How Very Queer: LGBTQ+ Identities in the Lighting Industry

29 July 2021 // Activities

This program is presented in partnership with:
NORTH AMERICAN COALITION OF LIGHTING INDUSTRY QUEERS (NACLIQ)

WOMEN IN LIGHTING (WIL)
WOMEN IN LIGHTING + DESIGN (WILD)

Thank you Francesca, Sophie, Marien, and Alana for educating us and telling your stories!! We want to take time to acknowledge the role and experience of Queer/LGTBQ+ identities within the lighting industry, and to make sure that we are inclusive of all women and gender non-conforming individuals that form part of our community. Panelists shared from their experience and also provided history of the queer perspective, current struggles, and definitions for any who are curious to better understand their friends and colleagues under the LGTBQ+ umbrella and to open pathways of communication across our global community. 

“It’s important to create spaces to diversify, and not only to diversify but to advance the industry as much as we can, and not only to diversify but to humanize it also. … We have to hold the industry accountable for not creating, in the past, spaces in which queer communities can feel safe and represented, but looking forward into the future – we’re here and let’s keep this discussion alive.”
– Marién

“I started NACLIQ for that reason – to create a space for us … to make that space safe everywhere, particularly in the reps office, in the distributor’s office, in the contracting company – [a space] to exist, to be ourselves.”
– Alana

“We are not living just as individuals within our different firms or companies, but also [the actions and reactions within these spaces shows] the impact that our employers and community members have on our existence.”
– Francesca

How to be an ally:
“Much like what we’ve been learning through conversations about Black Lives Matter, we can apply those sorts of things to queerness as well, and to feminism. Like rather than just not being homophobic – be actively anti-homophobic. If someone says a slur in front of you, maybe you’re not gay – maybe no one in the room is gay, but be brave enough to stand up and say ‘actually, I don’t find that funny, and why are you saying that, what’s the joke? I don’t get it.’ And also just listen and promote those voices when people speak out because I think it’s very difficult for other people to speak out about it.”
– Sophie

RESOURCES

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