New Queers on the Block returns for 2024!

Image description: A GIF shows a television set displaying the New Queers on the Block logo – lettering that says ‘New Queers on the Block’ in dark pink and turquoise. The television itself is in similar neon colours and the background behind it is lilac. The screen flickers and flashes and the numbers ‘2024’ appear underneath the New Queers on the Block logo.

Building on their reputation as a leading UK producer of queer-led intersectional performance and events, newly Arts Council England NPO-awarded Marlborough Productions is proud to present New Queers on the Block for 2024.

Since the scheme began in 2018, Marlborough Productions have brought queer joy to towns nationwide, including Blackpool, Bradford, Brighton, Folkestone and Hastings, with a programme in development in Crawley for the very first time. By bringing bold performance, visual art and community gatherings to these underserved queer culture capitals, New Queers on the Block has helped to highlight the efforts of queer arts communities and signpost members of both the LGBTQIA+ community and wider communities towards these events. 

This year, the company is working with five Local Associate Producers to curate and present their own queer-led arts programmes, cementing that LGBTQIA+ people and their art is welcome here. 

Folkestone plays host to QUEERCALL, a new multi-venue festival curated by action-based artist Ash McNaughton (they/them) in collaboration with Creative Folkestone and The Roger De Haan Charitable Trust. The festival will showcase the best LGBTQIA+ art, with exhibitions featuring cutting-edge 360° sound design, analogue animation, immersive computer game experiences, live photo printing, and participatory storytelling. In addition, 7 artists will be making live site-specific performance art works across the coast and public spaces. Events include an artist residency with performance and visual artist Jake Wood; an exhibition of work from multidisciplinary live artist Symoné; an interactive performance from the Istanbul Queer Art Collective at The Folkestone Bookshop; and a triple bill of radical queer live art and performance from Katy Baird, Wet Mess and Ray Felix Carter.

Performance artist Harry Clayton-Wright will present Queer Amusements, a season of multidisciplinary works across the year in their hometown of Blackpool. The seaside festival will include artist talks, workshops, public art, and performances from leading LGBTQIA+ artists from the worlds of cabaret, dance, drag and visual art. Full lineup to be announced soon.

In Bradford, Alice Parsons (she/her) and Sonia Sandhu (she/her) team up with Theatre in the Mill to programme Right Queer Right Now, a two-weekend long festival of LGBTQIA+ performance, live art, parties and workshops, including a season of New Queers on the Block-supported seed commissions. One such commission comes from the pioneering artist, activist and Chinese drag king, Whiskey Chow, and another is from the provocative Leeds-based artist and writer, Jamal Gerald. Alice is also expanding OUT OUT, the drag king project she established in 2022, across the year by offering artistic development opportunities, scratch events, and commissioning new live art and theatre works. The expansion sees Alice broaden the scope of the project to welcome new performance styles in addition to drag.

And finally, in Hastings, Hannah Rose Fox (she/they) curates a series of performance works with local partner Home Live Art, based at the town’s volunteer-led theatre, The Stables. Titled Giddy Up, the programme aims to encourage and support a varied range of artists to perform in a stage-based venue and provide a platform to bring compelling queer work to the southeast coast. Already announced is a performance from Tink Flaherty whose work lies at the intersection of class, gender, neurodivergence and marginalisation, and will take place during Hastings Trans Pride in July.

David Sheppeard, Co-Creative Director of Marlborough Productions, said: “New Queers on the Block has grown in the last year beyond our wildest expectations and this is largely because of the phenomenal group of producers, activists and organisers we are collaborating with in Bradford, Blackpool, Folkestone, Hastings and Crawley. They have brought such distinctive flavours to each festival programme that truly reflects what it means to be queer and living right now across the UK. We can’t wait for audiences to experience queer culture, from the subtle and moving, through to the bold and brash – it’s all there – and as inspirational queer artist Adrian Howells used to say, ‘it’s all allowed’.” 

Marlborough Productions is one of the UK’s leading producers of queer-led, intersectional performance, parties, heritage and radical community gatherings. It has supported New Queers on the Block since 2018 with previous contributors including Amrou Al-Kadhi, mandla rae and Ray Young.

Supported by Arts Council England, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.