Midsumma Festival

About

Midsumma Festival

Midsumma is Australia’s premier queer arts and cultural organisation, bringing together a diverse mix of LGBTQIA+ artists, performers, communities and audiences.

Our primary event, Midsumma Festival, usually runs over 23 days in Melbourne’s summer (January/February) each year with an explosion of queer events that centre around hidden and mainstream queer culture, involving local, interstate, and international artists.

Midsumma Festival will return in 2023 from Saturday 21 Jan to Sunday 12 February.

The Midsumma Festival program comprises a curated Midsumma Presents line-up plus the community-driven Open-access stream, to share with you the lived experiences of those voices at the margins, the expression of queer history, and the celebration of new ideas and stories that come to life through world-class art and performance.

Our festival program is made up of diverse art forms and genres, including visual arts, live music, theatre, spoken word, cabaret, film, parties, sport, social events, and public forums. Featuring over 153 events in 2022, 163 events in 2021, and 194 events in 2020 (despite COVID-19 limitations), with involvement by over 5000 culture-makers in over 100 different venues across Melbourne and wider Victoria – to audiences averaging 255,202 attendees over the past four years.

Our Leadership Position

Since 1988, we have evolved with our communities and repositioned ourselves as a globally-relevant cultural influencer and thought leader, while keeping learning and diversity at our heart. We have experienced rapid growth in audiences, breadth and scope of artist and community engagement, and depth of artistic partnerships and new work developed. We have matured to become one of Australia’s most significant queer arts organisations, supporting generations of LGBTQIA+ cultural voices, discovering artists and starting conversations that shape queer art and culture forever.

While we stay committed to our roots, with the primary three-week festival usually held in summer each year, we work year-round to provide artists, social-changers, and culture-makers with support and tools to create, present and promote their work. The most significant of these programs are Midsumma Futures and Midsumma Pathways, which provide mentorship, networking and development opportunities for early-career artists and culture-makers.

Elevating Creative Visibility

Midsumma attracts broad attendances across broad age ranges and demographics; truly representing inclusion and diversity in all its forms. For this reason, we are ideally placed to make the many diverse queer communities in Victoria more visible and to provide a platform for creative voices and stories that are often not heard or seen otherwise in the broader community.

Midsumma is a festival that intrinsically creates safe and inclusive places for communities, with diversity at its very core. We know that when our communities feel safe and supported, they are able to build stronger connections within their own groups and then with other groups they interact with.

Midsumma is a non-profit organisation. By making a donation to Midsumma you’re helping to support over 5000 culture makers, producers, artists, and community members passionate about queer cultural experiences who need to tell and hear these stories and share these safe spaces.

Your support really counts. If you are in a position to support, please donate what you can and help us keep our major events free for everyone in our communities.

We would love your help to bridge the shortfalls in our finances to enable us to meet the costs for delivery – and to make this festival the best Midsumma Festival that we can make it.

DONATE TO MIDSUMMA HERE

Midsumma is a non-profit organisation staffed by a small team of committed professionals, governed by a voluntary Board of Management, and supported by hundreds of generous and passionate volunteers every year.

Want to know more? Get in touch, we would love to share our story with you.

We are a part of MIDSUMMA FESTIVAL INC, who are registered as a: Not-for-profit.

More details

LGBTIQ Owned and Operated: Yes
Qualifications: MIDSUMMA FUTURES

Midsumma Futures is a nine-month development and mentoring program for early-career artists and culture-makers, typically kicking off in October and running until May. This program provides a queer context in which participants can develop their practice, and includes access to professional mentoring, and workshops with likeminded (or radically different-minded) peers. Midsumma Futures provides the opportunity for today's generation of early-career artists to advance their career, deepen their practice, gain exposure and lead the future of queer culture. For well over 30 years, Midsumma has been fertile ground for queer culture-makers, forging careers for some of Australia’s most respected cultural and artistic voices. (See https://www.midsumma.org.au/futures).

MIDSUMMA PATHWAYS

Midsumma Pathways is a 4-month-development and mentoring program for LGBTQIA+ artists with disability. This program provides a queer context in which participants will develop their creative practice. It includes access to professional mentoring, group workshops and contact with arts industry representatives that build participants' capacity. Midsumma Pathways is led by professional artists and arts workers, and brings together a diverse range of emerging cultural practitioners, creating a unique space for the intersection of ideas and modes of practice. Artists from across disciplines - including dance, visual art, theatre, media, circus, burlesque and writing - have been accepted into this program. (See https://www.midsumma.org.au/pathways).

Service Delivery Format: