Mardi Gras to face its members
UPDATED: Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras will face the people about its recent name and logo change and the 2012 festival at a forum to be held on Saturday, December 17, 10am-noon.
The organisation, formerly known as New Mardi Gras, launched its new name and logo on November 17, and dropped the words ‘Gay and Lesbian’ from the name of the festival.
The change resulted in mixed reactions from community members and fierce debate on both the Star Observer’s website and social media.
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“The Sydney Mardi Gras will always have its thumping gay heart that celebrates the city’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer communities, but Mardi Gras is now inviting those who share our positive message about the power and beauty of diversity to be part of our celebration,” Mardi Gras chair Peter Urmson said at the launch.
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“Our hope with this change is to turn Sydney Mardi Gras into an even bigger civic event — right up there with Rio and the world’s other great carnivals — to be enjoyed by everyone, but always remembered as being a gift to the city from its gay and lesbian community and a demonstration of our pride.”
INFO: The community information session was previously to be held at the ACON building at 414 Elizabeth St, Surry Hills, but will now instead be held at Darlinghurst’s Heffron Hall at 34 Burton Street.
It is nice to see this paper is actually informing the community and Mardi Gras members about this session and the change in venue. It’s a shame the organisation itself can’t do it.
The meeting is not listed on the Mardi Gras website – in fact the link on the front page about the new vision leads directly to the party page. They haven’t even publicised the meeting on their own face book page and twitter feeds where most of the debate has occurred and it has been buried in the middle of marketing based newsletters in the lead up with the wrong venues.
Do the Mardi Gras board really want to talk to the community and hear what they have to say? Or are they trying to make this meeting as as difficult as possible to get to so they can say they held a meeting and no-one showed up?
Now all we need to do is to replace the organizers with straight people so we can get big corporate sponsorship and better private seating areas, get rid of the dykes on bikes openers, and we can probably get really nice beads thrown at anyone will to show their big boobs. I can’t wait. I might actually go for a change.
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