Fabian Fletcher, president of the board at tri-Pride Community Association Inc. comes into the studio to talk about the tri-Pride organization, the tri-Pride Summer Festival, the performers, the history of Pride, some other 2SLGBTQIA+ organizations including Spectrum, and ideas for future activities and events.
Introducing Fabian Fletcher, the President of the Board of Directors of tri-Pride, an all-volunteer organization. In addition to the summer festival there’s Winter Pride, in February or March, and PRIDEtoberfest during the Octoberfest weekend. The Board works on organizing the events, but also works on policies and procedures, governance issues, and work more on advocacy and doing grass-roots community organization. The Board is eight or nine folx, a Vice-President and other Board directors who take on roles like vendors market, sponsorships, a treasurer, a development director: a small but mighty group. But there are twenty-plus volunteers who do the work of setting-up and tear-down, oversee the vendors market, volunteers to manage the stage area. There are enough volunteers for the summer festival, but people can sign up now for the fall and winter events. To volunteer, contact info@tri-pride.ca or look for the volunteer call-out on social media.
6m45s
Planning for the summer event started in January; lots of paperwork. The summer festival this year is taking place at Willow River Park, officially known as Victoria Park. The vendor market filled up really early this year, but there are still people looking for spots. This is the second year back after a Covid absence. Last year was really well attended, hoping to increase that for this year.
9m54s
Aside from the vendor booths, there will be performances from Noon to 4pm, local live performers, music, spoken word, standup. From 4pm to 8pm there will be the drag performances. Alysha Brilla is the musical headliner, and the headline drag performers are Ongina and Trinity K. Bonet, both from Ru Paul’s Drag Race. tri-Pride has a sign-up sheet for local performers, but the headline acts were cold-called. There’s a great drag scene in Waterloo Region.
12m27s
tri-Pride has been operating since 2002, doing summer festivals and other events. The City of Kitchener has an events team that coordinates with tri-Pride to arrange all the applications and paperwork. tri-Pride is very privileged to have the Board members it does to fill out paperwork and applying for licenses. Fabian wishes were ways to make the process more accessible to smaller organizations and community-based folks to have space in the park to have events. The requirements for audited financial statements are out of reach of organizations on shoe-string budgets that have no finances.
The tri-Pride festival this year is on Saturday, 10 June 2023 in Willow River Park, from Noon to 8pm. “tri”-Pride covers all three cities, Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge, although they have not been out in Cambridge as much as they want to. But Grand River Pride has just started up in Cambridge, having their summer festival also on Saturday, 10 June 2023!
20m58s
Covering some of the history of the Pride movement, starting with the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Are things getting worse today? Not necessarily, intolerance has always been there, but people today are less hesitant about sharing their hate. Life has become more difficult for Queer folx, actions v transferring over from the United States. Fabian knows of incidents across Canada, not so much in Waterloo Region, although there is the example in Oxford county with the municipality of Norwich refusing to fly the Pride flag.
25m26s
What actions can tri-Pride and other organizations take? It’s tricky, because the organizations need to ensure the safety their membership. Non-Queer folks can show up for the Queer community at events, protests, and rallies, get involved with local organizations, and lobby their elected officials. tri-Pride joined #Act4QueerSafety, and signed a letter addressed to government officials at both provincial and federal levels to say “Enough is enough, you need to act for Queer safety.” But while getting involved, there will be spaces strictly reserved for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. For example, tri-Pride is trying to create safe spaces geared toward BIPOC Queer folk, IndigiQueer youth, Two-Spirit youth, and those intersecting personalities. But non-Queer folk should show up for the larger festivals and use their voice and use their privilege to advocate for their 2SLGBTQIA+ community members.
Talking about tri-Pride‘s online presence; keeping it up-to-date is tough with volunteers. The main website needs to be updated, there’s a new volunteeer to do that.
Talking about other Pride organizations across Canada. There’s a Canada-wide organization, and a world-wide organization called InterPride. Joining such a federation gives tri-Pride a chance to hear from other organizations what’s working for them, to support each other, and to brainstorm ideas for festivals. There’s no Canada-wide Pride festival, although Captital Pride in Ottawa has what is deemed the nation-wide Pride festival, and InterPride has a festival as well.
37m43s
Pride festivals aren’t so much a protest any more, but a celebration. Fabian says it’s building communities. Talking about other events, like PRIDEtoberfest, a dance / drag performance / other performance. It’s an indoor event, unlike the summer festival. Winter Pride is a bit smaller, a dance with one or two drag performers. Fabian would like to have more social, low-key events like coffee nights, or speed friending.
39m50s
Talking about other Pride organizations, like Spectrum, in the same building as the CKMS-FM studio. Fabian is a staff member at Spectrum, overseeing their volunteers and operations. But tri-Pride is careful not to step on anyone’s toes, looking to support and uplift other organizations. Talking about some of Spectrum‘s programs, Fabian mentions “capacity building”, to be more accepting and creating safer space for Queer folks. tri-Pride focuses on the events, and focus on creating spaces. They’re looking at ways to do smaller events throughout the year that are tailored to different parts of their community.
Fabian tells us how Alysha Brilla came to be the headliner for this year’s festival. This year’s lineup was chosen to highlight diversity to represent what our community actually looks like.
50m45s
Bob and Fabian go over the details of the coming tri-Pride festival: Noon to 8pm on Saturday 10 June 2023 in Willow River Park, followed by a dance starting at 9pm hosted by Queer Night Out.
52m35s
Bob thanks Fabian for being on the show, and gives the end credits.
CKMS Community Connections Hour One airs on CKMS-FM 102.7 on Monday from 11:00am to Noon, and Hour Two airs alternate Fridays from 3:00pm to 4:00pm.
Andrew explains the setup of the installation Music For Trees on Roos Island in Willow River Part for the Open Ears festival this past spring. The origins of Music For Trees originated in an idea to emulate the sun and the moon. Synthesizer isn’t Andrew’s main instrument, that’s the harp. There’s 47 strings on a harp! And some have 50 strings! And seven foot pedals! The harp isn’t a chromatic instrument, so you use your feet to access the black notes. Other harps use levers. Andrew has four harps, the pedal-operated 47 string harp, a 26 string wearable harp, and two harps he built from a kit. Those are good to have for kids when Andrew is teaching. The strings on a harp are colour-coded, Cs are red and Fs are blue.
17m13s
This Garden is Andrew’s album of music primarily written for harp that sets four poems to music, poetry by Eli Sokoloff Harris. This was the capstone project for Andrew’s degree. It’s available on Bandcamp! Andrew likes quiet, prefers hearing the sounds around him (but not cars). Does Andrew listen to his own music? He writes music out of necessity, when nothing else scratches the itch. He looks for music that doesn’t pollute with its soundwaves. Music that slows things down. As an example, You Always Loved The Water.
Bob thought it was Andrew doing the narration, but it is Andrew’s friend Eli. When Andrew was looking for material for his grad concert, he asked Eli to send him some poems. It reminded Bob of a Vangelis piece called The Little Fete. Andrew’s thoughts on the piece today are not the same as when he wrote it, or heard the poem for the first time. It talks not so much about the garden itself, but what happens between people.
36m38s
Bob and Andrew met at the Rural Rainbow Ride in response to a Woolwich councillor making some “disgraceful remarks”. The ride was so the city community could show that they support the rural Queer community even if they don’t live there. As with all activists, Andrew thinks he should be doing more; while he attends events, the Rural Rainbow Ride was the first thing he organized.
43m01s
Andrew is no longer on social media. It didn’t feel authentic, like he was trying to create a gobal audience. Andrew is trying to care about everything, but he can only act on so much. Geting off the Internet gives him more control over where he’s acting. Bob says the Internet is not Real Life, but Andrew says digital things are real, but which ones? The Internet is still new, and the odds that we got it right on the first go are not very high. Perhaps we need some public control over the Internet, because when we leave it up to profit it doesn’t serve the public. We need access to the Internet the same way we need access to electricity. Things that happen on the Internet are real. Meeting online friends in real life is also real, but in a different way. Being off social media hasn’t affected Andrew’s ability to market himself, he tries to be present in the community and talk to people, tries to stay hyperlocal. The pressure is trying to keep up with social media, to post daily, but Andrew is trying to make art, he can’t keep up with that or it becomes just “content”. Andrew had a concert at the Conrad Centre For The Performing Arts with support from the City of Kitchener as part of the NUMUS 2022-2023 season. Not so much a concert as a collection of installations all in one space. Andrew will try to make this project available digitally, on his web site “this fall”…
53m12s
Bob gives the closing credits, and we go to the end of the podcast with Postlude (I love the way it flows)
Nothing but music this week, so no podcast, no bonus footage, no image gallery. Just music. Two hours worth! And it’s our SOCAN ratings week, which means that any musicians played today will receive oodles of royalties (for extremely low values of “oodles”). To maximize this economic windfall for Waterloo Region, most of the music is KWCon.
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