Long reads

“The Pride events began with a summit and awards, followed by a dinner for stakeholders and influencers to discuss how they could better use their platforms to promote queer rights and the work we want them to support. Then came the show. The show was scheduled as part of the final events for Pride in Lagos this year. We always focus on organizing performances by Queer artists. Last year’s performances featured a range of Nigerian artists, but this year we focused specifically on the drag community to encourage their visibility and growth.

It was an emotional experience because the room filled up with a lot of Queer creatives who came out to support their local drag scene. Plus, it was a rainy day. It’s been very rainy in Lagos, starting from around 3 a.m., and it hadn’t stopped. But the rain helped in terms of security because people who came in stayed inside, and those outside were eager to get in. Once inside, no one wanted to leave since it was so wet outside. Which meant we were able to manage a crowd of over 700 queer Nigerians under one roof for the show. Security didn’t require external assistance, as Mother Nature took care of it. It felt like the rain protected us, and we were able to enjoy the night safely.

We had five drag performers, one Queer comedian, a drag king, and a singer. As a producer, this was my first time organizing a drag event. Our first attempt at showcasing drag was back in 2022 with "Dragathon," which was supposed to be a competition to encourage participation. At the time, we were unsure how to create a show that was both relevant to the local community and safe but this years attendance number showed us that the collaboration with the drag queens was a success. Financially, it resulted in some loss. However, it was a great show overall.

TFA: You mentioned that part of the festival involves organizing a summit. Could you explain more about what the summit consists of, especially regarding influencing policymakers? I find it intriguing, as most festivals tend to focus more on the arts.

Timileyin: Sure. This year, we’ve started to recognize the need to separate audiences. We tailor-made different parts of the festival for different groups. The summit is more for corporate-minded individuals and policymakers, whereas the drag shows and balls are for the broader community. We also hosted a breakfast and dinner for influencers at a fancy restaurant so they could take photos and subtly show their support, without explicitly saying ‘Queer life matters’. It’s all about meeting people where they are and getting our message across in the safest and most effective way.

In Nigeria, we’re still at a point where the average Queer person doesn’t even know what it means to be Queer in terms of policy. Opportunities to learn about oneself have been blocked by years of homophobia. That’s where the summit comes in. It’s still growing, but this year we saw some progress. The summit tends to have a smaller turnout - around 200 people - compared to events like the drag show, which had over 700 attendees.

Policymakers aren’t interested in attending drag shows; they don’t want to be seen there. However, they are willing to come to spaces like the Alliance Française, where we can host these discussions. Even though we have to pay for the venue, it provides a safe space for the conversation.

Policymakers prefer corporate or diplomatic spaces where they can quietly engage with Queer issues. They don’t want to be seen as publicly supporting Queer life, but they’re willing to be in spaces that don’t loudly advertise their support. The setting is usually lavish; people enjoy champagne, snacks, and entertainment, which reflects the vanity of Lagos. It’s essential to understand the local culture and approach each audience accordingly if we want to get our message across.

But sometimes, there are also people there that you wouldn’t expect. For example, at this year’s summit, we had the first Queer teenager in attendance—an 18-year-old. During the summit, they asked how we’re helping younger Queer Nigerians. I was caught off guard and didn’t really have an answer, but it reminded me that our presence in these spaces is already significant. You never know who is watching or what impact we’re having.

TFA: And are you also trying to get politicians or other key figures to make public commitments, even if just symbolically?

Timi: The reality is that no Nigerian politician is going to openly support Queer people unless you’re handing them millions of dollars. Even then, they would probably deny it afterward. What we do instead is get them to present awards at our events. It’s a simple but effective commitment—they don’t have to say ‘Queer life matters,’ but by publicly presenting an award, they are indirectly supporting us.

It’s all about negotiating the space. We understand that not every space is safe for queer people, so we focus on finding ways to make it work for both sides. Sometimes that means doing things like sending wine or flowers to their office to keep the relationship strong. It’s about showing up at their events, even when you know you don’t really matter there, just to ensure they’ll show up at yours. It’s a lot of PR work—sometimes it’s about sending them coffee or just making sure they feel appreciated, so they’ll prioritize coming to our events.

And it is often very transactional, but in the end, it’s all for the community and the larger movement. It’s necessary to achieve the bigger goal.” (Part of a conversation in the regular meeting group between The Festival Academy and Alumni, 2024)

“South Africa for a very long time has presented itself as a country that's progressive. We have an incredible constitution, one of the best in the world, that has laws that protect LGBTI people, but the reality of the lived experience is completely different. The work that incredible people like Bev Dietsi were doing in the late 80s and the early 90s is still being continued. We haven't found complete freedom; we haven't found this nirvana that sometimes even our government tries to present that we have.

A little bit of background about me: I'm 25 this year, and so I grew up in a—I was a born-free, I was born in the new democratic South Africa. But even my childhood was still very conservative. I grew up in a very strict Christian home, and for a long time, things weren't questioned. One of my earliest memories is that my grandmother would make clothes for us. She lived in a small village, and whenever we'd go visit, she'd make clothes for each of the kids. I was a kid who liked staying indoors; I loved reading, so I was always the child who would try on the clothes for the other cousins while they were playing. So, I have memories of me wearing dresses because my girl cousins would wear dresses, and that was okay until a point, until they saw that, wait, this dress thing is becoming too familiar on this boy child.

Things got a little more intense when I went to boarding school. I was about 13 years old, and I went to a very strict private school, a boarding school where we'd read the Bible every morning before going to class. That's where the binaries were really enforced: boy, girl, black, white even. So, all of those things were really enforced in me, and it wasn't until I was about 17 that I started figuring out what sexuality and gender were for myself. 

It's when I moved to Joburg for university that everything changed for myself. I found community, and through finding community, I found freedom. I found expression. I found words for things that I had never had before. I didn't understand that "gay," the word "gay," is not just a slur, because the first time I heard it, it was a bad thing. But when I was in university, I began to understand that this is an identity that is not a bad thing. I learned about the diversity in the world, that it is not just man or woman, that there is a plethora of things that you can be, and that you're allowed personal evolution as well.

It was at the same time that I started getting involved with not only activism but also creating events and spaces, which I think, for LGBTI people, it's always linked. Our activism and the spaces that we create are linked. That's where I even met Bev—I'm not even sure if she remembers—but the first time I ever met her, I was hosting an event with LGBTI artists. I think I was 21 at the time, and everybody had to be LGBTI and Black. We put on a show that I self-funded myself. I remember having a conversation with her that was extremely validating after the show, where we just spoke about the work that they had been doing since they were a teenager, quite literally, and how it was beautiful to see that work carrying on. That's how I see the work that I'm doing: we're carrying on the work that started all those many years ago, because today, we still face the same problems.

I do an event called Vogue Nights Jozi, which essentially takes the ballroom culture that was established in places like the U.S. and then later on in Europe and brings it onto the African continent. 

We still are struggling. We are still struggling to get funding, we're still struggling to get venues, we struggle to even advertise it because we still have to worry about things like safety. We're having our next Vogue Nights soon, and we are prioritizing a big part of our budget to security—not because we're afraid that the people who attend are going to be fighting or doing whatever it is, but we're afraid of what happens to them when they step outside. So we've got a dedicated fund for security guards who'll be waiting with our participants for Ubers so that we can make sure that they're at least getting home safe. That's a concern that we still have today.

Another consideration is the access. For us to continue making these events, we still need to be thinking of all the different intersectionalities that are important when creating events for communities that, for a very long time, have been pushed to the sides and the fringes of society. We still need to think about: can people get here? Are we excluding them if we put it into a suburb? So all of our events try to be as central as possible, which means that they're not as safe all the time, so we have to find ways around that consistently. It's a difficult challenge, but it's one that we welcome, because we have to be inclusive. We have to make sure that all our events can take people who are disabled or of different abilities as well. 

We have to make sure that these are events that prioritize the general safety of everybody in the community, which includes the most marginalized of us, which is trans women, etc. These are things that we think about all the time, even in the name of having fun. We have to be more intentional than our cis-het counterparts. We cannot have our events at a place where we know there's also a het event happening next to us, because we know walking down or past that event could have people saying things to you, and that changes your entire night; that changes your entire day, even.

Moving our experiences outside of nightlife has been something else that we've been deliberately trying to do, to have more daytime festivals and events. Unfortunately, being gay, lesbian, or trans during the day is not something that's been really accepted, right? We've been relegated to the nightlife. We've been relegated to the times of the day when we aren't seen, because we seem to offend some type of sensibility, that we offend families, we offend morality. A lot of the things that we do are in the nighttime, and it's been, for us as younger creators, a deliberate push to have things like brunches, to have things like film festivals—things that stimulate parts of us that aren't just the nightlife. It's a consistent battle, because as being mentioned earlier, our country is going through an incredibly dark period right now for LGBTI people, specifically living in the townships where they are—and this is a trigger warning—where they are being mutilated and burned and killed. For a big part of it, our government hasn't said anything, the institutions that we see, have not said anything. They have not put up any money for programs that would work against these violent crimes that are happening.

We have to be very aware of all of those things that are happening and still try to provide spaces, even in the midst of the darkness and the bad things that are happening, we still have to find ways of getting joy. I think that's been the LGBTI experience of the world—that even in our darkest times, we find ways of creating joy, and we find ways of sharing. 

The basis of why we create our events is for community. For a very long time, money for us came second because the main priority was always creating for this community that otherwise would not have spaces because the spaces are still so limited. I live in Joburg, which is probably the biggest city in our country, and I can count maybe on one and a half hands how many spaces are dedicated to the LGBTI community in probably one of the biggest cities on our continent. We are working consistently to push back at that and to make it better, because I always remember that young child who was then told that you're no longer allowed to wear dresses, that this thing that you are is a bad word, that this thing that you are is a sin against your creator.

How do we begin to create spaces for that young child so that they can feel validated in their experience? Because the truth of the matter is, when you're at an event or you're at a festival or you're at a party, you see people like you, and them shining their light gives you permission to do the same. So that's what we aim to do with all the events that we create.” (Part of a Alumni working group meeting in 2021)