What is the project about?

With this youth exchange, we want to bring together 38 fantastic young people from Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Poland to celebrate, try out and perform Drag! We are a new queer organisation, Critical Queer Solidarity. We want to create alternative spaces within the queer community in Berlin and create connections with other queer people around Europe and the world. From our team, Queen Of Virginity and Thomas will be the ones coordinating this project.

Over the course of the project, you will get to know:

♥ Background of Drag. The history, present and future of the art of expressing gender outside the norm – and what is political about it.

♥ Skills for finding your expression of Drag. How can the art of make up or dressing up help us to blur gender, to perform gender and to break out from gender norms?

♥ Theater and movement. We will be working on performance skills through exercises that help us to connect with our bodies and to feel more comfortable on stage. Additionally, there will be a few public speaking and theater exercises that one could benefit from in their daily life as well as on stage.

♥ Experiencing the art. We will watch drag shows in Berlin, learn from some of Berlin‘s best drag performers – and get to know their approach.

♥ Final performance. We will create a final show with performances by all of us in the group who want to show what they learned and came up with during the week. Of course no one will be pressured to perform if they don’t feel comfortable.

Who can apply?

Anyone who identifies as queer, who is between 18 and 30 years old, and who lives in Berlin. We explicitly encourage participants of all genders, sexual orientations, abilities, educational backgrounds, races and ethnic backgrounds to apply.

No experience or special skills are needed. The youth exchange will take place in English. If you don’t feel so comfortable in English, we will support you in your understanding by translating or explaining in simple language.

Queen of Virginity. Photo: Josh Regitz Queen of Virginity | Photo: Josh Regitz

Where?

The project will take place at a hostel in Berlin-Weissensee.

COVID-19?

Of course we are not sure yet how the pandemic will look like in November and things might change spontaneously. At the moment, we do believe we can organise the exchange. We hope that the big majority of the group will be fully vaccinated by this point. We will of course also follow all hygiene regulations that are necessary to keep the group safe.

Costs?

There is no participation fee and the project will include three free meals a day. This project is funded by the European Commission through the program Erasmus+.

Questions?

Feel free to write an email to Thomas at thomas@cqs.berlin

Application closed! Funded by the European Commission:

The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe: