Belfast LGBTQI+ History Festival, ‘OUTing the Past’
- On January 9, 2018
Cara-Friend are delighted to announce that they are bringing the first ever LGBTQI+ History festival in Ireland to Belfast, as part of LGBTQI+ History Month in February 2018. ‘OUTing the Past’ will take place on Friday, February 16th and Saturday, February 17th. Belfast will be one of several hubs across Ireland and Britain taking part in the festival organised by Schools Out UK.
On Friday evening at 6pm the Lord Mayor, Cllr. Nuala McAllister will launch the festival at an event in Belfast City Hall, with special guest speakers Senator David Norris and Cllr. Jeff Dudgeon.
The Ulster Museum has partnered with Cara-Friend on Saturday to bring a day of popular presentations of LGBTQI+ history from Ireland, the UK and further afield, from 10am-4pm.
“LGBTQI+ history month is being celebrated by Cara-Friend with this festival as we believe that LGBTQI+ history belongs to everyone and should be known by everyone, not least because it is filled with fearless role models for young people, whether they are part of the community or not”, says Declan Meehan, Deputy Director of Cara-Friend. “There is a rich heritage there which is largely unknown to people inside and outside the LGBTQI+ community, and this festival hopes to ignite an interest in exploring and celebrating that heritage more fully.”
The full festival programme can be found here.
Cara-Friend are grateful to Belfast City Council, the Ulster Museum and School Out UK for their support.
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Further queries regarding this exciting event can be directed to festival hub organiser, Declan Meehan, on declan.meehan@cara-friend.org.uk.
