Queering the Arts Outdoors
Queering the Arts Outdoors
A symposium for LGBTQIA+ artists, producers and allies making work in public space
Tue 7 Oct 2025
10.30am - 5pm (drinks until 6pm)
at 101 Outdoor Arts
£5 (including lunch)
Gather with queer creatives to explore the presence and power of queerness in the outdoors
Queering the Arts Outdoors is an invitation for artists and producers to gather together for a 1 day symposium to ground, grow and get to know each other, whether you're already making site or place based work or just beginning to imagine what queer art can look like in public space.
Featuring a keynote by queer performance scholar Dr Phoebe Patey-Ferguson (Rose Bruford College), panel discussions with Rhys Slade-Jones, Adam Carver from Fatt Projects, Marisa Carnesky, Jake Wood, a case study of Walking: Holding by Rosanna Cade and practical do-ing with Ocean Stefan.
Who is this for?
Queering the Arts Outdoors is for LGBTQIA+ artists, producers and performers (and allies) who are working - or thinking about working - outdoors. Come to hear new ideas, meet fellow artists, and imagine what’s next!
Queering the Arts Outdoors has been produced by 101 Outdoor Arts working in partnership with artist Symoné. Special thanks to Rhys Slade-Jones, Adam carver, Ocean Stefan & Ivor MacAskill for insightful focus group conversations.
Queering the Arts Outdoors invites us to ask:
- What type of queer work is being made in outdoor performance contexts?
- What does it mean to bring queer identity into public space?
- How do we enable and embrace broader representation of queer voices?
- From questions of censorship, care, intersectionality and accessibility, to playful reimaginings of site and land, Queering the Arts Outdoors is about working together to hold space creatively, politically, and collectively.
Expect a day of embodied discussion, practical inquiry, and surprising encounters, designed to connect artists and producers across disciplines and experience levels.
Speakers
Rosana Cade
Rosana Cade is a Glasgow-based artist who mainly works in live performance. Their practice is rooted in a queer feminist discourse and straddles performance, live art and activism.
They will be reflecting on queer identity in public space in the UK over the past 15 years, giving a case study of their work Walking:Holding - a participatory performance which invites the audience to walk hand in hand with a series of different local strangers around nearby streets, parks and alleyways.
Dr Marisa Carnesky
Dr Marisa Carnesky is an artist, showwoman and practitioner-researcher who is interested in where popular entertainment, contemporary performance and the important issues of our times collide.
She is Founder and Creative Director of Carnesky Productions, a creative production company interested in the use of spectacle; fairground rides, magic illusions and grand ritual as a means of creating highly accessible provocative work, rooted in popular culture that promotes cultural and political discourses. She created a new BA for Rose Bruford College in 2022 in Contemporary and Popular Performance where she is currently a Senior Lecturer and Researcher.
Adam Carver from Fatt Projects
Adam Carver (they/them) is a Birmingham based performance artist, producer & community organiser also known as their drag persona Fatt Butcher.
They are the founder and Director of Fatt Projects, a birmingham based queer performance company which creates work about harnessing the radical potential of queer joy, and using that to find ways to build queer community, connectivity and spirituality.
Ocean Stefan
Ocean makes performance work, installations and texts. Their work is playful, low-key and interventionist, frequently playing with language, duration and confusion. They are interested in the grey areas in life, and their work is committed to undoing things which claim to be fixed.
Ocean will be running a workshop which explores thresholds, public and private space, and the porous nature of identity
Dr Phoebe Patey-Ferguson (Key Note Speaker)
Dr Phoebe Patey-Ferguson specialises in the social contexts of contemporary performance, focusing on queer and trans practices in festivals and nightlife.
Their work considers how subcultural and countercultural practices by marginalised artists generate community, resist assimilationist narratives and embrace radical creative methodologies. As a lecturer at Rose Bruford College, they are dedicated to developing queer pedagogical approaches to studying and creating performance.
Rhys Slade-Jones
Rhys Slade-Jones is an interdisciplinary artist who treads the line between confrontation and conviviality, imploring familial mythologies to explore the interwoven relationships between ecologies and histories. Through performance, installation and lens based media Rhys disrupts assumed narratives, and assembles stories of truth and more-than-truthful.
Rhys will be sharing insights and discoveries from recent interventions in and with gardens from across South Wales.
Rhys is currently undertaking a AHRC funded, practice lead PhD researching Ecodramaturgy at Aberystwyth University and National Botanic Gardens of Wales.
Jake Wood
Jake Wood is an artist based in Gillingham, Kent, whose work spans performance, sculpture, installation, collage, and photography. Drawing on a culture that is concerned with de-bunking the ideas of fitness, work, and exercise, they explore this by integrating their own use of the gym and physicality into their performances using tongue-in-cheek humour and slapstick comical gestures.
Jake is going to share three key outdoor performances that explore the intersections between bodybuilding and queerness, which have been inspired by their experience as a professional bodybuilder. These works integrate into their wider practice, making audiences aware of queer spaces and, more importantly, the act of queering spaces themselves.
Access
101 Outdoor Arts is accessible to wheel chair users. We have accessible parking bays, accommodation, rehearsal spaces and WC facilities. The symposium content will be captioned and can be signed or audio described as required. Learning resources or transcripts of the event are available in large print. 101 is neurodivergent friendly with an accessible quiet room available and an informal environment with flexible seating and staging. Please tell 101 Outdoor Arts what support would enable you to fully participate in this opportunity when booking.
Book Now
£5 (Including lunch)
Please book your place at the symposium by clicking on the link below.
Image credits:
Cover Image
- Queens Cwm Rag by Rhys Slade-Jones
Speaker Images
- Walking:Holding by Rosana Cade, photo: Kirk Lisaj
- Marisa Carnesky Showwomxn Sideshow Spectacular by Marisa Carnesky at Brighton Festival 2024, photo: Sarah Hickson
- Mobilise: Pride Parade 2022 by Fatt Projects, photo: Cameron Smith, Getty Images
- This Is The Sign You Have Been Waiting For by Ocean Hester Stefan Chillingworth at Norwich & Norfolk Festival 2022, photo: Luke Witcomb
- Headshot of Rhys Slade-Jones by Matt Austin
- Jake Wood, Muscle Mary, 2022, still image from performance to camera, photo credit: Alex Davis