This Midsumma Festival, the City of Stonnington is celebrating our proud and significant rainbow history by launching Retracing Stonnington’s Queer Footprints, an audio tour of significant local landmarks, venues and spaces, guided by voices and music from the local queer community.
This initiative is a collaboration with Queer-ways, which maps the queer cartography of Australia, combining the queer stories and voices of past and present into a permanent, interactive record of being queer in Australia.
The tour’s outline and key locations were mapped after two rounds of consultation with LGBTIQA+ community members and allies about places of pride and significance within Stonnington.
Retracing Stonnington’s Queer Footprints will launch at on Wednesday 21 January with a live in-person tour of the route guided by Queer-ways hosts LUCIANO and George Keats. The tour will begin at 10am at the Braille Library at 31-51 Commercial Road, South Yarra.
There will be a break mid-way during the tour with a stop at Chapel Off Chapel, where participants will be treated to a song performed by cabaret diva Dolly Diamond and enjoy free refreshments.
Attendees on the day are encouraged to bring a mobile device and headphones as the live tour will incorporate several recorded elements from community guest speakers who will share moving stories of community, connection, celebration and loss from across the LGBTQIA+ community.
This audio will also include music from the Melbourne Rainbow Band.
Following the launch, the pre-recorded version of the audio tour will sit online for people to listen to or do their own self-directed walking tours of the route at any time.
For more information visit stonnington.vic.gov.au/queer-ways