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The notion of ?gay and lesbian? art seems so straightforward but hides all sorts of thorny issues. David Leddy examines the pitfalls.

Many arts professionals are interested in creating or marketing events for gay audiences, but there are various problems to overcome. The most complex of all the problems is also the most basic. What is lesbian and gay artwork? As the Festival Producer for Glasgay, this is a problem that I mull over with every programming decision I make. Glasgay is a large and diverse gay arts festival with theatre, music, comedy, visual arts, community events, film, literature and clubs. Finding a gay link to all these genres can sometimes be problematic. Theatre, for example, is fairly simple. Gay performers make a strong link, especially in autobiographical performance art pieces or gay-themed plays. In comedy too there are lots of options for gay comics. In music, though, choices are often limited to singer/songwriters. What would count as gay instrumental work ? a lesbian chamber orchestra? Similarly, visual arts can pose a problem. Can we get away with an exhibition by a gay artist whose work does not have an explicit gay theme? Would audiences come if we did? It seems that the idea of ?gay art? is a pretty tenuous one when you put it under the light.

Identifying an audience

That leads us to another thorny point. Who is the audience and what do they want? At first glance, the notion of a gay audience is an easy one. On closer inspection, though, we see a disparate audience ranging through all class, race and age brackets. Does a fifty-year-old lesbian professional have the same artistic tastes as a twenty-year-old gay man working in a shop? Probably not. Predicting quite what they do want is a tricky business. Should a promoter play it safe and book a Shirley Bassey-style torch-song singer for the boys and a tree-sister Tracy Chapman lookey-likey for the girls? Would audiences dismiss it as old hat? The difference between ?new? and ?old? gay tastes is a vague area. Is your audience open to gay work which does not fit the mould? Many lesbians and gay men harbour prejudice towards their bisexual and transsexual peers. Does a promoter take the moral high ground by programming events for these communities only to find that they are poorly attended? Who knows. So, it seems that not only is ?gay art? a misnomer, so is the idea of a single unified ?gay audience?.

Even after you?ve wandered through the pitfalls of the various conflicting interests between the different lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, you have the problem of actually finding them. Where on earth are they? It?s common knowledge, of course, that the commercial gay scene revolves around night-clubs and bars where youth and beauty reign supreme. If a promoter focuses on these geographical points for distributing marketing information your publicity could fall on deaf ears. Do the disco-bunnies really want to go to see that acoustic-guitar protest singer? Hmm?

There are many, many lesbians and gay men who do not go out ?on the scene?. Many are older people who feel marginalised in such venues, but a significant proportion are younger people who simply do not like to get smashed in a sparkly top and dance to Steps and Kylie. Arts events can be an excellent alternative for them, as long as promoters can get in contact with them. Getting in touch with those people who do not frequent the gay scene is most often done through direct mailing and postering ? which bring their own pitfalls. Developing a good mailing list is never easy, but when you do get one the dividends can be enormous. Postering can be an expensive business. Is it worth a promoter splashing out hard cash on tube ads or poster distribution when such a tiny proportion of the people who see them will be interested?

The money question

That brings us back to the eternally miserable question of money. As with all arts events, money is often very limited. Lesbian and gay events can end up worse off than many people would imagine. In my experience, lesbian and gay work often falls between various different stools. Public funding is scarce for everybody, but funders often feel that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender audiences don?t deserve to be made part of social inclusion policies. This seems to be down to the old cliché that gays all love the arts. They sit around at home doing crochet and listening to Maria Callas records. Gays love the arts already, so why should we give them funding? So, public funders often push promoters off into the private sector citing the supposedly massive interest in the ?pink pound?.

In reality, of course, private money is very hard to come by. Businesses within the gay communities are sometimes keen but have very little money available to give. Big businesses such as brewers occasionally want to target the pink pound, but are usually keener on events that have a broader appeal than art events, such as Gay Pride festivals. Sponsorship of the arts is often viewed as a risky form of marketing because it appeals to such a small audience. Sponsorship of arts for lesbians and gay men is seen as such a tiny audience that business sponsors often see it as a waste of time. So, the promoters can often find themselves working very hard to court various different business sponsors who end up dropping out after a couple of meetings or only offering tiny amounts of money in return for extensive coverage.

One of the few advantages is press coverage. Magazines and newspapers, particularly broadsheets, are always on the lookout for something which is unusual enough to warrant a story and gay events can often fall into this camp ? so to speak. The downside, of course, is that the desire for a story can go in quite the opposite direction. The wrong kind of media attention can ruin events and, more damagingly, cause great strain with public funders and private sponsors.

Worth taking the risk

Ultimately then, the notions of lesbian and gay artwork and lesbian and gay audiences is a tenuous one at best. Promoters who try to access these ideas run the risk of alienating the very people they want to attract or missing the target entirely and getting no audience at all. But what are the upsides? It can?t all be doom and gloom. On an artistic level, of course, you can have fantastic events that enjoy enthusiastic support from a very loyal audience. Hopefully, when all is said and done, that will make all those dangers worth the risk.

David Leddy is Producer of Glasgay. t: 0141 334 7126; e: david.leddy@glasgay.org.uk; w: http://www.glasgay.co.uk