‘It Gets Better.’ Love, Newcastle

‘It Gets Better.’ Love, Newcastle

Newcastle has become the first city to broadcast a message to LGBTI youth that ‘It Gets Better’.

Supported by Newcastle City Council with speakers such as dancer Wil Sabin and DJs Murray Hood and James Tobin (DJ), the video comes just days after a Newcastle Presbyterian pastor posted an anti-same-sex marriage message on a billboard outside his church reading ‘even tradies know that you need both male and female joints to make a marriage,’.

CODE, a regular LGBTQI-friendly night at a local nightclub, launched It Gets Better Australia in December last year. The event’s producers, Aaron Little and Ashley Doran, let event patrons record their own It Gets Better message to recount their own experiences growing up in a community like Newcastle and how they overcame bullies, homo/transphobia and how their lives really have gotten better after school.

“It was amazing to see just how passionate and supportive the community of Newcastle was towards the IGBA cause,” Little said.

“We ended up with so many submissions we just didn’t know what to do with them and whilst some got left on the cutting-room floor we fortunately came up with this really rich narrative where about a dozen of the strongest submissions unite and intertwine to tell the story of being bullied at school, coming out to friends and families, heartbreak, losing friends and gaining better ones, building a support network and overcoming the odds.”

Watch the video below.

INFO: www.igba.org.au

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One response to “‘It Gets Better.’ Love, Newcastle”

  1. Newcastle is a really interesting place. On the one hand, it has pockets of liberalism and a forward thinking univerity and government. On the other, it has blatant homophobia displayed nightly on the street.

    I really hope that the ‘It Gets Better’ message isn’t just because GBLT people from Newcastle go on to find lives elsewhere