Reposted from the HOMO A GOGO myspace

Let’s talk about what’s going on with our fair festival, in a, “State of the HAGG address,” sort of way. You are probably wondering when and where the next festival will be so you can start to plan your gaycation. We are working on some great big gay changes and want to keep you all updated.

We have reassessed the plan to do a 2008 festival and realize that we are not ready. Queer Arts in Action, the “parent” organization of Homo A Go Go, doesn’t have the financial resources to make Homo A Go Go 2008 a reality.

We need your help to keep Homo A Go Go go-going. We are putting our fundraising and non-profit organizational plans in motion during this next year. These include membership programs (programs that people donate to the non-profit organization on a monthly or yearly basis), fundraising parties in several cities, HAGG merchandise and online programming. This leaves us with the necessary conclusion to wait to launch the next festival on July 29-August 2, 2009. We feel this was a difficult but necessary move to make.

I’d also like to officially announce that HAGG is moving out of Olympia. This was another difficult decision to make because there are many reasons why we love to be in our home town. There are some issues that have made Olympia challenging: lack of appropriate and affordable venues and inaccessibility to attendees travelling to the festival. Another reasons is that, I as the executive director, don’t live in Olympia anymore (I live in Los Angeles), and trying to keep the festival in Olympia is difficult on the organization and on me personally. There are currently two proposals on the table for the 2009 location: Los Angeles and San Francisco. We are currently looking at production budgets and feasibility for each city. We are doing an online survey so we can get an idea of where YOU would like to be in 2009. Follow the link below to vote!

The staff also recognizes that it is necessary to adapt the festival programming to acknowledge that HAGG has become a sort of, “family reunion,” for many people. We want to keep offering amazing music, film, art, spoken word and workshops, but we also want to make sure we build in more time for connecting. The result is that instead of simply offering more music, film, art, performance and workshops, we want to change our programming to adapt to a very specific audience and to offer some more interactive programming.

Lastly, we’d like to clear up some confusion that seemed to come with the announcement that we would do HAGG in Los Angeles in 2007. We have no intention of having HAGG in multiple cities or in franchising HAGG. HAGG will continue to be a single festival produced by the non-profit organization, Queer Arts in Action (QAA). QAA will be the only producer of the HAGG festival.

Love,

Ed Varga
QAA/HAGG Executive Director
aka head homo

p.s. now go vote! LA or SF?

Click Here to take survey

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