Lisa Connell, GCN Managing Editor, speaks to Laura Louise about her work with Gay Community News, the importance of queer nightlife and the origins of Love Sensation.
You can listen below or you can listen on Acast, Soundcloud, iTunes or Spotify. Links:
Acast: https://shows.acast.com/women-star/episodes/ep-3-lisa-connell
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5S8jPH90t30Q3oV1rbvEFr?si=7OhZ9RexQNC2W5iQj33jFQ
Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/user-961403691/ep-3-lisa-connell
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/women-star/
You can listen below or you can listen on Acast, Soundcloud, iTunes or Spotify. Links:
Acast: https://shows.acast.com/women-star/episodes/ep-3-lisa-connell
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5S8jPH90t30Q3oV1rbvEFr?si=7OhZ9RexQNC2W5iQj33jFQ
Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/user-961403691/ep-3-lisa-connell
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/women-star/
Episode 2 Transcription
Intro: And welcome to women STAR Dublin lesbian line’s new podcast created to showcase the stories within the LGBTQAI community, specifically the stories of women STAR, which includes queer, nonbinary and transgender people. We want you to feel included whatever way you present yourself to the world so if you have a story you want to tell get in touch with us at www.dublinlesbianline.ie. Today’s guest is Lisa Connell, managing editor of Gay Community News. We spoke to Lisa at the end of 2019 about her work with GCN and the importance of queer nightlife. We began by asking her to introduce herself.
Lisa Connell [LC]: My name is Lisa, I am a human person who works for GCN, Gay Community News, and I'm the managing editor and I also run parties and events and things for the community.
Laura Louise Condell [LLC]: So I heard you talk on the in ‘In Awe of Mná’ podcast, it was absolutely brilliant and thank you for the DLL and the 40th shout-out by the way. We'd love to hear similar topics but we really want to hear your personal experiences if that's okay with you. So starting back from the beginning, can you tell us about growing up queer in Donegal please?
LC: Okay, fadó fadó... so I'm of a certain age that I think it's a funny thing to say growing up queer because that's a very retrospective descriptor because I would say I grew up straight in this weird way, in that I don't think, I just do not think I had a real sense of my queerness as a child or as a teenager. It really came to me a lot later so I think I grew up feeling different but really didn't get to the bottom of that for a long time and didn't really... ya know thought it was about other things or different things so it's kind of... I often, when I was a younger queer person I would often envy people who had that very clearly 'awh I knew I was gay at four’ because I thought that that was so fabulous and amazing and for me it didn't really go like that, so you know like, I almost wish I was more of a tomboy than I even was, which is sort of silly, but that was kind of part of my process. So I kind of came to my queerness in my late teens and early 20's. I came out at the age of... I was early 21 when I came out so yeah it took me a bit of time and I think part of that was that I didn’t think you could be gay, I didn't have any, I didn't know any gay people. I didn't really register it in a way that felt accessible or visible even. So when I was in college I did a theatre degree so there was a high density of non-straight people and I was often mistaken for a queer person and I had... I was in an opposite sex relationship at the time and I used to be so hilariously offended when people would think I was gay, 'how dare you I have a boyfriend!' I mean who was I fooling? So then at 20 I met somebody and fell madly in love and she was my first girlfriend, my first love and then sort of from there there was a lot of retrospective 'ah ha, oh yes...' And it's interesting because I think sometimes for some queer folk you kind of revisit the past and then learn more about it with hindsight so yeah, that was sort of how it kind of happened.
LL: Thank you, I definitely think that's the case for a lot of [people], that there was a different feeling, but there wasn't any visibility or representation so it was like what... couldn't quite place what that different feeling was until you go out into the world and meet other people or fall for someone and then you're like 'oh yeah, that's what that was'. Ehm, and how did you end up in Dublin?
LC: So I, after I did my degree in the University of Ulster at Coleraine. So I'm from Donegal and I was actually explaining this recently, I feel that Donegal people are very much, we feel very close to Northern Ireland because obviously we're literally in it but think we sort of feel quite... ya know I grew up just across the border from Derry so when I finished college my natural first step was to live in Belfast which I did for a few years and then I decided to move to Dublin with my first girlfriend a couple of years after we lived in Belfast together because we wanted to move somewhere but we couldn’t decide on where so Dublin was sort of supposed to be the stepping and it ended up being the final destination. So we moved here at the height of the boom and it was kind of hilarious and ridiculous and Belfast is relatively affordable city to live in, like the living standards and the cost of living would be pretty reasonable I think, like I know it's changed now, at that time particularly and so when we moved to Dublin I was completely, I couldn't... it was bonkers, like rental... like actually hilariously cut to today we've gone back to that place. Ehm so yeah, and actually when I moved here I didn't particularly warm to it to start with, I was holding a candle for Northern Ireland still so it took me... actually what happened, I was really close to moving back to Belfast but I got involved in gay rights activism and that sort of ignited my love of this city through the people and through our community so I credit my early days with LGBT noise as my... they really bonded me to the city.
LLC: That's amazing, thank you. Congratulations on managing editor of GCN, would you tell us please how you got to this point?
LC: So I have been working with GCN for a decade and so at the start and for many years I worked part time and I was looking after distribution and at the same time that i was doing that I was also doing a lot of activism so it really suited me to have a part time gig and I was also working in coffee shops or working in bars but I enjoyed just the being part of the community magazine and feeling like I was contributing to something and then I kind of, you know that thing when you're juggling lots of jobs so I said to the guys 'ya know, is there more work going?' And so my previous colleague Conor Wilson said 'okay well let's get you selling some ads and you can pay for your extra time in the week or whatever'. So then I started selling ads and then it just sort of really, I just stayed around and kept learning more skills and doing more projects and tasks. GCN is a really wonderful place to work in that it's small enough that you can kind of get your hands dirty in all the different departments which is really exciting if you're someone like me who wants to know how everything works and how things are done. So I think my natural curiousity really allowed me to keep growing in this job because I was always wanting... 'Oh how do you run that event? And how would you do the ticketing for that?’ And you know of course in the community you're doing a lot of stuff on a shoe string or on no budget at all so you need people who are nosey enough and busy enough to sustain that energy. So yeah I just, and GCN has had over... last year we celebrated 30 years in publishing and it's had many wonderful editors and commercial managers and loads of brilliant people have come through the place across the last 30 years and I feel very indebted and I feel that we're still here and we're still thriving is a testament to hundreds of people and all the board members who would have run it across loads of different time periods. And then yeah I became the commercial manager two years ago and I did that for about a year and then the outgoing managing editor Brian was leaving so there was the opportunity to apply for his job so I thought ‘ya know I have come this far', and I applied for the job and got the job which is very exciting. And now I work with a really awesome small team. It's always funny, people are really surprised by how few of us there because I feel like we do a lot for out 40 hours a week but we're really excited and committed and we're all a bunch of people who have a similar... we really share a drive and a passion and an energy and that's really helpful. In fact I shouldn't really joke but I half joke the problem with this team is getting them to stop working so it's a really thing where we're all really committed and I just want everyone to mind themselves as well because I don't want people burning out. It's a dream job, it's a wonderful thing to be able to serve the community in such a tangible way because there's the physical product every month in the magazine and there's a physical product every day in the website and then we do events every quarter so there's a really, the kind of rewards are very rich in terms of that.
LLC: Absolutely, I think DLL can really relate to a lot of what you said there about doing things on a shoestring but also about passion and drive and not burning out because especially when, I think you mentioned in the other podcast, there's excitement and ideas and there's also a never ending list of things to try and achieve. And on that, now that you are managing editor what’s your priority for GCN?
LC: So I mean there's lots of things, we are, we're nearly at the end of 2019 and we've spent all year really reaching out to the community and trying every issue to really try to get to grips with what's going on for people and also really trying to showcase the rich diversity and difference and kind of amazing mix of types of people that in the community. Because you know at various points through time the magazine went through stages of feeling more of one thing than another or less of that and we, the current team, are very very committed and interested in the idea of having the most diverse representation and visibility of the community and really talking to all parts of the community about the other parts of the community because you know wanting people to understand trans folk, like having the rest of the community understand what's going with trans healthcare or having younger queer people understand what it might feel like to be a 60 something year old queer person. Because I think the sharing within the community is really important and when we know about one another we can have one another's backs. And then beyond that obviously is just there's an ever pressing priority to keep it afloat, keep the money coming in, working to make it sustainable business as well because there's often, it can be a bit of hustle at times so one goal that I have set for us and we're getting there, is to really just place it in an appropriate part of the Irish market so it has a sort of place and a sustainable place.
LLC: Thank you, that was actually another question, I think it's so phenomenal that GCN has always been free and still is, how do you manage that?
LC: Well we, it's absolutely fundamental that GCN remains as a free product, there isn't... unless the community vastly change it's ask of us, there's no way we would ever change that. It's so important that's it's a free community resource, you know the way people access information has changed but there is still a massive need for the magazine and we believe for the print edition as well as, I mean we've been growing our digital offering and reach but that is not in my opinion or it is not the idea to replace but it's to compliment because you know there are people who are not online and there are people in a rural setting who might, there access point might be their local resource centre or their library. We're a pretty creative bunch so we have part of our funding comes from the government, so we're Pobail funded, a big old chunk of our funding comes from Mother, which is a weekly nightclub with bigger seasonal parties and that's really my job as managing editor is to run the business. But Cormac and I run mother together and it's very much, it's a really important strand in GCN's kind of well, it helps us run ya know. And then obviously other GCN events, you know all the stuff that happen regularly in the community, we do quizzes, we do panel events, working with brands to really raise funds and that's a really interesting model to me because I feel that it's really important that all our events remain accessible because I don't want someone to be priced out of a conversation and so we work with different companies and brands in order, so they can cover the big costs so the LGBT person who might want to come isn't priced out of it.
LLC: I love that you’re anticipating all my questions before I get to them as well because I was going to ask you, GCN has an incredible online presence and it's made organisations like DLL, well not now that we have a comms team, but before that doing things quite last minute and maybe not knowing things in advance for the deadlines of the print magazines to be able to email and a journalist with say yeah sure we will put that online today. I was going to ask you, how important is keeping the print magazine and what it means to you?
LC: Actually interestingly about the digital stuff is that I love, one of the things that I, the limitation of a monthly cycle is that there will always be stuff that it's too far beyond... so say you guys have an event but then it's a full month after the event so it's kind of is a bit funny to put it on the magazine so the website is so great and the social media is so great because it allows us to cover community stuff in real time or just before or just after and it's great because it just allows... the other thing that I would say because we are a news site also you know we tend to be reporting on some tough stuff. Like LGBT news can be overwhelmingly bad news as the news can be in general so what the thing we love in here as well is actually we love working with community groups to get positive stuff out there, meet ups that are happening, you know that's so important. And in terms of the print publication, I know I sort of said it already, but for me personally beyond kind of, beyond the mission of the magazine... I think if you're over a certain age particularly GCN had a very specific role to play in your LGBT life, you know I certainly remember when I moved to Dublin first I would go to the IFI religiously every month when I knew it was out and pick it up because obviously we didn't all have phones and we didn't all have internet, we really did rely on the print product, obviously that has now changed quite dramatically. I do still love the idea that at any moment someone in the city can kind of dip into our world and okay it's not exhaustive but it is giving someone a sense what is happening for LGBT people on this island right now at this moment and so there's an even beyond the sort of information and resourcing there's also the documentation. Because Tonie Walsh who's one of the cofounders of GCN along with Katherine Glendon speaks a lot about the fact that one of the drivers to get the thing set up in the first place was the fact that mainstream media wouldn't cover anything to do with LGBT life or struggles or any of the great activism that was happening so it was really a way for the community to take it's story into its own hands and that has a lot of power and relevance and resonance because those stories are still important.
LLC: Absolutely. And I think the physical magazine; it serves so many purposes, not just for people who can't access things online. Like it's really nice to walk into somewhere that you don't expect to see GCN, I think it's a great signifier that the place is welcoming and it's accepting and I know for a lot of people who aren't necessarily out yet going to pick up a physical copy of GCN, it's there kind of queer thing to do for the month. Like god I remember I collected loads of them from important times in Ireland and important times in my life and I remember when I wasn’t out, the Pride parade was going on and I was working in shoe shop and I ran down the road and I got a copy of GCN and I still have that first GCN from my first secret pride. Like it's really important, it's something really special. And on special and important things... were you going to say something, sorry...
LC: I actually was, so we did on our arts issue a couple of months ago we did a cover with SOAK, the musician who's also an amazing illustrator, and we did the cover was the North is next and it was about ally-ship and support of our queer and also people who can get pregnant in Northern Ireland so there's sort of a cross border project that we did with Outburst arts and Dublin fringe and one of the proudest most amazing things, well there was two things – for the event we created a special zine which felt really, there was sort of a nice tactile nature of actually creating a physical product that people went to a space to get was really special and important because it marked it just as you're saying but also my pal lives in Berlin and she sent me a photo of the doorway of a block of flats and someone had put the GCN, like the full magazine, they'd pasted it up on to the front door and I just thought, I was completely delighted and blown away and so excited that the relevance of that physical artefact for want of a better term it still, as you say it's a signifier , it signals something and it just made me so happy. I was beside myself with joy.
LLC: That's amazing. And also I think with something like a physical magazine someone can walk past that and read and it and be brought into a world that maybe wasn't on their radar or they weren't thinking of. Like I think with the website which is fantastic a lot of the time people are going to it specifically. But with the magazine if you're in a cafe if you just pick it up in a queue like you might get introduced to something that you didn't know you were looking for. That's incredible. So you said at the start that you organised, and I hope I get this right, parties for the community, I love that and I have been to many of those parties and they're fantastic. What is it about queer nightlife that draws you in or that you're passionate about?
LC: So I mean I think that I have to claim my bias that I just think LGBT folk are more fun so no, I support queer spaces and I think they’re still relevant and important and necessary and yes we do know how to put on a good party and that's always helpful because going back across many decades the kind of cool music thing will start in the gay clubs and then filter out into wider culture and I think that's still the case. And yeah when we set mother up it was in a time of, the recession had hit really intensely and actually GCN was in a really rocky place because the bottom fell out of the advertising market so suddenly all the lovely shiny ads that would have been in the mag were not there because people's marketing budgets were just slashed so we had to, you know part necessity but also part a desire to kind of gather people together and say you know what can we always do? And what we can always do is find one another, and party and dance and I love dancing and I always have and I think it is such a powerful positive force and I I've said this before for LGBT people particularly, even if you're not, well especially if you're an activist, but even if you're not an activist sometimes just being an LGBT person in the world is your activism so there's the letting off steam that happens particularly in a queer space that is really important because as you said early if you do community work you can get fatigued, like it can be draining, it can be sometimes thankless, it can be tiring, and you don't know how can I do this or I can't do that or I've done too much already, but for me anyway there's something very rejuvenating or recharging about going in, having a bop, seeing your pals, having a laugh and then you know often feeling kind of, even if you're tired even if you’re hungover, just feeling that that was a great night and those are really important because I think those can fill the tank back up again. Particularly I mean now because I run the parties it's kind of important that they go well for other reasons because I want them to be a success but it just it gives me a lot of joy to see it and to feel it and to actually just be with your people and go 'these are my people'.
LLC: Absolutely it's so rejuvenating, it's such a powerful energy. I often don't make it to nights out, I think I just work so much in the community and volunteer so much that I'm just at my limit, I just want to go home. And I was working on pride, like work working, and Cáitríona had a ticket for me for Mother and it was just like, I was so tired but we danced until the very last song, like we're not leaving. And at one point I was just barely moving but it just felt so important to just be out and stay out and be there on Pride at our party. It was a great night and I wasn't drinking or anything that day I was just like wooo.
LC: Oh I mean that's another thing, dear listener, super super party hack is to stay sober, I'm telling you, it is the way of the future because I find as I have gotten older I actually find alcohol tires me more if I was just there with a little can of soda pop or sparkling water. So yeah I'm all about the sober party.
LLC: And I think people think that they can't go out in queer spaces if they don't drink or they don't do drugs. But I don't know, our spaces are there for us so whatever you do I would feel that Mother is a welcoming place.
LC: And yeah you know the serious sort of side to that is that obviously we are as community more vulnerable to being disproportionally affected by addiction so there is a part of that absolutely a lot of people feel that 'I can't go out unless I'm going to get wrecked' and actually I hope that people are moving beyond that and understanding that ‘no no I can do this a different way and I can access it a better way and a different way'. And people minding themselves because Irish people in general are terrible for 'what? What's wrong with you? Are you pregnant? Are you sick?' You know that kind of silly nonsense. I hope it’s changing because I do think people need to mind of themselves and I'm often sober now at parties because I'm working so it would be not cute for me to be drunk but it does not diminish my ability to enjoy. In fact I would argue that it has increased my capacity for enjoyment and kind of get the buzz out of it.
LLC: I agree with you, I do think things are changing on that front, I know the last few years there's been such a demand for night-time spaces that don't have alcohol in them but then I know that there's people that don't drink that still want to be out in dancing spaces. Now it is possible to still go out even if other people are drinking...
LC: Yeah I mean I find it really interesting at the moment that there's a whole exploding of non-alcoholic beers as a thing at the moment on the market. Like me and a couple of pals do a thing we call it Noo-vember so you don't drink in November and say even a few years ago when we started it, like you're options are you have water or you'd be drinking sugar which is fine... like I love a coca cola but you can't have 5 coca colas or your teeth would just all fall out. So it's really interesting the non-alcoholic beer is a really good and interesting development because it would allow people to feel that they're accessing something that they can't. I'm glad that that's a thing because I see more and more people kind of having that and also it means that you can drive in or then you can get up the next day or whatever so it's good. And also just for people minding themselves, you know the whole drink and drugs are not good for your mental health so yeah.
LLC: And what about Love Sensation? How did that come about? Did you enjoy it? Are you going to do it again?
LC: Okay so Love Sensation came about because of Pride. So pride as a party was growing and growing and we were super excited and it was just this massive thing and it kept kind of getting bigger every year. And at the same time as the Pride party was growing we were being asked to go to different music festivals, so we would do a stage at body and soul or we would do something at electric picnic. And loads of other lovely festivals and we kind of, obviously it's quite a dream, like that would be a big dream of 'oh we could do our own festival'. But it's obviously a massive undertaking and so it didn't feel like something, until this year it wasn't really something we felt we have the capacity to actually do. But then we had conversations with people who work in the industry and we teamed up with MCD as our booking partner because they are the people who help you get all the big acts and they would also have a good sense of, because they do so many other festivals. And so it kind of grew from there and suddenly it went from being a theoretical idea to a real life thing which was both exhilarating and terrifying and Cormac and I worked a lot on it. Cormac very much taking the lead on it and then it just went super well. I was really proud of it. I thought it was wonderful and to speak back to what we were saying about the queer space and the loveliness of being with your peeps, that was like super extra bonus queer space vibes and it felt really exciting that we were suddenly taking over this massive space, literal physical massive green site festival space and really making it feel our own and making it, like we put a lot of time and effort into making sure that the bathrooms weren’t gendered and we made sure the queuing system wasn't gendered and we briefed security on ‘you know this is a diverse crowd and you've got to just be really chill and if you see something that you are not used to please don't laugh’ and just really kind of thinking about what it is to be a queer person in a space and thinking about how we could make sure that there weren’t very pedestrian but often very upsetting encounters that just feel crap and would really kind of just bring your day down at little bit. And let's be real, it's not that people mean to do that, it's just we get so... particularly, and I can speak to this as someone who runs an event, people get very panicky because it's all crowd control stuff, so security are often gruff with people because they've been told to do a job, and 'I must not let anyone pass this or if you look like you might be a female person I can't let you in this space or vice verse'. And actually it's not that they want to be transphobic or problematic, they're burdened by this worry that they have to do the right thing in terms of the rules. So really we sort of were like ‘let's scratch all that, this is how this is going to go’. And it actually was beautiful and lovely and chill and there was no trouble and there was no, thankfully no bad incidents, no drama and then we had super exciting and fun acts and there were 3 stages and there was funfair and there was a queer quarter which was full of deadly people from the community doing deadly things. And yes we're doing it again, can't tell you anything yet, but like yes, in the works, and also going back to what worked, what didn't work, what we can make better and really going again.
LLC: Congratulations, it's amazing that the first year was such a success.
LC: Yeah it's wild, like Cormac and I about an hour before the gates opened the Saturday, we were doing a security check and we were walking through this site and just looking at one another going 'what on earth are we doing?' And I was kind of kidding and was like 'will we just, can we just leave now?’ [Laughs]. But no, obviously it was such a buzz and yeah it's a sort of a mad old game but it's really fun. But it's also, Ireland is already super, we have a lot of festivals already, it's a very, I would say nearly a fully saturated market in fact when you try to book dates or thinking when to have things there's so much stuff on but I suppose one thing that was really exciting for us with love sensation even though it is very busy we were offering enough of a different thing that people were into in it so that's kind of fun. And also even fun stuff like festivals historically have had a really big problem with balancing gender on their line ups and it's not that it's coincidence because obviously we have an approach to how we book but we tend to have 50 per cent or more female. Although I get that the binaried approach is also becoming, we're moving beyond that or at least challenging it more. But eh yeah even just that the way, who we're curating to play, who we're inviting to come and perform that's also really fun because that's when you get a chance to showcase talent and give people opportunities.
LLC: That's incredible and I love all the thought that went into not having gendered queues and things because I know so many trans people and non-binary people or people that present or feel differently than they present, queues going into things stress them out so much and can be a barrier to something. Like a real block, not wanting to be told you're in the wrong queue or to be patted down and being like 'what's...?' Like if someone is binded or if they're wearing a strap-on, to not have them being like 'oh what's in there?!' So to have that awareness and know you're going into a space that's not going to be gendered I would say that would even inspire people to go, just to get past that first block.
LC: Oh 100% because we know that's not fun and it's really difficult because again, not that I'm trying to... because obviously people can be homophobic and transphobic but it's often not even, it's something that maybe a security person might think it's a relatively innocuous or they think they're just doing their job. they don't really get or understand that they've just really really triggered or upset that person for the day and yeah exactly that sort of bizarre and violating feeling of being figured out you know? So yeah we were very, we had very strong ideas about how that should feel for people and I'm really glad to say that the security were all brilliant. And I think that's the thing you have to set the culture and explain that this is how this is going to be and we're really lucky, the crowd are, our customers are, the people who come and party with us are awesome so that's the other part. There's no need, the kind of heavy handed security vibe is not really needed with our events anyway because people are sound. Because sometimes I think poor security folk have a tough time when crowds are maybe trying to be bratty or agro so.
LLC: Yeah I love that you set the culture, especially seeing as you set that from the very start it's harder to change that once it's in whereas if you start off a certain way. That’s fantastic. And everyone knows going forward there's a reputation of the festival. So because this is with DLL the podcast is for people to feel supported or inspired or something like that. So as a human person or even as managing editor of GCN do you have any words of support or anything for anybody that might be listening that is feeling a bit lost.
LC: Oh well my experience tells me that people tend to be really hard on themselves and I wonder if we could all be slightly nicer to ourselves if that might not make quite a big difference because I think often you know the biggest critic and you're biggest enemy can sometimes be that kind of critical voice in your head. I'm not suggesting it's the only thing of course there's lots of other challenges and external forces. But I think there's something, and you know it's a slow process for me, I'm a person of a certain age and it's a work in process but yeah try and go easy on yourselves and if you're struggling talk to your pals or keep a journal or of course call the helpline. The reaching out and talking to folk is absolutely... you know I, there's no problem ever so big when you talk it out a little bit that you can't sort of at least figure out what is a potential next step. And I might say I'm so proud of you guys, I think it's amazing, I really think what the line does is so brilliant and special and important and the fact that you guys have been around, it's astounding to me that it's been 40 years and counting. I'm really happy and proud that our community has that resource because it's important.
Outro
The creators of this podcast are Dublin Lesbian Line’s Laura Louise Condell and Cáitríona Murphy and we would like to thank Lisa Connell for speaking to us for this episode. Dublin Lesbian Line is a confidential support service for the LGBTQAI+ community. If you’ve been affected by anything in this podcast you can reach us at 018729911or contact us on our online chat service at www.dublinlesbianline.ie. Dublin Lesbian Line is run by volunteers and relies on voluntary contributions so we would greatly appreciate any financial support you can offer whether it’s 2 euro or 100 hundred euro it makes a big difference to a small organisation like ours. Thank you for listening and take care.
Lisa Connell [LC]: My name is Lisa, I am a human person who works for GCN, Gay Community News, and I'm the managing editor and I also run parties and events and things for the community.
Laura Louise Condell [LLC]: So I heard you talk on the in ‘In Awe of Mná’ podcast, it was absolutely brilliant and thank you for the DLL and the 40th shout-out by the way. We'd love to hear similar topics but we really want to hear your personal experiences if that's okay with you. So starting back from the beginning, can you tell us about growing up queer in Donegal please?
LC: Okay, fadó fadó... so I'm of a certain age that I think it's a funny thing to say growing up queer because that's a very retrospective descriptor because I would say I grew up straight in this weird way, in that I don't think, I just do not think I had a real sense of my queerness as a child or as a teenager. It really came to me a lot later so I think I grew up feeling different but really didn't get to the bottom of that for a long time and didn't really... ya know thought it was about other things or different things so it's kind of... I often, when I was a younger queer person I would often envy people who had that very clearly 'awh I knew I was gay at four’ because I thought that that was so fabulous and amazing and for me it didn't really go like that, so you know like, I almost wish I was more of a tomboy than I even was, which is sort of silly, but that was kind of part of my process. So I kind of came to my queerness in my late teens and early 20's. I came out at the age of... I was early 21 when I came out so yeah it took me a bit of time and I think part of that was that I didn’t think you could be gay, I didn't have any, I didn't know any gay people. I didn't really register it in a way that felt accessible or visible even. So when I was in college I did a theatre degree so there was a high density of non-straight people and I was often mistaken for a queer person and I had... I was in an opposite sex relationship at the time and I used to be so hilariously offended when people would think I was gay, 'how dare you I have a boyfriend!' I mean who was I fooling? So then at 20 I met somebody and fell madly in love and she was my first girlfriend, my first love and then sort of from there there was a lot of retrospective 'ah ha, oh yes...' And it's interesting because I think sometimes for some queer folk you kind of revisit the past and then learn more about it with hindsight so yeah, that was sort of how it kind of happened.
LL: Thank you, I definitely think that's the case for a lot of [people], that there was a different feeling, but there wasn't any visibility or representation so it was like what... couldn't quite place what that different feeling was until you go out into the world and meet other people or fall for someone and then you're like 'oh yeah, that's what that was'. Ehm, and how did you end up in Dublin?
LC: So I, after I did my degree in the University of Ulster at Coleraine. So I'm from Donegal and I was actually explaining this recently, I feel that Donegal people are very much, we feel very close to Northern Ireland because obviously we're literally in it but think we sort of feel quite... ya know I grew up just across the border from Derry so when I finished college my natural first step was to live in Belfast which I did for a few years and then I decided to move to Dublin with my first girlfriend a couple of years after we lived in Belfast together because we wanted to move somewhere but we couldn’t decide on where so Dublin was sort of supposed to be the stepping and it ended up being the final destination. So we moved here at the height of the boom and it was kind of hilarious and ridiculous and Belfast is relatively affordable city to live in, like the living standards and the cost of living would be pretty reasonable I think, like I know it's changed now, at that time particularly and so when we moved to Dublin I was completely, I couldn't... it was bonkers, like rental... like actually hilariously cut to today we've gone back to that place. Ehm so yeah, and actually when I moved here I didn't particularly warm to it to start with, I was holding a candle for Northern Ireland still so it took me... actually what happened, I was really close to moving back to Belfast but I got involved in gay rights activism and that sort of ignited my love of this city through the people and through our community so I credit my early days with LGBT noise as my... they really bonded me to the city.
LLC: That's amazing, thank you. Congratulations on managing editor of GCN, would you tell us please how you got to this point?
LC: So I have been working with GCN for a decade and so at the start and for many years I worked part time and I was looking after distribution and at the same time that i was doing that I was also doing a lot of activism so it really suited me to have a part time gig and I was also working in coffee shops or working in bars but I enjoyed just the being part of the community magazine and feeling like I was contributing to something and then I kind of, you know that thing when you're juggling lots of jobs so I said to the guys 'ya know, is there more work going?' And so my previous colleague Conor Wilson said 'okay well let's get you selling some ads and you can pay for your extra time in the week or whatever'. So then I started selling ads and then it just sort of really, I just stayed around and kept learning more skills and doing more projects and tasks. GCN is a really wonderful place to work in that it's small enough that you can kind of get your hands dirty in all the different departments which is really exciting if you're someone like me who wants to know how everything works and how things are done. So I think my natural curiousity really allowed me to keep growing in this job because I was always wanting... 'Oh how do you run that event? And how would you do the ticketing for that?’ And you know of course in the community you're doing a lot of stuff on a shoe string or on no budget at all so you need people who are nosey enough and busy enough to sustain that energy. So yeah I just, and GCN has had over... last year we celebrated 30 years in publishing and it's had many wonderful editors and commercial managers and loads of brilliant people have come through the place across the last 30 years and I feel very indebted and I feel that we're still here and we're still thriving is a testament to hundreds of people and all the board members who would have run it across loads of different time periods. And then yeah I became the commercial manager two years ago and I did that for about a year and then the outgoing managing editor Brian was leaving so there was the opportunity to apply for his job so I thought ‘ya know I have come this far', and I applied for the job and got the job which is very exciting. And now I work with a really awesome small team. It's always funny, people are really surprised by how few of us there because I feel like we do a lot for out 40 hours a week but we're really excited and committed and we're all a bunch of people who have a similar... we really share a drive and a passion and an energy and that's really helpful. In fact I shouldn't really joke but I half joke the problem with this team is getting them to stop working so it's a really thing where we're all really committed and I just want everyone to mind themselves as well because I don't want people burning out. It's a dream job, it's a wonderful thing to be able to serve the community in such a tangible way because there's the physical product every month in the magazine and there's a physical product every day in the website and then we do events every quarter so there's a really, the kind of rewards are very rich in terms of that.
LLC: Absolutely, I think DLL can really relate to a lot of what you said there about doing things on a shoestring but also about passion and drive and not burning out because especially when, I think you mentioned in the other podcast, there's excitement and ideas and there's also a never ending list of things to try and achieve. And on that, now that you are managing editor what’s your priority for GCN?
LC: So I mean there's lots of things, we are, we're nearly at the end of 2019 and we've spent all year really reaching out to the community and trying every issue to really try to get to grips with what's going on for people and also really trying to showcase the rich diversity and difference and kind of amazing mix of types of people that in the community. Because you know at various points through time the magazine went through stages of feeling more of one thing than another or less of that and we, the current team, are very very committed and interested in the idea of having the most diverse representation and visibility of the community and really talking to all parts of the community about the other parts of the community because you know wanting people to understand trans folk, like having the rest of the community understand what's going with trans healthcare or having younger queer people understand what it might feel like to be a 60 something year old queer person. Because I think the sharing within the community is really important and when we know about one another we can have one another's backs. And then beyond that obviously is just there's an ever pressing priority to keep it afloat, keep the money coming in, working to make it sustainable business as well because there's often, it can be a bit of hustle at times so one goal that I have set for us and we're getting there, is to really just place it in an appropriate part of the Irish market so it has a sort of place and a sustainable place.
LLC: Thank you, that was actually another question, I think it's so phenomenal that GCN has always been free and still is, how do you manage that?
LC: Well we, it's absolutely fundamental that GCN remains as a free product, there isn't... unless the community vastly change it's ask of us, there's no way we would ever change that. It's so important that's it's a free community resource, you know the way people access information has changed but there is still a massive need for the magazine and we believe for the print edition as well as, I mean we've been growing our digital offering and reach but that is not in my opinion or it is not the idea to replace but it's to compliment because you know there are people who are not online and there are people in a rural setting who might, there access point might be their local resource centre or their library. We're a pretty creative bunch so we have part of our funding comes from the government, so we're Pobail funded, a big old chunk of our funding comes from Mother, which is a weekly nightclub with bigger seasonal parties and that's really my job as managing editor is to run the business. But Cormac and I run mother together and it's very much, it's a really important strand in GCN's kind of well, it helps us run ya know. And then obviously other GCN events, you know all the stuff that happen regularly in the community, we do quizzes, we do panel events, working with brands to really raise funds and that's a really interesting model to me because I feel that it's really important that all our events remain accessible because I don't want someone to be priced out of a conversation and so we work with different companies and brands in order, so they can cover the big costs so the LGBT person who might want to come isn't priced out of it.
LLC: I love that you’re anticipating all my questions before I get to them as well because I was going to ask you, GCN has an incredible online presence and it's made organisations like DLL, well not now that we have a comms team, but before that doing things quite last minute and maybe not knowing things in advance for the deadlines of the print magazines to be able to email and a journalist with say yeah sure we will put that online today. I was going to ask you, how important is keeping the print magazine and what it means to you?
LC: Actually interestingly about the digital stuff is that I love, one of the things that I, the limitation of a monthly cycle is that there will always be stuff that it's too far beyond... so say you guys have an event but then it's a full month after the event so it's kind of is a bit funny to put it on the magazine so the website is so great and the social media is so great because it allows us to cover community stuff in real time or just before or just after and it's great because it just allows... the other thing that I would say because we are a news site also you know we tend to be reporting on some tough stuff. Like LGBT news can be overwhelmingly bad news as the news can be in general so what the thing we love in here as well is actually we love working with community groups to get positive stuff out there, meet ups that are happening, you know that's so important. And in terms of the print publication, I know I sort of said it already, but for me personally beyond kind of, beyond the mission of the magazine... I think if you're over a certain age particularly GCN had a very specific role to play in your LGBT life, you know I certainly remember when I moved to Dublin first I would go to the IFI religiously every month when I knew it was out and pick it up because obviously we didn't all have phones and we didn't all have internet, we really did rely on the print product, obviously that has now changed quite dramatically. I do still love the idea that at any moment someone in the city can kind of dip into our world and okay it's not exhaustive but it is giving someone a sense what is happening for LGBT people on this island right now at this moment and so there's an even beyond the sort of information and resourcing there's also the documentation. Because Tonie Walsh who's one of the cofounders of GCN along with Katherine Glendon speaks a lot about the fact that one of the drivers to get the thing set up in the first place was the fact that mainstream media wouldn't cover anything to do with LGBT life or struggles or any of the great activism that was happening so it was really a way for the community to take it's story into its own hands and that has a lot of power and relevance and resonance because those stories are still important.
LLC: Absolutely. And I think the physical magazine; it serves so many purposes, not just for people who can't access things online. Like it's really nice to walk into somewhere that you don't expect to see GCN, I think it's a great signifier that the place is welcoming and it's accepting and I know for a lot of people who aren't necessarily out yet going to pick up a physical copy of GCN, it's there kind of queer thing to do for the month. Like god I remember I collected loads of them from important times in Ireland and important times in my life and I remember when I wasn’t out, the Pride parade was going on and I was working in shoe shop and I ran down the road and I got a copy of GCN and I still have that first GCN from my first secret pride. Like it's really important, it's something really special. And on special and important things... were you going to say something, sorry...
LC: I actually was, so we did on our arts issue a couple of months ago we did a cover with SOAK, the musician who's also an amazing illustrator, and we did the cover was the North is next and it was about ally-ship and support of our queer and also people who can get pregnant in Northern Ireland so there's sort of a cross border project that we did with Outburst arts and Dublin fringe and one of the proudest most amazing things, well there was two things – for the event we created a special zine which felt really, there was sort of a nice tactile nature of actually creating a physical product that people went to a space to get was really special and important because it marked it just as you're saying but also my pal lives in Berlin and she sent me a photo of the doorway of a block of flats and someone had put the GCN, like the full magazine, they'd pasted it up on to the front door and I just thought, I was completely delighted and blown away and so excited that the relevance of that physical artefact for want of a better term it still, as you say it's a signifier , it signals something and it just made me so happy. I was beside myself with joy.
LLC: That's amazing. And also I think with something like a physical magazine someone can walk past that and read and it and be brought into a world that maybe wasn't on their radar or they weren't thinking of. Like I think with the website which is fantastic a lot of the time people are going to it specifically. But with the magazine if you're in a cafe if you just pick it up in a queue like you might get introduced to something that you didn't know you were looking for. That's incredible. So you said at the start that you organised, and I hope I get this right, parties for the community, I love that and I have been to many of those parties and they're fantastic. What is it about queer nightlife that draws you in or that you're passionate about?
LC: So I mean I think that I have to claim my bias that I just think LGBT folk are more fun so no, I support queer spaces and I think they’re still relevant and important and necessary and yes we do know how to put on a good party and that's always helpful because going back across many decades the kind of cool music thing will start in the gay clubs and then filter out into wider culture and I think that's still the case. And yeah when we set mother up it was in a time of, the recession had hit really intensely and actually GCN was in a really rocky place because the bottom fell out of the advertising market so suddenly all the lovely shiny ads that would have been in the mag were not there because people's marketing budgets were just slashed so we had to, you know part necessity but also part a desire to kind of gather people together and say you know what can we always do? And what we can always do is find one another, and party and dance and I love dancing and I always have and I think it is such a powerful positive force and I I've said this before for LGBT people particularly, even if you're not, well especially if you're an activist, but even if you're not an activist sometimes just being an LGBT person in the world is your activism so there's the letting off steam that happens particularly in a queer space that is really important because as you said early if you do community work you can get fatigued, like it can be draining, it can be sometimes thankless, it can be tiring, and you don't know how can I do this or I can't do that or I've done too much already, but for me anyway there's something very rejuvenating or recharging about going in, having a bop, seeing your pals, having a laugh and then you know often feeling kind of, even if you're tired even if you’re hungover, just feeling that that was a great night and those are really important because I think those can fill the tank back up again. Particularly I mean now because I run the parties it's kind of important that they go well for other reasons because I want them to be a success but it just it gives me a lot of joy to see it and to feel it and to actually just be with your people and go 'these are my people'.
LLC: Absolutely it's so rejuvenating, it's such a powerful energy. I often don't make it to nights out, I think I just work so much in the community and volunteer so much that I'm just at my limit, I just want to go home. And I was working on pride, like work working, and Cáitríona had a ticket for me for Mother and it was just like, I was so tired but we danced until the very last song, like we're not leaving. And at one point I was just barely moving but it just felt so important to just be out and stay out and be there on Pride at our party. It was a great night and I wasn't drinking or anything that day I was just like wooo.
LC: Oh I mean that's another thing, dear listener, super super party hack is to stay sober, I'm telling you, it is the way of the future because I find as I have gotten older I actually find alcohol tires me more if I was just there with a little can of soda pop or sparkling water. So yeah I'm all about the sober party.
LLC: And I think people think that they can't go out in queer spaces if they don't drink or they don't do drugs. But I don't know, our spaces are there for us so whatever you do I would feel that Mother is a welcoming place.
LC: And yeah you know the serious sort of side to that is that obviously we are as community more vulnerable to being disproportionally affected by addiction so there is a part of that absolutely a lot of people feel that 'I can't go out unless I'm going to get wrecked' and actually I hope that people are moving beyond that and understanding that ‘no no I can do this a different way and I can access it a better way and a different way'. And people minding themselves because Irish people in general are terrible for 'what? What's wrong with you? Are you pregnant? Are you sick?' You know that kind of silly nonsense. I hope it’s changing because I do think people need to mind of themselves and I'm often sober now at parties because I'm working so it would be not cute for me to be drunk but it does not diminish my ability to enjoy. In fact I would argue that it has increased my capacity for enjoyment and kind of get the buzz out of it.
LLC: I agree with you, I do think things are changing on that front, I know the last few years there's been such a demand for night-time spaces that don't have alcohol in them but then I know that there's people that don't drink that still want to be out in dancing spaces. Now it is possible to still go out even if other people are drinking...
LC: Yeah I mean I find it really interesting at the moment that there's a whole exploding of non-alcoholic beers as a thing at the moment on the market. Like me and a couple of pals do a thing we call it Noo-vember so you don't drink in November and say even a few years ago when we started it, like you're options are you have water or you'd be drinking sugar which is fine... like I love a coca cola but you can't have 5 coca colas or your teeth would just all fall out. So it's really interesting the non-alcoholic beer is a really good and interesting development because it would allow people to feel that they're accessing something that they can't. I'm glad that that's a thing because I see more and more people kind of having that and also it means that you can drive in or then you can get up the next day or whatever so it's good. And also just for people minding themselves, you know the whole drink and drugs are not good for your mental health so yeah.
LLC: And what about Love Sensation? How did that come about? Did you enjoy it? Are you going to do it again?
LC: Okay so Love Sensation came about because of Pride. So pride as a party was growing and growing and we were super excited and it was just this massive thing and it kept kind of getting bigger every year. And at the same time as the Pride party was growing we were being asked to go to different music festivals, so we would do a stage at body and soul or we would do something at electric picnic. And loads of other lovely festivals and we kind of, obviously it's quite a dream, like that would be a big dream of 'oh we could do our own festival'. But it's obviously a massive undertaking and so it didn't feel like something, until this year it wasn't really something we felt we have the capacity to actually do. But then we had conversations with people who work in the industry and we teamed up with MCD as our booking partner because they are the people who help you get all the big acts and they would also have a good sense of, because they do so many other festivals. And so it kind of grew from there and suddenly it went from being a theoretical idea to a real life thing which was both exhilarating and terrifying and Cormac and I worked a lot on it. Cormac very much taking the lead on it and then it just went super well. I was really proud of it. I thought it was wonderful and to speak back to what we were saying about the queer space and the loveliness of being with your peeps, that was like super extra bonus queer space vibes and it felt really exciting that we were suddenly taking over this massive space, literal physical massive green site festival space and really making it feel our own and making it, like we put a lot of time and effort into making sure that the bathrooms weren’t gendered and we made sure the queuing system wasn't gendered and we briefed security on ‘you know this is a diverse crowd and you've got to just be really chill and if you see something that you are not used to please don't laugh’ and just really kind of thinking about what it is to be a queer person in a space and thinking about how we could make sure that there weren’t very pedestrian but often very upsetting encounters that just feel crap and would really kind of just bring your day down at little bit. And let's be real, it's not that people mean to do that, it's just we get so... particularly, and I can speak to this as someone who runs an event, people get very panicky because it's all crowd control stuff, so security are often gruff with people because they've been told to do a job, and 'I must not let anyone pass this or if you look like you might be a female person I can't let you in this space or vice verse'. And actually it's not that they want to be transphobic or problematic, they're burdened by this worry that they have to do the right thing in terms of the rules. So really we sort of were like ‘let's scratch all that, this is how this is going to go’. And it actually was beautiful and lovely and chill and there was no trouble and there was no, thankfully no bad incidents, no drama and then we had super exciting and fun acts and there were 3 stages and there was funfair and there was a queer quarter which was full of deadly people from the community doing deadly things. And yes we're doing it again, can't tell you anything yet, but like yes, in the works, and also going back to what worked, what didn't work, what we can make better and really going again.
LLC: Congratulations, it's amazing that the first year was such a success.
LC: Yeah it's wild, like Cormac and I about an hour before the gates opened the Saturday, we were doing a security check and we were walking through this site and just looking at one another going 'what on earth are we doing?' And I was kind of kidding and was like 'will we just, can we just leave now?’ [Laughs]. But no, obviously it was such a buzz and yeah it's a sort of a mad old game but it's really fun. But it's also, Ireland is already super, we have a lot of festivals already, it's a very, I would say nearly a fully saturated market in fact when you try to book dates or thinking when to have things there's so much stuff on but I suppose one thing that was really exciting for us with love sensation even though it is very busy we were offering enough of a different thing that people were into in it so that's kind of fun. And also even fun stuff like festivals historically have had a really big problem with balancing gender on their line ups and it's not that it's coincidence because obviously we have an approach to how we book but we tend to have 50 per cent or more female. Although I get that the binaried approach is also becoming, we're moving beyond that or at least challenging it more. But eh yeah even just that the way, who we're curating to play, who we're inviting to come and perform that's also really fun because that's when you get a chance to showcase talent and give people opportunities.
LLC: That's incredible and I love all the thought that went into not having gendered queues and things because I know so many trans people and non-binary people or people that present or feel differently than they present, queues going into things stress them out so much and can be a barrier to something. Like a real block, not wanting to be told you're in the wrong queue or to be patted down and being like 'what's...?' Like if someone is binded or if they're wearing a strap-on, to not have them being like 'oh what's in there?!' So to have that awareness and know you're going into a space that's not going to be gendered I would say that would even inspire people to go, just to get past that first block.
LC: Oh 100% because we know that's not fun and it's really difficult because again, not that I'm trying to... because obviously people can be homophobic and transphobic but it's often not even, it's something that maybe a security person might think it's a relatively innocuous or they think they're just doing their job. they don't really get or understand that they've just really really triggered or upset that person for the day and yeah exactly that sort of bizarre and violating feeling of being figured out you know? So yeah we were very, we had very strong ideas about how that should feel for people and I'm really glad to say that the security were all brilliant. And I think that's the thing you have to set the culture and explain that this is how this is going to be and we're really lucky, the crowd are, our customers are, the people who come and party with us are awesome so that's the other part. There's no need, the kind of heavy handed security vibe is not really needed with our events anyway because people are sound. Because sometimes I think poor security folk have a tough time when crowds are maybe trying to be bratty or agro so.
LLC: Yeah I love that you set the culture, especially seeing as you set that from the very start it's harder to change that once it's in whereas if you start off a certain way. That’s fantastic. And everyone knows going forward there's a reputation of the festival. So because this is with DLL the podcast is for people to feel supported or inspired or something like that. So as a human person or even as managing editor of GCN do you have any words of support or anything for anybody that might be listening that is feeling a bit lost.
LC: Oh well my experience tells me that people tend to be really hard on themselves and I wonder if we could all be slightly nicer to ourselves if that might not make quite a big difference because I think often you know the biggest critic and you're biggest enemy can sometimes be that kind of critical voice in your head. I'm not suggesting it's the only thing of course there's lots of other challenges and external forces. But I think there's something, and you know it's a slow process for me, I'm a person of a certain age and it's a work in process but yeah try and go easy on yourselves and if you're struggling talk to your pals or keep a journal or of course call the helpline. The reaching out and talking to folk is absolutely... you know I, there's no problem ever so big when you talk it out a little bit that you can't sort of at least figure out what is a potential next step. And I might say I'm so proud of you guys, I think it's amazing, I really think what the line does is so brilliant and special and important and the fact that you guys have been around, it's astounding to me that it's been 40 years and counting. I'm really happy and proud that our community has that resource because it's important.
Outro
The creators of this podcast are Dublin Lesbian Line’s Laura Louise Condell and Cáitríona Murphy and we would like to thank Lisa Connell for speaking to us for this episode. Dublin Lesbian Line is a confidential support service for the LGBTQAI+ community. If you’ve been affected by anything in this podcast you can reach us at 018729911or contact us on our online chat service at www.dublinlesbianline.ie. Dublin Lesbian Line is run by volunteers and relies on voluntary contributions so we would greatly appreciate any financial support you can offer whether it’s 2 euro or 100 hundred euro it makes a big difference to a small organisation like ours. Thank you for listening and take care.