A Queer Walk of York

Speakers: Andy Egerton, Rachel Cowgill and Laura C Forster

Between recent political strife regarding the Equality Act, local venues ending contracts with drag queens, and the sustained anti-trans campaigns funded by J.K. Rowling – whose themed shops dot the Shambles - York’s queer landscape faces significant pressure. Given this climate, it’s more important than ever to think about flagging practices, outward visibility of queer solidarity, space making and space co-opting.

A Queer Walk of York takes you on a journey through the city, commemorating spaces where queer folk used to meet, chat, dance and organise. Complete with personal reflections on venues long since defunct, it invites you to reflect on experiencing and living in York as a queer person. Echoing this year’s Festival theme, the guided walk focuses on how we take, make, fight for and commemorate the queer spaces in our city.

The Queer Walk of York is a trail of queer heritage sites building on work done during the StreetLife project, inspired by York Alternative History’s Guerilla Blue Plaque project, and later the collaboration between York LGBT Forum and the Rainbow Plaque Project headed by Kit Heyam, Helen Graham and Jan Atlus. We are also grateful for support from Queer Arts. The guided tour features spaces that would not necessarily ‘count’ as ‘official’ enough to be of historical interest at first glance.

Meet outside City Screen for this walk.

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Host or Publisher York Festival of Ideas