Plenty Queer is a three-day arts festival celebrating Pride and the LGBT+ movement from August 3-5 at Cafe Plenty.
Plenty Queer was born out of a desire to promote queer artistic voices, highlight the meaning of Pride, and raise some money for the Terrence Higgins Trust (THT). It has been a shared feeling among the organisers Brighton peers that, whilst always a great weekend, Brighton Pride often overlooks the creative LGBT+ talent the city has on offer.
On Thursday, August 3 from 19.00-00.00 Plenty Queer is hosting the private (although very public) view for the Trace exhibition. The evening will feature spoken word, poetry from queer artist and guest speakers talking about the history LGBT+ movement.
For the Friday night party on August 4, from 7.30pm-2.00a, they’re converting Cafe Plenty into a pampering salon for their Pre Pride Preparation Party.
They’ll have various beautification stations providing, glitter, manicures and makeup. There is live entertainment from award-winning drag prince Alfie Ordinary and award-winning songwriter Paul Diello. Their resident dj’s will have everyone dancing till the early morning.
Finally on Pride Saturday they’ll be providing an outside friendly festival environment for people to relax in after watching the parade, with food stalls and DJ’s to lift everyone’s spirits.
The Trace exhibition will be on display at Cafe Plenty from August 3-7. All of these events we will be Raising money for the Terrence Higgins Trust.
Alex Foley, Trace founder, said: “Trace is a queer artist collective I started at the end of 2016 that aims to promote queer artists and facilitate their collaboration, as well as to engage with local communities. We had our inaugural exhibition at Dynamite Gallery on Trafalgar Street in January of this year, and since then have been working on getting more artists into the fold and raising some money to put on future exhibitions.
“We were thrilled when Nick approached us to do this collaboration with Cafe Plenty. A lot of our artists feel really dejected about the corporation-centric feel of recent Prides, and so I think there was a lot of excitement about holding an exhibition that had an authentically queer party vibe, really showcasing the queer talent that typically gets pushed to the fringes.
“In fact, one of the reasons I started Trace is because Brighton has such a wealth of queer voices, which don’t get the platform they deserve. Plenty has given us use of their incredible space to throw a sort of pre-Pride queer salon where people can get their nails and face paint done for Pride whilst admiring the art we’ve got up, plus there will be queer DJs and performers playing all day on the Friday and Saturday, which we think will give the exhibition a really unique atmosphere.”
For more information about the Trace Collective, click here:
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