Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

Internationally, June is celebrated as Pride Month by members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

This year, I Am One T&T, a local community-based organisation which seeks to address the needs of gender and sexual minorities, will be hosting a Pride Arts Festival in T&T from June 3 to July 1.

I Am One T&T co-director, Zelecca Julien, said while the group wanted to have a Pride Celebration, they were not interested in having a Carnival-type parade, as happens elsewhere in the world, because of the hostile environment and because Carnival is already a T&T celebration. She said the group decided to showcase the art of members of T&T’s gender and sexual minorities communities because many of them are artists in various forms.
The Festival will include photography and art exhibitions by local and regional artists, dance and photography workshops, spoken word events and movie and film screenings. “We’re also featuring some of the work that I Am One T&T has done, for example, the “I Am Human” photo series that we started, so for this we’re going to feature the 15 stories we collected. The Pride Market is members of the community coming out to sell the work they do, jewelry, fashion, hairdressing, because we have a wide range of artists in the community. We have Juan Pablo Alba Dennis doing dance workshops and a performance stemming from those, Ullelie Verbeke from SASOD Guyana doing a photography project and a couple of other artists. We’re also having Spoken Word.” There will be a LGBT Sports and Family Day on June 19 and a Pride Market, composed of local LGBT vendors. The Calypso Cabaret, “Buss The Mark” is a musical/play written, directed and starring members of the LGBT community.
Festival organizer and I Am One T&T co-director Timmia Hearn said she is particularly excited about the launch of the CaribbeanTales Short Film Challenge and the Queer and Trans* People of Colour Film Challenge, which will be launched on June 21. The group will be conducting a film shoot over the following few days to submit to the challenge. She said films submitted to the Challenge will be uploaded to the CaribbeanTales TV Video-on-Demand Platform, which is part of the CaribbeanTales Worldwide Distribution Company, based in Canada.
On the entertainment side, the group will be hosting T&T’s, and possibly the region’s, first ever King Show, where Julien said “the aim is to give cis-gender women and transgender men a space to perform masculinity.” There will also be a series of dance parties, called “Sweaty Fridays,” each with a different theme, on each Friday of the month, and the month will end with a cooldown fete.
Julien said the Festival is mostly free, as the group has been doing fund-raising events since last year to pay for it. Some of the bigger events, such as the dance parties, the King Show and the Calypso Cabaret will charge a cover price or ask for a donation.
She said the hope is to have the Festival become an annual one, similar to the NGC Bocas Literary Festival or the T&T Film Festival, where other regional and international LGBT organizations can take part, and there will be many more events for people to choose from.

Julien said the Festival is mostly free, as the group has been doing fund-raising events since last year to pay for it. Some of the bigger events, such as the dance parties, the King Show and the Calypso Cabaret will charge a cover price or ask for a donation.

Julien said the aim of the Festival and all the events put on by the group is community building, so she encourages members of the different gender and sexual minority communities and their supporters to come out and get to know and support each other.

For more information, visit the I Am One T&T Facebook page or email iamoneworld@gmail.com