WeHo Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival continues through end of month

Each year, the City of West Hollywood celebrates the artistic contributions of the LGBTQ community with its WeHo Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival (formerly known as the One City One Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival). The festival runs for 40 days, from Harvey Milk Day on Sunday, May 22, 2022 through Thursday, June 30, 2022, which marks the end of Pride month. This year, some events will be presented in-person and others will be available online. All programming details are posted at pride.weho.org and there is a link to this site from www.weho.org/pride.

Some highlights of the remainder of the 40-day festival include:

· WeHo Reads: Pride & Joy in the Matrix – June 7, 2022 at 6 p.m. Free. Online, RSVP: www.weho.org/wehoreads. LGBTQ+ authors are taking a hard look at society IRL and virtually, pinpointing the ways we come up short in connecting with and loving each other.

· Pride Poets – “Pledge” Poetry Hotline – June 11, 2022 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and again from June 11, 2022 at 11 p.m. to June 12, 2022 at 2 a.m. Free. Call (202) 998-3510. LGBTQ poets are standing by ready to tackle all your poetic needs! Call in and have an original poem created for you or a loved one. This year’s theme is “Pledge: come share your allegiances with us!”

· Vox Femina: A WeHo Tribute to Sondheim – June 12, 2022 at 3 p.m. at Congregation Kol Ami, located at 1200 N. La Brea Avenue in West

Hollywood. Featuring songs from much-loved shows such as West Side Story, Into the Woods, Company, and many more, this lively concert celebrates one of Broadway’s most beloved and influential lyricists and composers, Stephen Sondheim! With performances from the full VOX ensemble, as well as dynamic solos, this joyful evening is not to be missed! This concert is supported in part by an arts grant from the City of West Hollywood. Free, Suggested Donation $10, RSVP required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-weho-salute-to-sondheim-tickets-343385995757

· Q Con: A One Day Comic Convention Celebrating LGBTQ Comics – June 18, 2022 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Plummer Park’s Fiesta Hall, located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard. Free. Find an exciting, diverse selection of LGBTQ comics and graphic novels all in one place! Talk to creators, get autographs! Q Con is family friendly, and admission is free. Cosplay is encouraged. Join in the costume contest for fun and prizes! For the latest updates on Q Con, visit https://www.prismcomics.org/q-con.

· Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles’ Tribute to QUEEN! – June 18, 2022 at 4 p.m. at Plummer Park, located at 7377 Santa Monica Boulevard. Free outdoor community concert. Members of the Chorus will sing a selection of iconic songs from Queen and Freddie Mercury, inspired by their recent hit concert QUEEN of the night. We Are the Champions, Somebody to Love and We Will Rock You are among the best pop/rock anthems ever written, and the Gay Men’s Chorus will bring them to life as you’ve never heard before in this special one-hour concert. Space is limited. For reservations visit https://gmcla.org.

· Trans Pride LA 2022: The VarieTy Show – June 18, 2022 at 7 p.m. RSVP required. Free. For more information and to RSVP: https://transpride.lalgbtcenter.org/. The VarieTy Show serves as the grand finale of the annual Trans Pride LA Festival.

· QUEER DIASPORAS: Lavender City of Dreams presented by Rubén Esparza and Queer Biennial – through August 19, 2022. Free. Online exhibition with some in-person events at ONE Gallery. Touching on issues of identity, activism, futurity, and beauty where queerness is the thread that weaves through all these personal – yet universal -perspectives. View the exhibition at www.lavendercity.art

· Season 2: Walking Amongst the Rubble: Undocuqueer Pride LA’s free monthly queer poetry reading series, Influx Collectiv: Queer Reading Series, welcomes season two of the Walking Amongst the Rubble: Undocuqueer Pride podcast. Season two includes poetry performances and interviews by LA-based award-winning undocuqueer poets Sonia Guinansaca, Lupe Limon Corrales, Jennifer Tamayo, and Jesus L. Valles. Episodes will be released weekly on Saturdays in June. Links available here: https://www.influxcollectiv.org/podcast.

More detailed information and a full list of the City of West Hollywood’s LGBTQ Arts Festival 2022 programming is posted at pride.weho.org and there is a link to this site from www.weho.org/pride.

In addition, archived online programs from 2020 and 2021 are available to view. Among these is a collection of short films which tell the fabulous, fun, and deep LGBTQ history of the City of West Hollywood called the Stuart Timmons West Hollywood LGBTQ History Tour. Acclaimed author/historian Stuart Timmons (author The Trouble With Harry Hay, co-author of GAY L.A., former executive director of the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives) was in the process of writing his West Hollywood LGBTQ History Tour as the final in a trio of walking tours (Downtown Los Angeles and Silverlake are the other two) when he suffered a debilitating stroke in 2008. The tour remained incomplete until the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division funded its completion as part of the City’s 2015 LGBTQ Arts Festival, allowing Timmons and a small team to help finish his research, bringing it to completion as both a self-guided walking tour and a special in-person event featuring performance artists as tour guides. This fun and

informative tour returned for two more years, and in 2021, was recorded as a collection of short films that can be viewed on the City’s WeHo Arts YouTube channel.

The WeHo Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival theme for 2022 is “With Liberty, Diversity, Inclusion and Progress for All” and this year’s festival poster was designed by Kaija Sydlowski through an open call poster competition which received submissions from around the world. The City of West Hollywood’s #WeHoPride LGBTQ Arts Festival is organized by the City’s Arts Division. The City of West Hollywood is committed to providing accessible arts programming for residents and visitors. The City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division delivers a broad array of arts programs including: Art on the Outside (temporary public art), Urban Art Program (permanent public art), Summer Sounds, Winter Sounds, the WeHo Reads literary series, Free Theatre in the Parks, Arts Grants for Nonprofit Arts Organizations, Library Exhibits and Programming, the City Poet Laureate Program, Human Rights Speakers Series and the #WeHoPride LGBTQ Arts Festival. For additional information, please visit www.weho.org/arts.

For more information about the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Pride LGBTQ Arts Festival, please contact Mike Che, the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Coordinator, at (323) 848-6377 or at [email protected]. For people who are Deaf or hard of hearing, please call TTY (323) 848-6496.