Annual Community Healing Festival

Our team planned an end-of-year community photoshoot event that focused on queer & trans visibility & advocacy. Our digital campaign aims to empower queer & trans St. Louisans to speak up on social justice issues they care about through empowering mini-interviews facilitated by trained peer counselors

This was an outdoors social gathering featuring music, food, a fashion runway, and an open mic, with the goal of promoting peer support, mental health, empowerment, and solidarity among queer St. Louisans. We wanted to create a safe space where queer & trans St. Louisans can feel whole in their bodies; heard in their experiences; and seen in their identities.

Given recent community tragedies (2016 Pulse shooting in Orlando and subsequent heightened policing of LGBTQIA+ communities, 2022 anti-trans legislation in Missouri and nationwide, trans erasure in conversations about abortion access after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, anti-trans protests in Missouri), this is a particularly salient opportunity to strengthen our community’s resilience, highlight positive possibility models and representation for queer & trans St. Louisans, and create safe spaces where we can be our authentic selves. We know that radical healing occurs when one is able to be critically conscious about systemic oppression and envision personal and collective liberation. Through this project, we aimed to promote the 5 anchors of radical healing for queer & trans St. Louisans: Collectivism, critical consciousness, radical hope, strength and resistance, and cultural authenticity and self-knowledge.

We invited 4 community photographers to take photos of queer St. Louisans wearing gender-euphoric clothing at Tower Grove Park, while leading mini-interviews with them to flesh out their personal profiles & experiences with community activism.

Our goal was to create a safe, affirming space for queer & trans youth St. Louisans to come together, build community, and have some fun with modeling – while lending visibility to forms of beauty that are marginalized by White supremacist, Eurocentric, ableist, & fatphobic structures & beauty standards. We then (with consent) are using the photos to put together a digital campaign that is promoted through our social media, newsletter, and website.

• Interview space where models can engage in supportive one-on-one or group conversations facilitated by SQSH’s peer counselors

• Model/photoshoot space + fashion runway

• Socializing space + open mic

• Healing activities led by holistic wellness providers (chair massage, reiki, art therapy)

• Food & drinks

This event was for queer and trans St. Louisans working, or going to school in the St. Louis MO-IL Metro Area, as well as their supportive peers and caregivers in their lives. St. Louisans of all races and genders are welcome, but we prioritized and centered the needs of Black and Brown transgender and gender non-conforming youth.

77 people signed in at our event through Google Forms.

We promoted this event through flyering, sharing with our partners, social media (Facebook and Instagram), our monthly newsletter, our website, and word-of-mouth outreach. More than 90% of our volunteers and 100% of our staff are queer St. Louisans; our personal relationships went a long way towards attracting queer & trans St. Louisans to participate in this event.

At our Community Debrief on Nov 16, we found that successes included:

• Pulling off an event that centered connection, visibility, storytelling, wellness, and holistic healing for queer & trans St. Louisans, for the first time!

• Incorporating an effective array of innovative programming including peer-led interviews, open mic, postcard collage, face-painting, queer closet, fashion runway, photoshoot, art therapy, reiki healing, chair massage, etc. which appealed to various participants’ individualized needs

• Prioritizing accessibility for our most marginalized event participants, including incorporating an anti-carceral event safety plan; ASL interpretation; windowed masks; childcare; name tags with pronouns; photo consent; and free services & activities

• Effective event concept, layout, and promotion that included recruitment of a high volume of volunteers, partners, event supplies, and community support

• 89 people registered for our event on Eventbrite

• Ample event preparation including a dry run, venue scout, personnel briefing, setup + tear-down

• All event participants who filled out our post-event feedback survey (n=22) rated the overall event quality as “Good” or “Very Good”, and that they would recommend or strongly recommend this event to others.

At our Community Debrief on Nov 16, we found that challenges included:

• Difficulty in coordinating high number of personnel, partners, and volunteers, as well as juggling multiple event activities simultaneously (some were more well-utilized than others)

• Difficulty in predicting number of event participants and planning food + supplies accordingly

• Difficulty in mobilizing, connecting with, and recruiting more Black, brown, Latine, Asian, and Indigenous queer St. Louisans to attend – more intentional and intensive relationship-building and outreach is needed and hoped for in 2023. We plan to reach more QTBIPOC youth in 2023 by reaching out to and partnering with QTBIPOC-led organizations.

• Sign-in process was too tedious and involved too many steps while relying on hotspot wi-fi that was spotty – would like to streamline and use pen & paper methods next year

• Lack of bathrooms close to the event

• Chilly, windy weather

We are very excited about the support we received from our community and partners that made this event a success! Your donations would allow us to take our event to the next level in 2023, and provide our queer & trans youth-led team with the resources we need to create a radical healing and celebration space for our community annually.