Key Funding Area
LGBTQIA+ Arts & Culture
PFA introduced LGBTQIA+ Arts & Culture as a key focus area in 2021, recognising the importance of visible representation of queer stories and people within the broader Australian cultural landscape.
While PFA has long supported queer art and live performance through the Small Grants program, we recognise that the Arts in general are undervalued and underfunded, let alone LGBTQIA+ stories and creativity.
Including Arts & Culture as a key area of funding for large grants means that we can fund projects at a larger scale to have greater impact and ensure that queer stories continue to be told.
Projects funded towards LGBTQIA+ Arts & Culture
The Nest Ensemble
Zac Callaghan, Margi Brown Ash & Leah Mercer
2023 | $10,000
To enable the world premiere of the original play, Wanderings (with accompanying community workshops), presented as part of Queensland Theatre’s DOOR 3 season in the Diane Cilento Studio in Brisbane, November/December 2024. The play will present a portrayal of a positive, trans masculine character – whose own experience of transitioning equips them to take a leadership role in their family – encourages all audience members (not just LGBTQIA+ folks) to have a more empathetic understanding of transitioning in all its forms.
Gadigal Koori Radio: Queer, Blaq & Deadly Program
Tony Duke with Koori Radio
2024 | $10,000
To pilot a weekly Queer Blaq and Deadly radio show over a 3-month period. Run by a team of First Nations LGBTIQA+SB people.
Welcoming the Unwelcome: A Black Rainbow Homecoming
Marijke Bassani
2024 | $10,000
Marijke will work with Cape York Peninsula-based First Nations LGBTQIA+ Sistergirl, Brotherboy, 2Spirit & IndigiQueers on a human rights photography grassroots project. This will involve spending 2-3 years taking portraits and collecting contemporary personal narratives about community life and culture for First Nations LGBTQIA+ Sistergirl, Brotherboy, 2Spirit & IndigiQueer peoples in the Cape York Peninsula. These will be collated into a photography book, and all profits from the book will go back to the local communities.
APT's Pride Collection 2024
Australian Plays Transform
2023 | $6,000
A collection of five new publications by LGBTQIA+ playwrights, alongside a curated selection of recommendations from the LGBTQIA+ Australian theatrical canon, put forward by prominent theatre-makers as influential to them, as well as education and academic resources, including teachers notes for approaching LGBTQIA+ topics and works with young people, as well as higher-level academic papers and resources.
The Dan Daw Show
The Dan Daw Show
2022 | $15,000
We provided sponsorship for the Dan Daw Show at Sydney World Pride. This was to re rehearse, produce, present and perform The Dan Daw Show as part of Sydney WorldPride at the Seymour Centre 21-24 February ($10,000). It also supported the accommodation costs of the touring party ($5,000).
Wanderings
Stace Callaghan and Margi Brown Ash
2022 | $10,000
We developed a partnership with Australian Plays Transform (APT) to commission a new play by a LGBTQIA+ playwright. The commission went to Stace Callaghan and Margi Brown Ash for Wanderings.
Their description of the idea for the play: “Through the gender transitioning of an adult child and their relationship with their ageing mother (who is going through her own transition of consciousness with dementia), Wanderings will explore the heart-opening opportunities, challenges and demands of shifting identities and changing relationship dynamics – within families and beyond.
Starting from autobiographical experience—Stace is a 50 year old Trans masculine, non-binary queer person whose mother has dementia and Margi is the mother of an adult child who is currently transitioning – Wanderings will interrogate and clarify the universality of transitioning and the importance of home, family and belonging.”
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