The Lesbians Incorporated community grants program has awarded eight (8) grants for our second round of grants of 2020. Each project received up to $1000. The grant recipients are individuals and organisations representing a wide variety of lesbians in Australia. The grants will use the funding for a wide range of purposes, including education and training, community development and creation of arts and culture to help support lesbians and LGBTIQ+ communities across the country.
Lesbians Incorporated grant recipients for round two of 2020 include:
Rainbow Families Queensland website
Rainbow Families Queensland supports and advocates on behalf of LGBTQIA parents and prospective parents across Queensland. The LInc grant project seeks to develop a current functioning, user friendly website. They will also use the site to keep their members up to date on community events, playgroups and sell their merchandise to raise funds for the organisation. The website will promote the incredible resources that they created last year so that the community, as well as health, childcare, and LGBTQ+ specific organisations, can access and disseminate these community resources.
“Speaking Personally” an account of surviving a violent family background
The Lesbian Inc grant will support the publication of Speaking Personally. The book launches for Speaking Personally will be in the form of workshops which will provide a forum for discussion of the issues around family violence and lesbianism. With domestic violence sadly a common theme in our society these workshops will also provide resources for those present who need them to get support. Talking is acknowledged to be an important way of dealing with trauma and supportive environments such as feminist workshops can offer a way to begin healing. Lesbians have learnt the value of speaking out and this book will provide a forum for book groups and individuals to speak out about domestic violence.
Dyke Eye
DYKE EYE is a short-form comedy webseries parody of QUEER EYE that focusses on THE ALMOST FAB FIVE – five hilariously incompetent lesbians performing a makeover on baby gay Anya. Standing in the way of the Almost Fab Five is an unbelievable amount of lesbian drama, a bit of organised crime, Netflix ignoring their calls, and seriously bad taste in furniture. As tension rises between the Five, they will fight to get their shit together to save their romantic, platonic, and fashion relationships. DYKE EYE is made by, and for, lesbian and queer people. The four lead creatives are lesbian and queer, and we have a strong focus on creating work that empowers and entertains in equal measure. Produced and created by Jean Tong
Tales of a Upstart documentary project
Tales of an Upstart is a documentary of the decade long attempt at creating an imperfect utopic queer venue – the Red Rattler Theatre (‘the Rat’). This doco delves into the cooperative model where by 5 dykes hocked themselves into debt to buy the warehouse space and then the tales of the huge community of volunteers, artists and activists who staffed and ran the space for 10 big years to slowly buy out the owners to make the space in 2020 fully community owned – socialising wealth for our future queer communities.
The doco covers the dyke army that built the space – the volunteers (mostly lesbians and queer women ) the artists + the techs + the event organisers + communities who use the space to make culture and find a bent home. The Rat was dreamed up as a response to lesbian + queer artists + activists wanting a home where they could fundraise for social justice projects and create their own culture, without censorship or huge fees and where any profits would come back to our communities.
Wicked Women web series
Wicked Women is a web series set in the late 80s, the love story of Lisa Salmon and Jasper (Francine) Laybutt, the infamous couple who founded Australia’s first Lesbian erotica magazine. The drama explores their ground-breaking journey, as they fight to give expression to radical female sexuality and become legends of Australia’s LGBTQI identity.
The LINC grant will contribute to the operational costs needed to sustain project’s development. This is a critical stage of development and fundraising for the project if you would like to see how you can help this project succeed please check out the Wicked Women Facebook page.
Femme – The Doco
Femme will be a short documentary which will be submitted to the Melbourne Queer Film Festival 2021. Femme will explore what it means to be a queer femme woman in 2020. The documentary will be created by a crew of all queer women who are producing this film in response to the lack of representation of femme lesbians in media. An exciting opportunity to showcase the joys and struggles of being a femme queer women – from not being read as gay, to downplaying femininity to be taken seriously in corporate spaces, as well as femme and femme romantic relationships.
The short documentary will feature the stories of a cross-section of femme identifying individuals and will capture the intersections of being femme and also living with a disability, being a person of colour, First Nations, trans and/or a queer elder. The documentary will provide a platform for voices we don’t often see in the mainstream or LGBTQIA+ media and is a project of Alexis Lea and Unicorn Party .
Queers on the Fringe
Maeve Marsden & Queerstories produced 4 nights of an LGBTQI+ variety show – for a scaled down Sydney Fringe festival in September 2020. Equal parts playful, personal and political, 6 performers, including artists from across the LGBTQI+ community shared stories and created a safe community space during COVID 19.
Queerstories Australia believes LGBTQI+ people have a particular perspective on the year we’ve all been through – our focus on chosen family, our history of mutual aid, and our experiences living through the AIDS crisis, equip us with different emotional and community building skills from the mainstream. Queers on the Fringe explored and showed community resilience, creativity and sense of joy, while offering an engaging show, both for live audiences in Sydney and anyone around the world via live stream.
Rainbow Mob Getaway
The Rainbow Mob Getaway is an initiative developed to improve social connection, access to wellbeing coping strategies and support for Lesbians. The Rainbow Mob Getaway is a weekend of social connection, recreation and connection to Culture.
The women attending will have an opportunity to connect socially, discuss lived experiences and formulate wellness self coping strategies. The Lesbian Incorporated grant is to contribute to the costs of educational workshops, venue hire, and administration. The IndigiLez Co Founders created the Rainbow Mob Getaway as a culturally safe exclusive initiative for Aboriginal,Torres Strait Islander and Australian South Sea Islander women and other diverse peoples that may or may not identify as women with a disability or Elders.