A lot of this year’s festival is happening online. You can still expect an eclectic mix of entertaining and inspiring LGBTQIA art and culture, but the way you access it is going to be different.
Whether you’re not very tech confident or simply have questions about where to access content, we’ve put together the information below to ensure that your audience experience is as smooth and enjoyable as possible.
FREE EVENTS
Online events marked FREE will be live-streamed on both our YouTube channel and Facebook page. You don’t need to do anything in advance, just head to one of these websites at the start time of the event.
The exception is Mirror, Mirror which will be hosted by the Open Eye Gallery on Twitch. You will need to sign-up for a Twitch account in advance, if you don’t already have one.
TICKETED LIVESTREAMS
For some events you will need to pay or make a donation in order to access the livestream. Those who have booked, will be sent the event link by email (to the email address you used to make the booking) approximately 1 hour before the event start time. So keep an eye on those emails!
A friendly reminder: please do not to share livestream links with anyone who has not paid for a ticket. We trust you to do the right thing by our artists.
ONLINE WORKSHOPS
If you’ve booked onto an event described as a workshop, these will be held via the video conferencing platform Zoom. If you haven’t already used Zoom, you’ll need to sign-up for a free account in advance, on the website here. You will receive a link to the Zoom meeting (sometimes you’ll also get a password) approximately one hour before the start of the event. This will be emailed to the address you used to make the booking.
PODCASTS
Our Queer The City project features a series of podcasts and audio guides. These will be available to listen online via all of your favourite listening platforms. If you simply want to listen from home while your device is connected to WiFi, you’ll be able to play the podcasts directly from our website from 30 October.
If you’d like to listen to the guide while visiting the art crawl, you’ll need to download each one to your phone (unless you have lots of data and a great 4G connection). If you’re new to this, here’s how to download a podcast to your phone. For an iPhone, you can use the Podcasts app which is already installed on your phone. For an Android phone, you could download an app such as Podcast Addict. Either way, open the app, search ‘Homotopia’ and you should find what you’re looking for. Hit the download button (it might look like a cloud with a downward arrow) to save each podcast to your phone. Note: you might later wish to remove the downloads in order to free up space on your phone.
ACCESS
All of our digital events will feature live captioning (please check with us for workshops hosted by partner organisations). In addition, EAT ME and the livestream of Homotopia and Friends’ Fabulous Cabaret will feature BSL interpretation.
If you have any questions about how to access any of our digital content, do get in touch via hello@homotopia.net or on 0151 709 1113 and we’ll do our best to help.