Queer Arts Family Fest

Mess Arts, in collaboration with gender explorative coach & teacher T.T. Kooken, presents this free arts event for families and children of all ages! Join us for fun arts and crafts activities, snacks, and community. Through creative play, we will start collective conversations about creative self expression, gender, queerness, and family.

About the Organizers

MessArts is a community minded visual arts education program for all ages. We facilitate a collaborative studio environment which balances rigor and play. MessArts teaching makes fine arts and craft approachable in order to enrich and challenge our understanding of art.

We wanted to collaborate with T.T. to create a community space for queer families of all shapes and sizes to connect and explore self expression and gender creativity though the medium of art.

T.T. Kooken (they/them), operating as Majak Qigong, is a somatic embodiment coach, bodyworker, parent coach, dancer, movement facilitator, and facilitator of conversations and practices on Gender Creative Parenting. They have experience holding space for adults, children, and families. They identify as nonbinary genderqueer and organize their life around creatively co-parenting their 5 year-old.

Collective Statement

This event arose out of an initial conversation between Ness and T.T. about addressing the need for community with Queer parents, families, and child educators. We found there was a lack of spaces or events for depthful connection and conversation to take place around the topics of gender and queerness in multigenerational and parental settings. We envision this event holding space for queerness as creativity, gender as a field of exploration, and simply allowing children to freely express themselves in playful ways. We want to gently curate conversations around gender shaping in our bodies, cultures, and families, in a way that is open, dynamic, and fun, humanizing Queer experiences and moving away from perfunctory DEI approaches to gender. Our philosophy is that we are all, LGBTQ identifying or not, served by expanding our definitions of gender and creative self expression. We hope you have fun, and continue these conversations far beyond this space!

A genda:

T his arts event will consist of 4 different art activities for the community to participate in. Each activity will have optional thought provoking questions and conversation starters relating to self expression, gender creativity, and family. The final activity will be a community participatory performance "Be a Bird" at 2:30 pm.

Parking:

The event will be held at Mess Arts, 2217 Columbus street. This is a neighborhood and we want to be respectful, please do not park in any active driveways, street parking is available.

Accessibility:

The event is not wheelchair accessible.

F OOD

Snacks and Refreshments donated by The Station!

T icketing:

Please note in your ticket amount how many people will be attending included in your family pod.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

2217 Columbus Street, New Orleans, LA, USA, United States