Saoirse Ryan on Body Movements and the rise of queer festivals
For too long, queer events have generally taken place under the shadow of darkness. But promoters up and down the country are making this a thing of the past, with a whole host of new music festivals bringing the queer community into the light
For one day in October last year, one corner of London was transformed into a playground for the city’s queer community. “It felt like a real place of self-expression… to see everyone express their queerness in the middle of the day, taking over a whole section of East London,” says Saoirse Ryan, DJ and co-founder of Body Movements festival.
The one-day event – dubbed “East London’s first queer dance festival” – took place in venues around Hackney Wick, an area already known for its plethora of independent, queer-friendly spaces. Just a glance at some of the photos captured from the festival showed exactly how joyous it was, and highlights the need for more events of its kind. “I've been playing at a lot of queer events around the world… and it just clicked in my head [that] there's no festival that represents all of these people,” says Ryan.
“Our goal with Body Movements was that it was representative of the full – as much as possible – spectrum of the queer community within clubbing culture,” she continues. “We wanted to have a broad and diverse music policy; we wanted to make sure that it was representing a lot of different sexual identities, cultures, ethnicities; and also it was important to work with promoters who we know have a real established audience, but also with promoters who are doing something a lot more unique and smaller.”
If the huge turnout and glowing reviews of the festival’s inaugural edition didn't prove just how necessary a festival like Body Movements is, then the demand for tickets for its second edition certainly does. When we speak to Ryan, it’s on the same day that presale tickets for Body Movements 2022 go live, and by the end of the day 80% of tickets for the festival have gone.
This time around, though, Body Movements boasts a much more localised line-up, with collectives like Glasgow’s Lezzer Quest, London’s Pxssy Palace, and Manchester’s High Hoops among those hosting showcases. The festival will also incorporate workshops and panels for the first time, with Ryan’s Body Movements partner, Clayton Wright of Little Gay Brother, even working on putting together an LGBTQ+ promoters forum that will provide advice for queer promoters on licencing, funding, legal issues and so forth.
“There's not really anything like it that exists for queer promoters, and there's a lot of different nuances that come with being a queer promoter,” says Ryan. “The whole future goal [for Body Movements] is not just to put on a rave, but to actually build something that really benefits the queer community and the culture of clubbing.”
And it feels like a match has been lit, with the announcement of several new queer festivals across the UK this year already. The UK’s first queer electronic music and camping festival, Flesh, was announced in January, and is set to take place at Springfield Farm in St Albans on 28 and 29 May. The festival’s line-up is also the first to be entirely made up of underrepresented artists, with 90% of those performing being women, trans and non-binary artists of various ethnicities.
Working with many of the same collectives as Body Movements, Flesh will showcase an array of rising and established DJs from all over the world across its three stages, featuring sets from the likes of Chippy Nonstop, LSDXOXO and TAAHLIAH. There will also be an activity tent – catered towards sober festival goers – hosted by art-rave collective Riposte, where attendees can socialise, take part in workshops and panels, share their experiences, and relax.
A running thread between these festivals is their focus on community, with each of them working with various organisations and collectives to offer a broad range of experiences that cater to as many members of the queer community as possible. And as each of them work to bring queer events into the daytime economy, that feeling of being cast into the shadows that has existed, for so long, among the queer community feels like it might just be starting to slip away.
Body Movements takes place at various venues across Hackney Wick, London, 30 Jul: bodymovements.co.uk
Flesh Queer Festival takes place at Springfield Farm, St Albans, 28-29 May: fleshfestival.com