As we head towards the end of the year, here’s a quick look back on what the Fabulous Femininities team has been up to – and what’s coming up in the first few months of 2025.
In April, I (Daisy) joined the team and quickly after that, we headed into a series of workshops across West Yorkshire. These workshops were centred on three themes: complex intersectionalities and audiences; protected spaces for alternative sex-positive communities; mental health champions and amateur chair burlesque. We’ve been documenting these discussions both here and over on our Instagram and our thanks to everyone who has been involved.
We’ve been also sharing many of our findings through public engagement events and activities throughout the year. In June, our fabulous documentary was shown at Stirchley Cinema as part of their Pride programming and Jacki, Jon (our film-maker from Slate and Mortar) and Dominus Von Vexo (one of the performers featured in the film) participated in a Q&A after the showing.
Talking of our documentary, it’s had quite the year. By the end of December 2024, it will have received laurels from twelve festivals, been shown on Freeview, been broadcast in the UK, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Vietnam – where it’s up for the Queen New Wave Award. We look forward to celebrating its continued success! (If you’d like to host a showing in 2025 or a panel discussion, then do just get in touch…).
In October, I joined Alice and Medusa Has Been in Headingley as part of the International Day for Older People events. Alice was interviewed for BBC Leeds, before speaking about her research on how the costumes of burlesque performers can support and celebrate the aging female body. She shared examples from her interviews with nine burlesque performers, all aged over fifty, and then Medusa took the stage with a wonderful performance. It was a brilliant day and it was lovely to meet so many new faces and friends there.
November saw Jacki speaking at a local International Day of Consent celebrations. Her talk was about “enthusiastic consent” and how people could not guarantee a safe space, but rather could work to generate safer spaces. This term had come directly from our workshops where producers talked about how audience members might feel coerced into participation whilst still not wholly wishing to consent.
November also saw our work gain special mention in the University of Leeds Research Impact and Engagement Awards in the category of “cultural impact”. Here’s a bit more on what that means:
Research can enhance quality of life via collaboration with public arts venues, artists and cultural organisations to produce new forms of artistic expression, often leading to engagement from marginalised or overlooked audiences. This award recognises research that has made a difference to culture, creativity or civil society.
We were delighted to be recognised and send our thanks to everybody who has been connected to the project so far. It’s been a good year!
So what’s coming up next year?
Jacki and Alice will be speaking about Fabulous Femininities at the Night Time Economy Summit in February 2025. Here’s a snippet of what they’ll be talking about at the event:
Creating an Inclusive and Safer night-time culture: the case of burlesque.
Jacki Willson and Alice O’Grady
This presentation focuses on inclusive practices, safer spaces and grassroots organizations. We will share our research on the UK burlesque industry and its approach to safety. The research has shown the importance of understanding the needs of marginalized groups. We will discuss the implications of that work for the wider industry so that night time spaces are more inclusive and welcoming for all.
Burlesque is an historically female-centred industry that puts diverse bodies, striptease, gender expression and consent, centre stage. As a case study, therefore, much can be gleaned from the industry’s approach to conceptualizing, constructing and organizing spaces. Whilst undertaking our initial research on the transformative role of costume, we realized that the community only felt safe to express themselves because the spaces were constructed in particular ways. It is an industry where consent, respect, and inclusion are integral to its governing structures and ways of working. This is a community that gets to know its audiences so that the club nights feel welcoming to a diverse marginalized group of people who otherwise do not feel accepted elsewhere. This is a community that sets out clear rules for their spaces and events where everybody is welcome so long as they abide by the rules. This is an industry that caters to specific needs in a hyperlocal way. Most importantly this is a grassroots way of running spaces that protects the club members in a particular matriarchal and hierarchical way.
Our presentation will make visible the mechanics of how these spaces operate so that frameworks can be developed for other contexts with similar concerns about inclusivity.
In March, we will be hosting a public event in March to launch our brand new film and findings from this phase in the project… more soon!