Yarra grant for Leather Pride
Melbourne Leather Pride has secured a one-off $13,000 funding grant from the City of Yarra for next month’s festival.
MLP festival director Alex Schoeffel said the grant was an important step to sure up this year’s event and praised the council f
or its decision to fund the festival, as well as offering additional in-kind support for venue hire.
“City of Yarra has acknowledged the diversity of its own communities, but it is a really brave step to support a controversial constituency that is used to going unsupported, especially when this might upset the conservative voters,” Schoeffel said.
“Now that Yarra is the principal public partner of Leather Pride, it takes the City of Yarra to the forefront of queer culture in Australia and sets the foundations for building the leather, fetish and bear culture of Yarra into one of the best in the world.”
Schoeffel said he plans to move the event to a not-for-profit structure to strengthen its community standing and broaden the festival’s reach.
Earlier this month a new board made up of community members was established.
“[The original aim of the festival] was bringing the largest leather community in Australia together in a context that represents how sexy, professional, provocative, important and socially responsible this market was.
“I think securing the national [leather] circuit and becoming part of the international circuit should be high on the new board’s priority list.”
Five councillors voted for the grant including Mayor Alison Clarke, Sam Gaylard, Anthony Main, Stephen Jolly and Amanda Stone.
Councillors Geoff Barbour, Jackie Fristacky and Josh Funder opposed the request.
Councillor Dale Smedley excused himself from the vote due to a declared conflict of interest.
Yarra Council has requested MLP organisers provide an evaluation of the event.
Yarra Mayor Alison Clarke told the Star Observer she was “pleased” to support the sexual health message in the leather festival.
“Council has previously supported the festival by providing subsidised use of the Collingwood and Fitzroy Town Halls,” Clarke said.
“We appreciate this is a unique festival that the organisers are seeking to grow into an internationally-recognised community event.”
“We’re pleased the festival provides opportunities to promote sexual health and access to sexual health services and programs.”
The leather festival will no doubt receive a boost from the grant after some challenging past years, but is set to go ahead with international guests, a visual and performing arts program, a cinema program curated by the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, and plenty of workshops and parties.
The centrepiece of the festival will be the Mr Leather Australia/New Zealand competition on April 8 and 9 and the Leather Fair on April 17.
The winner of Mr Leather Australia/New Zealand will compete at International Mr Leather in Chicago in May. Melbourne Leather Pride is scheduled to run from April 8 – 26.
info: Visit www.leatherpride.com.au
Bobby may think it is appalling news but as a leather man I think it is great. If the bear community and other parts of our gay community can apply for and get grants why not leather folk.
The safe sex message is important and because the leather community takes part in activities that your average gay man doesn’t means that the safe sex message needs to be tailored specifically for them.
Or would Bobby only have council grants go to upstanding gay queens who vote Liberal and have conventional sex with the all the blinds closed so no one can see them. Our communities are very diverse and the council grants recognize and need to reflect that. Would you have an issue with council money going to Greeks, Italians, Armenians, Chinese etc. I hope not.
Melbourne Leather Pride is not alone as a leather organization in applying for council grants. I know that Sydney Leather Pride has previously got a grant from Marrickville Council for safer sex education in the BDSM community; and that is going to print education material to be handed out during Sydney’s Leather Pride week. I wrote the grant application.
This is appalling news – tax payer funds should be supporting far more worthy causes than events that are on the margins of the Gay community.
That 13k could have been used towards violence prevention, community support, mental health etc etc. Instead we have a money being spent on a sexual event which fetishes sex and leather and does nothing for the general well being of our community.