongside music film and performance in person for the first time since 2019, though it was celebrated online during the pandemic.

Curious Festival aims to be a true celebration of the region's LGBTQIA+ culture, with this year's events highlighting work by trans and non-binary artists, artists of colour and work by young emerging artists, "in a time when visibility has never been more important." Events will take place at venues throughout Tyne and Wear, County Durham and Northumberland including BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Sage Gateshead, Queen's Hall Arts Centre and ARC Stockton.

Phil Douglas, Founder of Curious Festival, said: "Now more so than ever, visibility for Trans, Non-binary and Queer artists of colour is essential to increase understanding, respect and safety for under-represented communities. We’re delighted that Curious Festival is back to create queer positive spaces, platform exciting new work and enable us to be with communities across the North East again."

Events kick off this weekend with Curious Families Day, a day of free creative workshops at BALTIC and Home with The Noir Narrative, a platform for Black LGBTQIA+ creatives. To officially launch the festival on Saturday July 2, BALTIC is Curious is hosting an evening of film and performance featuring Mapping Gender, a work by dance artist Anders Duckworth and Queer Shorts, a series of short films by women and non-binary people of colour.

Throughout the month there will be a range of events, closing with the Curious Arts stage at Northern Pride at Newcastle's Town Moor on July 23 and 24. This year, Newcastle is not only as the host city for Northern Pride, but also UK Pride. As the first in-person Pride event in the city since 2019, it could potentially give the Curious Festival a bigger reach than it has had before.

Mel Sproates, who is facilitating the Zine-making workshops at the festival, said: "The opportunities and experiences that I've had with Curious Arts have been some of my best evermemories! Curious were the first big champions of my work when I was starting out, and not only has my confidence, skills and friendships grown since working with them, but my own queer identity has been given the space and freedom to blossom."

Alex Billingham, the artist behind Milk & Honey, part of the Queer Change Showcase, said: "Curious Arts/Festival have been amazingly supportive of me, giving me space to leap from Live art to theatre and develop this show. Making space for Othered voices within Othered communities is vitally important in being able to support audience members to not feel as alone with this as I once did."

Queer change by Alex Billingham (Image: Marcin SZ)

Cat Hurst-McGahey, Chair of LGBT+ Northern Social Group, said: "It is a breath of fresh air to work with an organisation who understand the importance of equity and who provide representation for many parts of our communities who are often overlooked or ignored. The work they do is so powerful and beautiful, we love Curious."