Gorge Festival hopes to wow autumn crowds

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For its fifth edition, Winnipeg’s Gorge Festival is stepping out on its own.

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For its fifth edition, Winnipeg’s Gorge Festival is stepping out on its own.

Aside from its inaugural virtual event in March 2021, Gorge has coincided with June’s Pride celebrations. But this year, organizers decided to shift to the fall with hopes the queer arts and drag festival could continue evolving into its own entity.

“We decided to go out on our own without the added chaos of Pride season, when there’s so many other events and all our performers are booked at a million other things as well,” says festival co-director Andrew Eastman, a co-founder of Synonym Art Consultation.

BNB STUDIOS PHOTO
Hellen Bedd D’Sloot performs at Hyperart in 2023.
BNB STUDIOS PHOTO Hellen Bedd D’Sloot performs at Hyperart in 2023.

Eastman says this year’s festival, which runs to Oct. 4, is relying on intercommunity collaboration to continue celebrating drag while also expanding its embrace of queer ballroom culture.

Organizers this year joined forces with local drag personalities such as Hari V., Ruby Chopstix and Prince Odi Pinklady on a series of free workshops, panels, BIPOC showcase performances and a royalty-themed ball on Oct. 4.

“We wanted to work very closely with these artists to help lift up their programming, to work in a collective approach where we can share resources, share promotional strategies, apply for grants together and lift everybody up,” says Eastman, who with Synonym’s Chloe Chafe also co-founded the Wall to Wall mural festival.

The festival found its financial situation complicated earlier this month when its application for funding through the Canada Council for the Arts was rejected.

The festival had not received Canada Council funding for its first four editions either, but was hopeful. The organization applied for grant support in February, says Eastman, who understands the funding body’s constraints but was frustrated with the seven-month waiting period between application and response.

Though Gorge has funding through the Manitoba Arts Council and several private supporters, the organizers decided to reach out for community support to help cover the mostly free-to-attend festival’s operational costs. As of Friday at noon, a GoFundMe had raised $6,200.

“We’ve never really had to do this call to community in the 13 years of Synonym operating, but people of course have stepped up,” says Eastman, who anticipated the rejection but was still disappointed.

“It was a good reminder to ourselves and to everyone that this type of programming takes months and months and months of work — often unpaid — by artists, and that (it) shouldn’t be taken for granted. It can disappear so quickly.”

BNB STUDIOS PHOTO
Kymera at the Kiki Ball in 2024.
BNB STUDIOS PHOTO Kymera at the Kiki Ball in 2024.

Bolstered by community support, the festival’s latest edition will go forward as planned, which organizers believe is especially necessary while queer and trans rights are being threatened on a daily basis.

“Queer joy and queer artistry are always going to exist, sometimes a little more safely and out loud in the world, and we are fortunate to live in a time in general that’s had some of the most progressive leaps forward in terms of representation,” Eastman says.

“But we definitely feel the pushback currently. As artists, we’re used to pushing back ourselves and getting our voices out there. We want to make sure we’re doing that in a safe and responsible way, taking care of our artists. That comes in the form of community building, capacity building, paying artists properly when they’re out there spreading their art.”

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca

Ben Waldman

Ben Waldman
Reporter

Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University’s (now Toronto Metropolitan University’s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben.

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