NATIONAL QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL 2005

Welcome to the 8th Annual National Queer Arts Festival! NQAF events begin June 1st and end on June 30th! The Queer Cultural Center (Qcc) and The San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center are kicking off the NQAF and celebrating Pride Month on June 4th with the mother of all FREE Performance Parties – The QBall! Starting at 6:00pm, join us for four, count ’em FOUR art openings and twenty bite-size performances. Then kick back the chairs and dance. As always, the beats got treats: free food and drink abound.

We have riveting performances and knockout visual arts exhibitions for the entire festival. Qcc asked visual artists to define and create new work about war. War might be with economic, political, racial, gender-based, environmental or illness. We are sharing this exhibition with visual artists from around the world, and complementing the exhibit is an evening of performance at the opening on June 5th at SomArts.

This year, Qcc is lowering the ticket prices for most of our events, and has increased the number of FREE events. Our event costs have risen 20-40%, but we are lowering admissions to bring these programs to the widest possible audience. Most of our tickets will be a sliding scale of $5 – $15. Eighty to ninety percent of our ticket earnings are given back to the artists as fees. Please consider what you can afford and if you are able, purchase tickets at the higher end of the sliding scale; you are directly supporting your community’s artists!

The National Queer Arts Festival 2005 is produced by Qcc in collaboration with numerous Bay Area arts organizations such as SomArts, The LGBT Community Center, Jon Sims Center for the Arts, QueLACo, Asian/Pacific Islander Cultural Center, Native American Cultural Center, the African American Art & Culture Complex, Corazon del Pueblo, The Three Dollar Bill Cafe, Galería de la Raza, and our newest producing partner, the amazing Femina Potens and Elements Hostel/Hotel.

We thank the funders and supporters of NQAF 2005 for helping to make it happen! Also to our new media sponsor the SF Bay Guardian for the ink and support!