Drag Queen Story Time is a local project, inspired by a similar project in the United States.
The premise is simple: Local Drag Queens providing a fun, inclusive, reading time for local schools, children and hospitals.
The aim of DQST is to capture the imagination and fun of the gender fluidity of childhood, while giving children a glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role model. DQST provides spaces in which kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and allow them to imagine a world in which people can present as they wish. Where dress up is real.
Drag Queen Story Time is where fairytales come to life. Presented by real Queens.
DQST will focus on conventional fairytales, as well as feminist fairytales and gender fluid novels aimed at young children. The thought behind this is that intolerance, homophobia, and other negative thought patterns, are all learnt behaviours. DQST aims to challenge these negative views at a young age. Instead, providing an alternative view of acceptance and tolerance; all within an educational environment.
The purpose of this crowdfund project is to assist with the formation this project. To allow for the required DBS checks, so the entertainers may perform for the children in line with the law, as well as to assist with the production and implementation of marketing materials, thus allowing knowledge of the scheme to expand in the local area.
It is still early days for the project, although I am in talks with local libraries and various community centres already, with great positive response.