The Future of Trans Art

Building our own future is the theme of this year’s Trans Vegas Festival so we are kicking off with a panel of artists who will be proposing some inspiring ideas for trans creatives to arm themselves with, along with some challenges for the industry to pick up. With a keynote speech from Travis Alabanza who this year brought us Sound of the Underground at the Royal court and a live visual art creation by Ashton Attzs, will be celebrating how far we have come and how we can move forward in an industry that often gets it wrong.

The panel is made up of creatives who are firmly keeping the future in their hands: 

Travis Alabanza, EJ Scott, Campbell X, Jamie Fletcher, Tito Bone and Trans Creative’s Artistic Director, Kate O’Donnell.

The panel will be followed by a Q and A.

Tuesday 4 July at 7.30pm

HOME
2 Tony Wilson Place, Manchester, M15 4FN

Tickets £5 - £10 (plus booking fee)

This will be a relaxed event with BSL interpretation and audio descriptions via headsets. There will be a breakout space available as well. 

  • is an award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker. After being the Artist-in-Residency programme at Tate Galleries, Alabanza’s debut show Burgerz toured internationally to sold-out performances in the Southbank Centre, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and HAU, Berlin, and won the Edinburgh Fringe Total Theatre Award. In 2020 their theatre show Overflow debuted at the Bush Theatre to widespread acclaim and later streamed online in over 20 countries, and their latest play, Sound of the Underground was performed in spring 2023 to critical acclaim.

  • is a 24 year old UK-based artist. Attzs’ paintings and digital illustrations are a vehicle to empower and celebrate the everyday person. Creating a quotidian utopia in dreamy blues, and cotton-candy pinks, popping against charmingly distinctive, racially and gender- diverse animated characters. Attzs’ work is bold, joyful and unapologetic both in style and message.

  • is a curator, cultural producer and a dress historian with research ranging widely from 19th century House of Worth Parisian haute couture to 1960’s Crimplene. In his first ever voluntary role at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, he mounted men’s Regency costume for the Dress for Excess exhibition at the Brighton Royal Pavilion. He went on to care for 14,000 pieces of dress and textiles for the National Trust as Assistant Fashion Curator at Killerton House, Exeter.

  • is your average blind, non-binary, bisexual drag king who just wants you to smell the world through their nose, ya know? They are a true triple threat: they sing, dad dance, and audio describe, all while wearing large amounts of eco glitter. Tito’s mission is simple: to entertain the masses through socratic irony, political satire and taking their clothes off for strangers in the name of intersectional feminism. They also strive to prove that making accessible art is the epitome of cool. Tito Bone shares a body with Amelia Cavallo, a multi-disciplinary artist and one half of Quiplash (@quiplashlondon) - a queer, crip (quip) performance project that is taking space for Deaf and disabled people across the LGBTQQIA+ spectrum.

  • is a performer and theatre maker. In 2016 she founded Trans Creative arts company with the tagline “telling our own stories”. In 2017 she initiated Manchester's first trans arts festival Trans Vegas giving a platform to 300 trans artists . Her theatre work includes the award-winning “Big Girl’s Blouse”, acclaimed one woman show ‘You've Changed’, playing Feste in Twelfth Night & Electra in Gypsy, both at the Royal Exchange. Kate has directed Transpose at the Barbican two years running and regularly speaks on panels and made guest appearances on the Guilty Feminist podcast at the live shows. In 2018 she was nominated for the Gay Times Arts and Culture Award.

  • is a writer/director who directed the award-winning queer urban romantic comedy feature film STUD LIFE. His film Stud Life was voted by the Guardian as one of the top 10 Black British feature films ever made. It was also in Vogue magazine as one of the best films to watch in 2020. Stud Life was also selected by the British Film Institute as one of the top 8 queer films to view while we were all on lockdown.

  • is a director and musician specialising in multi-disciplinary performance, musical theatre, comedy, adaptations and work with socio-political themes. She has worked in the industry for over 16 years including working as a core artist with Unlimited Theatre. Her identity as a northern, working class, neurodivergent, queer, trans woman informs the work she makes. Jamie is deeply passionate about directing, collaboration and telling diverse stories on the stage and screen as well as finding new creative ways to tell these.