Last Thursday evening, I attended the launch of the 2012 Season and the new names for the organisation and festival. It was a high tempo event with excellent speeches from impressive young people and genuine about the season to come.
I left feeling rather wistful. The return of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Inc marks the end of nine years of New Mardi Gras.
In 2002, I was one of a small group of people who were persuaded to stage a bid to rescue our community’s event. I co-chaired a startup board that very quickly pulled in good will from the most unlikely sources. Within months, 150 people were volunteering at least 10 hours a week to restage Mardi Gras.
New Mardi Gras was born because the old Mardi Gras organisation went broke. For several months, corporate administrators owned Mardi Gras and they had no reason to stage 2003 Festival.
The former Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was a ground breaking organisation, fabulous organisation. It did more for the visibility of gay and lesbian lives than any other institution I can recall.
Mardi Gras’s fortunes rose on the back of a short period in mid 90’s Australia when gay was cool and cutting edge and fashionable all at once. It was the Priscilla moment. The Parades were never bigger. A hundred thousand came to watch and be part of the best street party in Sydney. Everyone wanted to be at our parties. They were fantastic and they were the only parties of their kind in Sydney. They were so popular that Mardi Gras had to restrict entry so that our people, particularly women, could party without being hit on by straight blokes.
The organisation changed too. It became more professional. A beer company paid money to put the Mardi Gras logo on its bottles. Mardi Gras recorded the biggest profits in its history. It also recorded the biggest losses, sometimes in consecutive years.
Presidencies were determined in an orderly manner to guarantee equal representation of women and men and mainly rubber stamped at each election. Public meetings were vicious affairs with personal attacks and ambushes. Mardi Gras became known for a its own brand of gay and lesbian separatism, famously exemplified by the members deciding some where around 2000, that automatic membership for bisexuals was just too much of a risk.
It partied like there was no tomorrow. Eventually, of course, there wasn’t.
The world had changed. The only place that Priscilla had survived was in the Cabaret Bar at the Imperial. Straight party promoters created parties for straight people that did all the things Mardi Gras did, only better. Being part of our Parade was still the most fun you could have standing up but it was no longer edgy just by its very existence.
Old Mardi Gras died because it couldn’t change quick enough. There were too many sacred cows. It was not possible to make the same events bigger and better when revenue was falling. Too many people had got used to sitting back and being entertained.
New Mardi Gras was lucky. When the 2003 Season got axed, people realised they needed to do something. Hundreds volunteered. Others just stopped whingeing.
Somehow we made the 2003 Season happen and got whole thing back in community hands. To this day, I don’t know how we did it. It remains one of the most profound experiences of my life.
The New Mardi Gras experience has of course been rocky. There were some well intended but startlingly naive decisions. At times, NMG forgot that being a ‘community’ organisation means understanding everyone and not only listening to loud voices that invoke nostalgia to resist change.
But the events are still here and going strong. In my heart of hearts, I thought it would only last five years.
I didn’t help create New Mardi Gras to pump out carbon copies of the 90s year after year. I wanted to Mardi Gras to reflect the hopes, creativity and desires of the people who bothered to turn up. I wanted it to keep changing with the times, taking what was useful from decades of tradition and applying it to where ever we are today.
That’s why I left the launch last week feeling wistful. New Mardi Gras succeeded because it is still able to change.
I believe these name changes are the right decision.
The Parade of the 90’s made ‘Mardi Gras’ an Australian synonym for gay, even without the adjectives. New Mardi Gras asked new people to keep it going.
I believe these name changes are the logical next step in our tradition. They say that Mardi Gras is a gay and lesbian organisation with a powerful hope for ourselves, Sydney and the world. If you like, infinite love for all.
INFO: Michael Woodhouse was a co-chair of New Mardi Gras between 2002 and 2004.
Well said Michael!
Thanks Michael,
At a risk of being attacked because of my Board position, I’ll comment anyway.
I remember the early 80s and the passion from my elders who allowed me to grow through my 20s as a ‘legal’ poof. Thank you for giving me my ride into our society with some sense of security. We still walked in groups, we checked up on each other, we cared – we had to. The haters were still there ready to bash us.
I also remember how we became so incredibly close from 85 to 95 due to AIDS (as it was called), how the girls helped and cared for our fallen, how we truly became even more community for a humanity based reason. The support of the ‘L’ letter is never lost on me. The Holocaust cemented the G&L.
The late 90s were the party years – bigger and better, plus small amazing high production parties like Frisky setting the trend (yes, I did work on it before someone attacks my comment), the clubs and pubs, birth of day ‘clubs’ like Annie’s and the Beresford etc. Heady days indeed.
1999 saw a serious challenge to the ‘old guard’ at Mardi Gras but the electoral system only allowed for organised ‘tickets’ with enough proxies to get elected. Some commentators of the last few days controlled that process in a very ‘king making’ fashion.
They were also the days of Pinkboard and commentary that makes Facebook look like a kiddies playground. This was out there, full on aggression, abuse and vitriole. We still, for some silly reason, seem to be very good at that….
Mardi Gras kept spending and spending on Festival, didn’t listen to those who wanted costs reigned in, and in the end, the bubble burst.
Gifts like Michael, Steph, Nick, Stevie et al, rallied troups and organisations and she was saved, along with the thousands of volunteers who made the 2003 Parade and Party happen. Lots of tears that night in 2003 when it was realised we had a sell out party and MG was saved.
Some years, going forward, were great, some less so, the 30th big and bold and then the Parade/Party split mishap. A mishap that knocked off 40% of cash reserves in one season with money being thrown hand over fist to try and save the error. History now.
So, ‘treading water’, or heading along a road of ‘attrition’, depending on interpretation, the 2012 Board has looked at the history, embraced the people who gave us (and definately me) freedom to be, and looked to the future, the young ones, the ‘free’ because of the earlier battles, and tried to come up with a vision for tomorrow.
Please read the facts and listen to the young people when they so tell us that they embrace it, now are starting to understand the history (never adequately ‘taught’ before), and want to get on with the business of loving and caring…
Thanks for listening.
Michael, as a friend and a long serving volunteer in the community, I have to say to you that I agree with only one part of your column.
I agree wholeheartedly with the decision by the Board and the CEO toe change the name back to SGLMG. In my opinion this was a decision that was long overdue and was in fact discussed by a number of people (you and I included) at the 2010 AGM.
However I think that the rest of the changes are poorly thought through at best and alienating of a lot of older Vollies and members at worst.
The big problem with all of this however (and it seems to be a perennial one) is the almost total absence of a true Community Consultation Communications Plan.
Most of the people who are complaining are saying that there was no opportunity to put their views forward and/or that a change of this magnitude should have been overtly asked of the communities the organisation claims to be integral to, not obliquely buried in a survey about a large number of elements to do with Parade, Party, Festival etc.
I do not believe that the anger and vitriol around this will go away until the organisation recognises the failure of the team who were supposed to manage the process of helping the communities have genuine and meaningful input to the decisions and then communicate the eventual decisions to those communities