Thank you for attending NQAF 2023!

From our team at Queer Cultural Center, we couldn’t be more grateful for our community who attended our events the 26th Annual National Queer Arts Festival! Whether you joined us in-person or cheered us on at home while streaming a virtual event, thank you so much for your support. If you haven’t yet, please fill out our Audience Survey to share your thoughts on this year’s events. Check out our virtual events and live streams in our NQAF 2023 playlist on our QCC Youtube channel, and enjoy the rest of your summer!

ABOUT NATIONAL QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL

Our signature program is the National Queer Arts Festival (NQAF), an annual multidisciplinary Festival held May through July throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Each year we commission over twenty performances, visual arts exhibitions, and interdisciplinary showcases and in the process, we support hundreds of artists and production crews.

Since 1998, NQAF has presented more than 800 different events that have featured more than 2,300 LGBTQ+ artists including Bill T. Jones, Heklina, Alice Walker, Robert Rauschenberg, Meredith Monk, Adrienne Rich, Marga Gomez, Justin Chin, Thom Gunn, Cherrie Moraga and Dorothy Allison. Many artists find their start at the festival. NQAF is the largest queer arts festival in North America.

2023 NQAF

26TH ANNIVERSARY

This year’s 26th Anniversary National Queer Arts Festival will take place June 9, 2023 through July 2, 2023 and will be a hybrid festival, in-person around the Bay Area and virtual worldwide. The 2023 NQAF theme “Murmurations of Queer Power” celebrates the convergence of a swarm of queerness and the power of coming together in service of liberation. The National Queer Arts Festival centers Queer, Trans, Gender Nonconforming, Intersex, Two-spirit, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (QTI2SBIPOC artists) and honors their work.

2023 NQAF Artists & Events

Check out our program by clicking the above title!

June 9, 2023 – Xtal Azul & Gaia WXYZ: Murmurations Gallery Opening & NQAF Opening Night

June 9 – 30, 2023 – Xtal Azul & Gaia WXYZ: Murmurations: Queer Bodies of Werq 

June 9 – 11, 2023 – In Lak’ech Dance Academy: 5th Annual Afro Latin Dance Festival

June 10 – 11, 2023 – Valerie Troutt: Because of Black Music IAM

June 11, 2023 – Maya Chinchilla & Gwen Park: Live & Queer LIVE!

June 15, 2023 – Queer Ancestors Project: Queer Ancestors Project Resist!

June 16, 2023 – OYSTERKNIFE: & seeking

June 17, 2023 – It’s Qwere: Mighty Real: A Sketch Variety Show

June 21, 2023 – Art Handlxrs*: Handle With Care: The Future of Art Handling

June 22, 2023 – A.B.O. Comix: Across Prison Walls: Building Community Through Letter Writing

June 23, 2023 – SF Trans March: Performances

June 28, 2023 – Queer Cultural Center: QCC Cabaret

June 29, 2023 – tanea lunsford lynx: Remembering Club Q: Panel & After Party

June 30, 2023 – Skip The Needle: Octavia of Earth Vol 2 & More

June 30 – July 2, 2023 – Dazié Grego-Sykes: The Changer and The Changed

June 30, 2023 – Xtal Azul & Gaia WXYZ: Murmurations Gallery Closing & NQAF Closing Night

To honor community care and wellness, QCC is producing a hybrid festival with both in-person and virtual gatherings. Our aim is to produce a festival where folks can participate in a manner that feels safe and good to each individual preference. Our in-person events range from small workshops to large concerts. At our events, masking is required for all in-door experiences. In addition, we have masks and hand-sanitizer on-hand and are providing testing for our artists and team.

ASL interpretation available for only specific in-person events and by request. Check each event’s individual Eventbrite for their accessibility information. If you are interested in attending an event and require ASL interpretation, please send your request to [email protected].

For blind and visually impaired audience members, Queer Arts Festival partners with Gravity Access Services to offer live audio description and haptic access tour for “& seeking.” Audio description is a live audio track spoken by a professional audio describer to audience members with visual impairments through a wireless headset system. You will receive a headset a the venue. It provides clear and engaging descriptions of the meaningful visual details of a performance. Haptic access tours (20-30 minutes) are a live pre-show tour that allows patrons to experience—through touch and their own movement— the space, performers, costumes and objects in addition to key movement elements in the performance.

For more information, to book a spot in a Haptic Access Tour or to reserve a headset please email [email protected].

AUDIENCE SURVEY

To help Queer Cultural Center (QCC) get a better idea of who is in our audience and the impact of our shows, after attending an event we would be grateful if you could please answer a few questions about the event you attended and yourself: Audience Survey

If you would like to share additional comments about the Festival or an event you attended, please do so by emailing [email protected]!

FUNDERS

Thank you to Queer Cultural Center Funders:

Akonadi Foundation
Alameda County ARTSFund
California Arts Council
East Bay Community Foundation
Horizons Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
Phyllis Wattis Foundation
Ruth Arts
San Francisco Arts Commission
San Francisco Grants for the Arts
SOMArts
Trans Justice Funding Project
Walter & Elise Haas Foundation
Zellerbach Family Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Community Partner Events

June 2, 2023 – Queer Rebels: Reshaping the Paradox

June 4, 2023 – Dear Queer Dancer: Queer Dance Film Festival

June 9-11, 2023 – QWOCMAP: 19th Annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival

June 14-18, 2023 – Fresh Meat Productions: Fresh Meat Festival of trans and queer performance

June 23, 2023 – Trans March 2023

June 24, 2023 – Dyke March 2023

June 24-25, 2023 – SF Pride 2023

Thank you to our community partners, sponsors, and venues!