Facilitators
The role of our facilitators is not to lead you somewhere, but to create the conditions where you can explore. They shape the week with care: holding space, introducing practices, and guiding conversations that linger.
In their company, belonging is not abstract — it becomes felt, shared, and lasting.
Guided by artists and scholars, the week becomes a room for clear, generous seeing. We gather around four questions—anchoring points for the week:
How we let others portray us — images that name us, and names we outgrow.
Who we let others see — thresholds, permissions, and the courage to reframe.
Who we are — a self assembled from memory, value, and desire.
How we want to be seen — a declaration shaped in language, image, and presence.
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Writer, journalist, and cultural organizer Paul Burston is the founder of the Polari Salon and Polari Prize, celebrating LGBTQ+ literature.
A former editor for Time Out’s LGBTQ section and contributor to major UK newspapers and magazines, he’s known for championing queer stories in print and on stage. His memoir, We Can Be Heroes (2023), tracks a life of activism—from ACT UP and GALOP to media work—set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis and contemporary Britain.
Burston’s community-building runs alongside a shelf of novels and anthologies; he curates readings, interviews authors, and keeps queer literary scenes vibrant and visible. Calmly incisive on culture and politics, he writes with intimacy about survival, friendship, and the long arc of change.
Burston’s projects create platforms as much as pages: places where writers and readers meet, histories are remembered, and new voices step forward.
Socials
Website: paulburston.net
YouTube: Polari Salon (channel)
Instagram: @paulburston1Selected Works
We Can Be Heroes (2023); Shameless (2001), Lovers & Losers (2007), The Gay Divorcee (2009).
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Art historian, curator, and writer Jonathan D. Katz is a pioneering voice in queer art history.
His scholarship and exhibitions trace how sexuality and identity shape modern and contemporary art, and he’s renowned for expansive, international curatorial projects that reframe the canon.
As Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, Katz bridges research and public scholarship, publishing landmark books and organizing shows that travel widely.
His recent work connects post-Stonewall cultural politics to today’s global practices, championing artists historically ignored by institutions. Katz’s projects are immersive—marrying rigorous archival work with bold, public-facing storytelling—and have helped mainstream audiences encounter queer histories in museums, catalogues, and classrooms.
Whether excavating early expressions of homosexual identity or surveying the last half-century of queer art, Katz’s aim is consistent: to change how we see, remember, and discuss art, and to expand who gets represented on the wall and on the page.
Selected Works
Bibliography:
About Face: Stonewall, Revolt, and New Queer Art (2024); The First Homosexuals (2025); Hide/Seek (2010).
Exhibitions:Hide/Seek (National Portrait Gallery, 2010–11); About Face (Wrightwood 659, 2019); The First Homosexuals (Wrightwood 659, 2025).
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Alim Kheraj is a journalist and author mapping pop culture and queer life with clarity and warmth.
His reporting and criticism appear across The Guardian, GQ, i-D, the New Statesman, and beyond, where he explores music, media, and LGBTQ+ culture.
His first book, Queer London (ACC Art Books, 2021), is a guide to the city’s LGBTQ+ past and present—part history walk, part living map of community spaces. Kheraj also writes the Britney-centric Substack In the Zine and frequently appears on podcasts and panels, connecting fandoms to wider cultural conversations.
He’s a generous guide: practical when you need a venue, probing when a pop moment needs context, and always tuned to the ways queer communities make—and remake—culture.
Socials
Website: In the Zine (Substack)
Instagram: @alimkherajSelected Works
Queer London (2021).
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Madrid-born dancer, choreographer, and philosopher Fernando López investigates flamenco through a queer lens, moving between stage, scholarship, and public dialogue.
A doctor in Aesthetics (Paris 8), he directs a contemporary flamenco company whose works braid movement, text, and music while challenging gendered codes of the form.
López’s groundbreaking study Historia queer del flamenco (2020) reframed two centuries of dance history; its English edition, A Queer History of Flamenco (2024), brings the research to international readers.
Onstage and on the page, he argues for flamenco as a living archive of transgression and reinvention, making space for bodies and stories long kept to the margins.
López tours widely, teaches, and contributes to debates on performance, identity, and tradition—proving scholarship can sweat, and dance can theorize.
Socials
Website: lrparrafernando.com
Instagram: @lrparrafernandoSelected Works
Historia queer del flamenco (2020); A Queer History of Flamenco (2024).
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Roberto Lugo is a Philadelphia-born ceramic artist, educator, and cultural worker whose monumental vessels and teapots remix porcelain traditions with hip-hop aesthetics and portraiture of figures too often excluded from fine china.
A community advocate known as “The Village Potter,” Lugo scales from sidewalk wheel demos to major museums, where his work reframes luxury objects as platforms for representation. Recent projects include the immersive solo The Village Potter at Grounds For Sculpture and the community-driven We Here—paired with a bilingual children’s book encouraging young artists.
Media features (from CBS Sunday Morning to PBS’s Craft in America) amplify his message that clay can carry history, honor neighborhoods, and spark joy. Lugo’s practice is virtuosic and generous: technically dazzling, politically lucid, and deeply rooted in place.
Socials
Website: robertolugostudio.com
Instagram: @robertolugowithoutwaxSelected Works
Exhibitions: The Village Potter (Grounds For Sculpture, 2022–23); Hi-Def Archives (Cincinnati Art Museum, 2023).Bibliography: We Here: What Kind of Artist Will YOU Be? (with Frank Berrios, 2024).
TV & Films: CBS Sunday Morning feature (2021); Craft in America (PBS) feature.
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Vocalist, writer, and art historian David McAlmont pairs one of British pop’s most expressive voices with a scholar’s curiosity.
First acclaimed for 1990s hits with Bernard Butler (“Yes”), he’s continued to shapeshift—solo, in collaborative albums, on stage, and in galleries.
Recent records with HiFi Sean (Happy Ending, Daylight, Twilight) rekindle his widescreen soul while his public-history projects explore beauty, identity, and representation. McAlmont’s Permissible Beauty at Hampton Court Palace (2023) connected 17th-century portraiture to contemporary Black queer sitters, and his performance work girl.boy.child shone a light on LGBTQ histories across National Trust sites.
In music and in museums, he pursues the same idea: that voice—sung or written—can remap how we see ourselves. He’s an artist of scale and detail: meticulous about history, fearless about feeling, and generous with the audience in front of him.
Socials
Website: davidmcalmont.co.uk
YouTube: @DavidMcAlmont (official channel)
Instagram: @david.mcalmontSelected Works
Discography: The Sound of McAlmont & Butler (1995); Bring It Back (2002); A Little Communication (1998); The Glare (2009); with HiFi Sean—Happy Ending (2023), Daylight (2024), Twilight (2025).
Exhibitions: Permissible Beauty (Hampton Court Palace, 2023); girl.boy.child (National Trust, 2017).
TV & Films: Performances on Later… with Jools Holland; Permissible Beauty film.
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Crystal is a gender-bending drag artist and presenter, RuPaul's Drag Race UK Season 1 contestant, and the host of celebratory queer podcast Camp Classics.
As a broadcast presenter, they have appeared as a judge/ mentor on two seasons of OutTV production Call Me Mother, the just-renewed Sew Fierce, fronted Canadian reality dating show Group Sext and they were selected as Canada's Drag Race official correspondent for BBC Three. Crystal has appeared on the Strictly Come Dancing spinoff series Strictly Frooked Up! and hosted celebrity interviews for Attitude's social platforms.
Crystal's performance style is as fearless as their looks, fusing theatre, circus and aerial play in touring shows across the UK and North America. A self-confessed "stunt queen", Crystal is never afraid to shock audiences with performances that dazzle and delight, combining art school creativity, high performance and daring techniques, including angle grinding, whip play, and aerial rope and hoop.
A Canada native, but having lived in London for 12 years, Crystal is embedded within the local LBGTQIA+ community and is a known advocate for queer issues, racial equality and climate change, most recently in a high-profile court against Laurence Fox.
Crystal believes drag is a vehicle to dismantle the patriarchy and liberate us from gender norms. Drag uses radical self-expression to show us that there are no rules, other than what we impose on ourselves.
Socials
Website: crystalwillseeyounow.com
Instagram: @crystal.will.see.you.nowSelected Works
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK (BBC Three, 2019); Mentor on Call Me Mother (OutTV, 2021–22); Co-host, Sew Fierce S2 (OutTV, 2024).