Canberra’s Yes!Fest announces 2019 line-up for Lonsdale St party

The team behind Canberra’s annual equality street festival, Yes!Fest, has announced the line-up for its 2019 event in mid November.

This year’s Yes!Fest will feature 29 LGBTQI performers from Canberra and surrounding regions across three stages, transforming Canberra’s bustling Lonsdale Street into a festival of colour and celebration on Saturday 16 November.

The line-up will be packed with drag queens and queer performers including Felicia Foxx, Ellen Reed, The Huxleys, Etc Etc, The Homecoming Queens, Sheba Williams, The House of Luna and Sarah Moany – to name a few.

Yes!Fest 2019 also guarantees patrons tons of great live DJ sets, street vogueing, a stunning variety of queer comedy, and will include the first ever Rainbow Runway Competition. Festival goers will also be invited to become the ‘Queen of Canberra’ by strutting, vogueing and dancing down the runway to compete for the Rainbow Roundabout crown.

Yes!Fest Creative Director, Danny Corvini said in a press release that the 2019 Yes!Fest aims to showcase the very best local and interstate LGBTIQ+ performers the ‘bush capital’ has to offer

“Yes!Fest continues its phenomenal run this year with the addition of the new Rainbow Runway competition at the Roundabout and the Electric Pride night stage in the middle of the street,” he said.

“The local community and our visitors will be treated to a stunning array of queer talent across three stages, from day into night, including DJs, drag kings, singers and circus performers. And it’s all completely free,”

The Canberra festival’s humble beginnings date to 15 November 2017, when Australia overwhelmingly voted in favour of marriage equality and the ACT had just returned the highest ‘yes’ vote of any state or territory.

After 74 per cent of Canberrans voted in favour of marriage equality, the Marriage Equality Results Night Party, organised for that night at Hopscotch Bar by a collective called Gaycrash, quickly turned into a bigger event than organisers had anticipated.

With some help from Jacob White of the ACT division of the Australian Marriage Equality (AME), and Yes!Fest’s’ now-creative director and Star Observer contributor Danny Corvini, Gaycrash’s humble Marriage Equality Results Night Party was transformed into a huge makeshift street party.

Lonsdale Street was hastily closed off to accommodate the nearly 6000 Canberrans who celebrated with dancing, performing and crying in what the city’s daily newspaper dubbed “the first spontaneous thing to ever happen in Canberra!”

Now with the third Yes!Fest about to be staged, Yes!Fest is even bigger, better and bolder as Canberra celebrates its newly discovered title as the ‘Capital of Equality’.

Yes!Fest Chair, Patrick Connell said in a press release that the 2019 line-up would be the biggest in Yes!Fest’s history and will highlight Canberra’s burgeoning reputations as Australia’s most inclusive .

“When the marriage equality postal survey results were announced in 2017, Canberra was the loudest voice for equality in the country and this year’s Yes!Fest line-up will make our voice even louder,” he said

“Canberrans should be proud to live in the Capital of Equality and I look forward to celebrating with our entire community [with] this year’s incredible entertainment line-up.”

Yes!Fest 2019 is supported by the ACT Government, Canberra Airport, Molonglo Group, Hopscotch, Assembly, BentSpoke Brewing Co. and Midnight Hotel.

For the full 2019 line-up and event details visit facebook.com/events/521995795219821/