TRANS-FEST MAKES DEBUT
Weeklong festival featuring virtual events
Odd as it might sound, the challenges of 2020 actually made the perfect launching pad for Ottawa’s first festival for trans, two-spirit and gender-diverse people.
The idea for Trans-Fest was born just weeks ago in a conversation between organizers Fae Johnstone and Jade Byard Peek. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, they knew they couldn’t plan a traditional downtown march and group dinner during Pride celebrations, as they had a year earlier.
At the same time, they were acutely aware of the pandemicfuelled isolation many members of their community were struggling with.
It’s challenging enough at the best of times for trans folks to find places where they can gather and safely be themselves. “Not being able to meet people and not being able to have those spaces ... it’s been very hard,” Peek said.
They decided to forge ahead online and, rather than a scaled-back version of past years’ events, have used the virtual environment as an opportunity to break new ground.
“Without tooting our own horn, we have never had a festival of this scope in Ottawa around trans identities and trans communities,” Johnstone said. “We have a good relationship with Capital Pride, but we wanted something that was distinct and by us and for us.”
On a shoestring budget and with a seriously compressed timeline, Johnstone and Peek pulled together a week of mostly virtual programming that opened Friday and continues until Aug. 28, with more than a dozen distinct events: an impossible logistical feat, if they were taking the traditional festival route.
Local non-profits like the Centretown Community Health Centre and MAX Ottawa are helping deliver online sessions on trans health care and sexuality. Ottawa photographer Adrienne RowSmith is hosting a photo shoot for trans folks who don’t have professional head shots, while Halifax esthetician Chris Cochrane is leading a workshop on transfeminine makeup.
Kole Peplinskie, an Indigiqueer artist, is leading a two-spirit beading workshop via Zoom.
“It’s open to anyone, but who I would love to see is just anyone who’s ever felt — especially Indigenous queer and trans folks — like there wasn’t a space for them,” Peplinskie said.
“I wholeheartedly believe that beading is medicine, so I would love to share that with people who need it, and our trans community definitely needs all the medicine they can get.”
Safety is a basic concern for any festival organizer, but when bringing together members of a community regularly threatened by harassment, discrimination and overt violence, it’s a paramount priority.
“No matter what trans folks do, we always have a target on our back,” Peek said. Hateful comments have already shown up on Trans-Fest social media pages, and organizers have been actively recruiting moderators who can help ensure the virtual event space remains respectful.
While hosting a festival online in the age of Zoom-bombing and other security challenges has its drawbacks, the flip side is that the format may better serve people facing barriers to attending events in person.
Even if someone just wants to show up to listen, without turning on their webcam, they can do that, Johnstone noted. And without the requirement for travel to the festival, they’re expecting participation beyond just Ottawa.
“It’s really accessible, in that sense,” Johnstone said. “We hope that we will fill a gap for folks across the country around trans-specific content.”
Some of the festival programming will be open only to those who identify as trans, two-spirit or gender diverse, but much of it will be accessible to whomever wants to attend.
We have never had a festival of this scope in Ottawa around trans identities and trans communities. … We wanted something that was distinct and by us and for us.
One such event explicitly for cisgender (non-trans) people is an Introduction to Trans Inclusion workshop with Eliot Newton, education co-ordinator at the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity.
Fuelled in part by growing trans representation in popular culture — the popularity of the FX television series Pose, for example, or the Netflix documentary Disclosure — Newton perceives a growing desire for education about the trans community among cisgender people.
“I like to think that there’s a corollary rise in compassion and personal interest in treating people the right way,” Newton said.
“My favourite demographic to teach is people who really, really want to do the right thing, but are scared of being an idiot. I do my best in all of my workshops to really create a safe space for people to ask the questions they think are stupid or misguided or that they worry are going to hurt someone.”
Trans-Fest 2020 will conclude with a virtual community dinner and open mic night on Aug. 28. With food insecurity another challenge disproportionately faced by the trans community, festival organizers have partnered with the Parkdale Food Centre to deliver a meal to anyone who needs it.
“You always get nervous as an organizer, you want to make sure that everything goes well,” Peek said, reflecting on the festival as a whole. “I’m hoping, by the end of it, that folks have been able to feel like they’ve made a friend or that they’ve learned something about their identity or that there is some self-love.”
A detailed list of Trans-Fest events is available on Facebook. tblewett@postmedia.com