The program will run fortnightly across September and October as part of seniors festival events and will be delivered by "All The Queens Men". The Department of Health and Human Services is providing the funding for this program and Council is coordinating the event and providing the venue.
Councils Team Leader Assessment and Inclusion Services, Jason Watts said “This event helps promote Greater Shepparton as an inclusive community whereby the LGBTI community and their allies can come together in a safe and enjoyable environment, build on their dancing skills, socialise and enjoy each other’s company.”
Greater Shepparton City Council is working with GV Pride to reach the local LGBTI community. GV Pride will set-up a Facebook Event to promote the dance club and reach their community members.
This projects aims to:
- Connect disparate and isolated LGBTI elders, through a network of community gatherings and creative workshops.
- Foster a strong and supportive LGBTI elders community throughout Victoria through regular contact and relationship building among individuals.
- Facilitate leadership and creative ownership of an annual Victorian LGBTI elders public awareness event – “The Coming Back Out Ball”.
- Facilitate the physical, cognitive and emotional benefits of regular creative practice for a marginalised, traumatised and pioneering generation.
- Produce regular and multiple events which support the creative expression, storytelling, advocacy of LGBTI elders; events that engages the broader community with their narratives, needs and celebration.
- Contribute to restoring a reverence to the ‘elder’, as is articulated through First Nations culture, to the contemporary Australian culture which struggles with ageism, materialism and discrimination.
- Meaningfully capture the learnings of this community development process with LGBTI elders in a way that further informs research, the aged care sector, community initiatives and the broader community.
Document through video, photography and online narrative the life experience of these uniquely lived elders (the last Australian generation who have lived through historical and systemic discrimination due to their sexual and gender orientation).
