- Restaurant review: Late Summer Afternoon Tea at King Street Townhouse, Manchester - 8 August, 2023
- Meet our cover star: Lady Bushra - 28 January, 2023
- Film review: My Best Friend’s Exorcism (Amazon Studios, 2022) - 30 September, 2022
curious arts festival is an annual celebration of LGBT+ culture across the North East. curious artsdevelops projects with the aim of exploring and celebrating our culture through the arts, increasing visibility, dialogue and understanding of the LGBT+ community.
Friday 5 July 2019
Talk: curious about visual arts
Time: 12-1pm
Venue: Curious Festival Hub, 8 – 9 Central Arcade Newcastle, NE1 5AF
Age: All ages
Access: BSL interpreted
Price: FREE (no booking required)
An open discussion and chance to meet some of the visual artists showcased in Curious Festival 2018.
Sex Education by Harry Clayton Wright
Time: 8-9pm
Venue: Alphabetti Theatre, Newcastle, NE1 4HP
Age: 18+
Price: £10 / Book online
One parent refuses to talk about sex – the other buys their child gay porn DVDs.
Sex Education blends startling performance, moving storytelling and a no-holds-barred interview with Harry’s mum and some good old-fashioned gay porn that his dad bought when he was 14.
A show for anyone who’s wondered why they want what they want.
Winner of the LGBTQ Brighton Fringe Award (2017)
*Please note this performance contains sexual scenes and a description of sexual violence.
Scratch & Lemon at Alphabetti
Time: 9.30-10.30pm
Venue: Alphabetti Theatre, Newcastle, NE1 4HP
Age: 18+
Price: £6 / Book online
A platform of experimental and entertaining queer performance hosted and featuring performances by Ginny Lemon.
The evening showcases works in development from Curious Arts ‘Development Bursary’ recipients exploring and celebrating LGBTQ themes.
The ticket includes a post show party until midnight with Ginny Lemon.
Post-show party: Entry only £3 (pay on the door).
Saturday 6 July 2019
Spectacular Drag Storytime (Newcastle)
Time: 10.30-11.20am
Venue: Northern Stage, Newcastle, nothernstage.co.uk
Price: £5 / Book online
Where everyone is welcome and every story is fabulous!
Join Ben and their Grandma Gladys for a storytime like no other… Forget traditional tales and enter a place where storybook adventures break the norms and imagination is unlimited.
Curious craft sessions: Get creative this pride season! Join artists after the storytime fun to decorate bunting for Gladys’ house and make your own badge to take away.
Spaces are limited.
Spectacular Drag Storytime (Stockton)
Time: 2.30-3.20pm
Venue: ARC, Stockton, arconline.co.uk
Ages: 3-7, Families
Price: £6 / Groups of 6 or more: £4.50 per person + £0.10 booking fee per ticket/ Book online
Where everyone is welcome and every story is fabulous!
Join Ben and their Grandma Gladys for a storytime like no other… Forget traditional tales and enter a place where storybook adventures break the norms and imagination is unlimited.
Curious Craft Sessions: Get creative this pride season! Join artists after the storytime fun to decorate bunting for Gladys’ house and make your own badge to take away.
Spaces are limited.
The Longtable: Presented by Slate: Black. Arts. World.
Time: 5pm
Venue: Northern Stage, Newcastle, NE1 7RH
Time: 14+ (14–17 to be accompanied by an adult)
Price: Free but booking required / Book online
After last year’s sold-out event, Slate returns with an artist-led discussion that invites inspirational Black* LGBT+ artists based in the North to share their artistic practice, discuss the barriers that exist around creating new work and offer some solutions. The Long Table is an open panel format where audience members can ‘take a seat at the table’ and join the debate.
Come along, have a bite to eat, join the conversation and put the arts world to rights.
Led by Eclipse, Slate is a three-year movement supporting Black* artists in the North to work on a local, national and international level. Featured artists to be announced. For further information contact: degna@eclipsetheatre.org.uk.
*To Slate, Black means anyone who has been marginalised by their race or ethnicity (e.g., POC, BAME, etc).
Rent Party
Time: 7.15-8.20pm
Venue: Northern Stage, Newcastle, NE1 7RH
Age: 14+ (14 -17 accompanied by an adult)
Price: From £10 / Book online
Being Broke Never Looked So Fierce.
We’re inviting you to a party, we’re going to entertain you with all our friends – dancers, singers and musicians – we’re going to vogue, we’re going to party and we’re going to create a kaleidoscopic picture of what it means to be young, gifted, black…and poor, and gay.
Rent Party is an immersive show about 21st-Century Austerity Britain, created by an extraordinary group of artists inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes and the Rent Parties of the 1920’s Harlem Renaissance.
Once the performance stops, the party continues with Curious Vogue Ball at Dance City.
Curious Vogue Ball
Time: 9-11.20pm
Venue: Dance City, Newcastle, NE1 4BR
Age: 18+
Price: £13.50 | Students £8 | Concessions £11 / Book online
The annual Curious Vogue Ball is back and this year the party comes to Dance City!
The Vogue Ball is an ultimate celebration of North East LGBT+ and Vogue Culture, an evening of vogue from community participants and professional vogue houses from across the North.
Voguing is a highly stylised, modern house dance developed in the 1980s by LGBT+ people of colour to create and own their own space, becoming a celebration of their culture.
Sunday 7 July 2019
Spectacular Drag Storytime (Darlington)
Time: 11-11.50am, 1-1.50pm
Venue: The Hullabaloo, Darlington, theatrehullabaloo.org.uk
Ages: 3-7, Families
Price: £5 each / Group Ticket: Buy 4 tickets, save £3 (must include min. one adult) / Buy tickets (11am) / Buy tickets (1pm)
Where everyone is welcome and every story is fabulous!
Join Ben and their Grandma Gladys for a storytime like no other… Forget traditional tales and enter a place where storybook adventures break the norms and imagination is unlimited.
Curious Craft Sessions: Get creative this pride season! Join artists after the storytime fun to decorate bunting for Gladys’ house and make your own badge to take away.
Spaces are limited.
Baltic is Curious
Time: 7pm
Venue: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, NE8 3BA
Age: 16+ (16-17 accompanied by an adult)
Age: £12 / £8 concessions / £10 before 30 June + booking fee / Book online
This lively evening explores gender through queer performance and screenings by celebrated local and national artists. BALTIC is Curious’ triple bill includes:
‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ by Lazlo Pearlman
A 10-minute cabaret/boylesque performance that explores intimacy, love, partnering and the transgender body.
Includes frontal nudity.
Tombo(y)la by Amy Bell
A conversation with a dancer dancing in conversation with their gender. A rolling archive of tomboyhood. A drop-in durational installation.
Give it a spin.
What is a tomboy? How does that word live in the body and why would anybody want to grow out of it? How does the gene pool lottery connect with learned patterns of movement to shape our felt sense of body, gender, self and belonging?
Tombo(y)la dances in that space between language and embodiment and opens up the gaps between names, nouns, declarations and the affects, emotions and potentials of embodiment.
Tombo(y)la asks what it might be to move differently within gendered attempts to fix the flux of experience.
Drag Syndrome
The starting point is the art. Before Down’s Syndrome, before extra chromosome, before disability, before anything. We are Drag Syndrome! Freshly fierced! The world’s first Drag troupe featuring highly addictive drag queens and kings with Down’s Syndrome.
More information
For more information, visit curiousarts.org.uk.
