Join photographer Ming De Nasty in celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community of Liverpool’s city centre through a unique socially engaged photography project; Residents. 📸
LGBTQIA+ people have long gathered in the city centre for safety, community, and self-expression – Residents aims to honour that culture by making their presence visible via public artworks. This project aims to be intergenerational, reflecting the long LGBTQIA+ history of Liverpool and a younger experience of what the LGBTQIA+ scene is today – where people of all ages meet and connect. 👥
If you live in the heart of Liverpool or feel like the city centre is ‘home’ we would love to hear from you! To be part of a major public exhibition celebrating LGBTQIA+ identity, all participants must live within the Liverpool City Region. Your portrait will become part of a public exhibition, displayed across the city centre in a celebration of identity and belonging. ❤️
If you want to join this project, email mingdenasty@gmail.com with subject line “Residentsproject“.
Residents is a Socially Engaged Photography project by Ming de Nasty, Open Eye Gallery, Homotopia and LGBTQIA+ community members. Residents is part of the Photo Here programme – a series of 6 residencies with a variety of groups around the Liverpool City Region. Residents is also part of Homotopia Festival 2025.
At Homotopia, we believe in amplifying the voices, stories, and brilliance of our entire trans community. Your art, activism, stories and lives are essential to our community and our culture.
To our trans sisters: We see you. We love you. We will always stand with you. We will celebrate you. We will make your voices heard.
In solidarity, Board of Trustees, Homotopia. 🏳️⚧️
🎨 by the incredible Fox Fisher, who we have had the pleasure of hosting as our Artist In Residence for Homotopia Festival in 2020, Fox also mentored as part of our QueerCore programme in 2021, to which he mentored the incredible Dan Chan. Fox is an artist, filmmaker, author and activist.
We’re looking for a talented and passionate arts professional to join our team as Homotopia Festival Producer. Reporting to our Interim Executive Prodcucer, you’ll ensure the successful delivery of Homotopia Festival, leading on production and coordination of the programme.
Contract: Ten months fixed term, four days per week
Salary:
£18,666 total salary – 32 hours per week (4 days) over 10 months (£28,000 FTE)
Place of work: Creative Industry Studio 17, The Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX
Start date: April 2025
End date: January 2026
The deadline for applications is 23:00 Sunday 16th March
To Apply
Please submit a supporting statement highlighting how your experience and expertise meet the role responsibilities and personal specification criteria outlined (maximum 600 words), together with your CV (maximum two pages, to include two referees).
Please also complete and submit Homotopia’s equalities monitoring document here
Please insert Application Homotopia Festival Producer as the subject
Shortlisted candidates will be contacted by email and invited to an interview on Thursday 27th March.
Access and Further information
If you require any further information about this recruitment process, need additional information about the role, or need additional access support to make an application, please get in touch. We are here to support you. If you would like to have an informal chat about the role please contact Interim Executive Director, Adrian Friedli, via recruitment@homotopia.net.
For Your Pleasure: 15 Years of DuoVision is an exhibition using photography and film at the Open Eye Gallery, reflecting on and celebrating the fledgling queer club culture of the 90s in the UK, curated by guest curators DuoVision, and supported by Homotopia.
Adrian Friedli, Interim Director, Homotopia, said:
With this exhibition, DuoVision takes the celebration of North West music from the 80s into the 90s. Having partnered with the fantastic DuoVision on The Holly Johnson Story, currently on display at Museum of Liverpool until 27th July 2025, Homotopia is delighted to support our long-
term collaborators in this exciting and important project. An amazing show, and a significant event in marking the legacy of North West club and Queer culture.
Exhibition Launch | 30th Jan 6pm – 8pm
Be sure to come along to the exhibition launch, the tickets are free and everyone is welcome!
Calling All LGBTQIA+ Performers aged 16-25 in Liverpool!
Join Young Homotopia for an incredible programme of creativity and collaboration starting 17th February 2025.
We’re looking for dancers, singers, and actors of all abilities and experiences to help create a cabaret-style performance inspired by the iconic Holly Johnson and his extraordinary exhibition at Liverpool Museum.
Rehearsals will take place the week of 17th February (Monday-Friday) + additional rehearsals on select Saturdays throughout March.
Your journey will culminate in a performance at Homotopia’s Takeover Day Museum Of Liverpool on 5th April.
A colourful display of material from the archives of ‘Homotopia’, Liverpool’s unique and trailblazing LGBT+ arts and culture festival, is at Liverpool Central Library. Featuring programmes, articles and interviews, the exhibition celebrates some of the artists and authors who have appeared in Liverpool.
Established in 2003 with its first festival in 2004, Homotopia has attracted an audience of more than 125,000 people, and a global audience of over 175,000 for its web-based TV programme.
See it at Liverpool Central Library from Monday 21st October 2024 -until Saturday 31st January 2025
As part of Homotopia’s Autumn Programme, join us as we hear the story of Holly Johnson from the artist himself.
To celebrate the recent opening of The Holly Johnson Story exhibition, curated by DuoVision Arts and produced in partnership with Homotopia and National Museums Liverpool, book your tickets for an intimate event where none other than Holly himself will be in conversation with journalist, Paul Flynn.
The exhibition celebrates Holly’s creative genius, charting his personal life and extraordinary music career over five decades. This event will see Holly speak openly about his music and his life in the public eye.
Holly Johnson will be joined by Paul to talk about his music career of over 40 years, his rise to meteoric fame following the release of Welcome to the Pleasuredome, and life in the public eye.
Paul Flynn is a prolific London-based writer and pop cultural commentator who writes for i-D, Attitude, Fantastic Man, the Sunday Times, GQ Style and Grazia.
Paul’s book Good As You: From Prejudice to Pride – 30 years of Gay Britain, published in 2017, is essential reading for self-respecting homosexuals and pop culture fans alike.
This event is suitable for people aged 16+.
The event will take place at Museum of Liverpool, Pier Head, in the ground floor Global City Theatre on Saturday 30 November. It will start promptly at 2pm and run until 3pm.
Tickets are £24pp and includes entry to The Holly Johnson Story exhibition (entry following the In Conversation 3pm – 4pm).
A BSL interpreter will be present for the duration of the in conversation.
Tickets are limited due to capacity so buy now to avoid disappointment!
We’re delighted to welcome Adrian Friedli as Interim Executive Director at Homotopia.
Adrian comes to Homotopia with a wealth of experience in the arts sector, as an accomplished arts worker and Director. You can read all about him here.
Adrian says
“I am delighted to have the opportunity to work with the dynamic Board and team at Homotopia, to support the next chapter in its development as a queer arts and social justice organisation, exploring what the future of LGBTQIA+ art and activism can be.”
Homotopia is also delighted to announce we have become a charity. This change in status helps us to focus on developing the organisation further.
It’s going to be a busy Autumn as, although we have no Homotopia Festival this year, we co-produced The Holly Johnson Story with Museum of Liverpool and DuoVision and will announce a series of events as part of that this Autumn and Spring. We will also have Young Homotopia and Queercore programme news very soon.
We know many of our friends and family in the arts community and the LGBT+ community in Liverpool want to know more about Homotopia.
Adrian is here as Interim Dirctor to guide us into the next chapter. We remain an Arts Council England National Portfolio Ogrnaisation (NPO). The decision to pause the Homotopia Festival in 2024, allows for the time and space to focus on strengthening the organisation’s foundations and building for the future.
Topher Campbell joined the organisation in 2024 as Director/CEO. After five months with Homotopia, Topher made the decision to focus on his own artistic projects at Tate Modern and Somerset House, as well as his family commitments in London.
We are really excited about what the next twelve months will bring and how it will strenghten this festival for the future.
Martin Green and James Lawler are DuoVision, co-curators of The Holly Johnson Story, in partnership with National Museums Liverpool and Homotopia.
The Holly Johnson Story opens on 14 September 2024 running until Sunday 27 July 2025. Book your tickets here
DuoVision has worked extensively with the LGBTQIA+ creative community since 2012, curating exhibitions by undervalued artists, photographers and designers, aimed at engaging with a wider audience.
The Gallery Liverpool on Stanhope Street
Until 2020, they curated exhibitions at The Gallery, Liverpool, featuring artists including Duggie Fields, Caroline Coon, Pam Hogg, Peter Ashworth, Jarvis Cocker, Marc Almond and more. Since then, DuoVision have curated exhibitions at; Cartier, Paris; Potteries Museum, Stoke on Trent; Gallery46, Whitechapel, London; Fitzrovia Chapel, London; Tramps, London; TCFE, Soho, London.
“There are many artists who haven’t had the recognition they deserve”, says Martin, “and central to our work has been the ethos of casting a light on both the quality of the work they have produced, as well as making the artworld see them in a different light”.
This began with Duggie Fields, the late British artist, who Duovision exhibited in the Gallery in 2012 with the show Welcome To My World.
“Duggie’s work was evocative of a certain era and culture of British art and identity that blended pop culture references, music, queer identity, post punk, flamboyance and dazzling colour. He was chronically overlooked by the art world so this exhibition was a stamp, a mark in the ground to say ‘you have to recognise how important this artist is”.
Welcome to My World featured paintings, prints, objects and sculpture from Duggie’s archive and work that had featured in solo shows in London, Tokyo and New York.
Duggie Fields (left) and sculptor Andrew Logan at the opening of Welcome to My World
Through Duggie, DuoVision met Caroline Coon, an iconic figure of the counterculture, known as a photographer and campaigner, but whose visual art was not well known.
“In 2018 we held the first solo show by Caroline Coon at The Gallery, The Great Offender. It was Caroline’s introduction to the artworld as this fully formed, astonishingly talented and yet overlooked artistic figure”.
That exhibition catapulted Coon into the artworld, positioning her a vital figure within the narrative of female art.
“Too often in the artworld, people are put into a certain box early in their career and they stay there. If we do truly want to be both diverse and inclusive, we have to give people the freedom and ability to evolve through their life and artistic journey. The artist you begin your career as when you are young isn’t the same one you will be as you age. Giving the ability to document and exhibit that journey is a huge part of fully embedding the artist experience within culture”.
In 2018 other exhibitions featured the British fashion designer Pam Hogg and photographer Peter Ashworth.
DuoVision with Jarvis Cocker. From left, james lawler, Jarvis Cocker, Martin Green
The Holly Johnson Story is an exhibition part of this tradition about seeing creatives in a different light from the one they have been perceived.
“My personal journey began with Holly in 1982” says James, “when I saw him perform with the unsigned Frankie Goes to Hollywood art at my art college. His openness about his sexuality was affirming and influential during a time of rampant homophobia. In the 80s, Holly was one of the musicians whose unapologetic approach to their own sexuality helped shift mainstream understanding and acceptance”
“We approached Holly about doing this exhibition. Then we talked to Homotopia about securing Heritage Lottery funding and they, with other partners, helped us to work on the application, which was successful. Then we partnered with National Museums Liverpool for an exhibition space”.
The Holly Johnson Story is open until Sunday 27 July 2025.
