We love to challenge the status quo. Why should there be only one ten day gay festival (Pride) in the City of Toronto? We believe there is room for us too. Queer West has been here ten years, quietly working away with little or no money and an organization unknown to many.
We believe we hosted the best alterna-queer ten day festival to Pride, the City of Toronto has seen in 2010. To us its not about being the largest or making the city economy grow. Its about you and making sure you enjoy our festival. If your not completely satisfied, we're not happy. We care about creating a quality festival. We won't settle for anything less than excellence.
We just happen to believe we are holding exceptional and fun queer art festivals, every year for the past ten years. We're constantly focusing on being innovative, we added a film festival in 2008 that is starting to grow, from a backyard to a 244 seat theatre in 3 years. Throughout the year we hold other quality queer cultural events, everything from youth art workshops to young adult UnConferences to nights of poetry and spoken word.
Our arts festival use to precede Toronto Pride Week, in June. The Queer West Board of Directors and Arts Collective thought Toronto's LGBTQ fabulousness shouldn't all be jam packed into that month. The annual arts festival has now moved to August and become A whole different Festival, on its own, to showcase queer culture in a better light. We believe there are tourists in the city all summer long, especially in August; they will be looking for something different than, Pride
We believe we are making a significant change, how people view gay and lesbian festivals.
Want to Come?
