The party putting accessibility and politics centre stage

The mid­dle of the first lock­down in spring 2020. Silent streets filled with ambu­lances and peo­ple out for their gov­ern­ment man­dat­ed exer­cise. Police cars with loud hail­ers slow­ly cir­cled parks and com­mons, berat­ing any­one who had the temer­i­ty to sit. Across the city, clubs, bars, spaces sat emp­ty. For those of us who find com­mu­ni­ty, joy, con­nec­tion and mean­ing on the dance floor it was a des­per­ate­ly lone­ly, bleak time.

It was in this dark hour that the shin­ing light of Queer House Par­ty appeared. The brain­child of DJ and organ­is­er Har­ry Gay, the live-streamed DJ sets and online drag per­for­mances quick­ly drew a huge fol­low­ing, cre­at­ing a com­mu­ni­ty shaped life­line for queer peo­ple across the coun­try.

Almost five years on from the first DJ sets streamed from their south east Lon­don kitchen Queer House Par­ty is still going strong. Their events pack out ware­hous­es, whilst their fes­ti­val appear­ances pull crowds of thou­sands. They fill dance floors with sweaty joy­ous peo­ple, sound­tracked by an eclec­tic, genre flu­id parade of the best DJs on the scene. With per­form­ers, musi­cians, dancers, ven­dors and more, there remains no par­ty like a Queer House Par­ty. 

Now a core group of three in the shape of DJs Har­ry Gay and Pass­er and host Taali not Char­lie we caught up with the Huck List alum­ni to talk through the last half decade, the ethos that keeps their par­ties going and what the future holds.

Tell us about how Queer House Par­ty came into being?

Har­ry Gay: Pass­er and I first met through com­mu­ni­ty organ­is­ing and direct action back in 2017. At the time, we were both (very inex­pe­ri­enced and not par­tic­u­lar­ly skilled) DJs, and we start­ed run­ning reg­u­lar fundrais­ers in sol­i­dar­i­ty with organ­i­sa­tions sup­port­ing queer peo­ple in the asy­lum process. Taali and I go way back — we first met in a club about a decade ago.

By 2019, pass­er and I were liv­ing togeth­er in an over­priced, run-down house share in New Cross, South Lon­don. That’s where we were when the pan­dem­ic and lock­down hit. Both of us were work­ing front­line roles at dif­fer­ent home­less­ness shel­ters — I was with The Out­side Project. As part of my work there, we devel­oped an online com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, which gave us access to a cor­po­rate Zoom account usu­al­ly reserved for conferences.

When lock­down began, I had the idea to pull togeth­er all our bat­tered DJ equip­ment at home and see if we could pull off a live-streamed DJ set. I put out some DIY pro­mo, invit­ing peo­ple to our ​“Sexy House Par­ty,” where we’d stream a DJ set live — and realised we could also include online drag per­for­mances. We thought a hand­ful of friends might join, but on the first night, over a thou­sand peo­ple tuned in.

That’s when I knew we’d stum­bled onto some­thing spe­cial. It was an intense and uncer­tain time, and peo­ple were des­per­ate for a sense of relief. They were also look­ing for new ways to engage with nightlife and elec­tron­ic music — some­thing that com­bined acces­si­bil­i­ty, pol­i­tics, and a bang­ing time. And so, Queer House Par­ty was born. We quick­ly taught our­selves how to DJ prop­er­ly and became experts at throw­ing acces­si­ble online par­ties on Zoom and con­tin­ued to make every­thing up as we went along.

Lots of peo­ple I know talk about how impor­tant Queer House Par­ty was for them dur­ing lock­downs, what did it mean for you guys?

Taali Not Char­lie: Queer House Par­ty meant every­thing to me in lock­down! At the time, I was liv­ing in my fam­i­ly home, and just before QHP start­ed, my fam­i­ly got covid real­ly bad­ly and my dad was hos­pi­talised because of it for 10 days. When he came out, we were all look­ing after him and as he start­ed to recov­er, I saw Harry’s sto­ry about Queer House Par­ty on ins­ta. I was real­ly miss­ing my queer com­mu­ni­ty, and after my dads expe­ri­ence, I was in real need of a dance and a pick me up so I got dressed up and went and from then on I went to every sin­gle QHP online. It real­ly saved me in lock­down and gave me hope.

My mum, who at the time was in her late 50s, also came out as a rag­ing bisex­u­al at a QHP online in lock­down, and she was shown so much love. I real­ly believe a huge part of the rea­son she felt able to do that was because she had been vir­tu­al­ly attend­ing so many QHP and see­ing peo­ple of all ages in the com­mu­ni­ty there. We still hear sto­ries from peo­ple at our par­ties about how it saved them in lock­down, so I’m for­ev­er grate­ful for it and to be the host of it now. 

Once lock­down end­ed you took the par­ty out into the world, talk us through what that has been like!

Har­ry: We quick­ly made a name for our­selves on the queer nightlife scene, blow­ing up in a way none of us had antic­i­pat­ed — or were remote­ly ready for. Com­ing out of lock­down and into the clubs was a whirl­wind. We had to trans­late the com­mu­ni­ty we’d built online into phys­i­cal spaces, throw­ing par­ties that hon­oured every­thing we’d cre­at­ed. Before lock­down, if we’d pitched our con­cept to a club, it would’ve been reject­ed out­right. But post-lock­down, with the online fol­low­ing we’d built, venues were lin­ing up to have us. It was sur­re­al but empow­er­ing — sud­den­ly, we could do every­thing on our own terms.

Ear­ly on, we were spot­ted by Years & Years. [Lead singer] Olly Alexan­der asked if he could do a sur­prise per­for­mance at one of our par­ties, which then led to us join­ing the band on an are­na tour and open­ing Wem­b­ley. That still doesn’t feel real.

The fes­ti­val cir­cuit picked us up ear­ly on, and before we knew it, we were fly­ing out to dif­fer­ent coun­tries to throw par­ties, then com­ing straight back to Lon­don on no sleep to take over huge stages at huge fes­ti­vals. Those ear­ly days were a chaot­ic blur of ener­gy and excite­ment. The high­light, though, has to be our Glas­ton­bury debut last year. We were booked to play at 4 PM at The Rum­shack, and we were con­vinced no one would turn up. We poured every­thing into that show, book­ing all our friends out of our own pock­et, and I told every­one back­stage not to expect much of a crowd. Five min­utes lat­er, we found out they’d stopped let­ting peo­ple in — the queue was over capac­i­ty before the doors even opened. We lat­er heard it was the busiest that stage had been in over a decade. Those two hours are some­thing I’ll nev­er forget.

Over the years col­lec­tive mem­bers have come and gone onto do their own incred­i­ble things. Our core team is now the three of us and we’re stronger than ever — we’re a mix of organ­is­ers from work­ing class, QTIBPOC and trans back­grounds and this real­ly informs how we curate our par­ties and run them. This means that our crowd is one of the most diverse in terms of gen­der, eth­nic­i­ty, age and class back­grounds that I’ve seen in Lon­don which feels real­ly spe­cial. The three of us are backed by a huge net­work of amaz­ing queer cre­atives that we work with and we’re real­ly focused on mak­ing next year big­ger and bet­ter than ever.

How impor­tant are your pol­i­tics to the par­ties you throw?

Pass­er: It’s basi­cal­ly the rea­son we throw parties.

Pol­i­tics, care and com­mu­ni­ty were the cat­a­lyst for us start­ing QHP and as we’ve grown and devel­oped we’ve always tried to keep the pol­i­tics at the core of how we organ­ise. At the end of the day, we are just a par­ty, we know this isn’t the place where the ​‘rev­o­lu­tion’ is going to hap­pen. But we believe there’s huge polit­i­cal poten­tial found on the dance floor, found through music and cre­at­ing a safe, inclu­sive and lib­er­a­to­ry queer space; for expres­sion, release, com­mu­ni­ty build­ing, fundraising.

Over the years we’ve DJ’d on the streets sup­port­ing demon­stra­tions call­ing for divest­ment from fos­sil fuel com­pa­nies and weapons man­u­fac­tur­ers. We throw an online event every Christ­mas along­side The Out­side Project so that queers that may be home­less in tem­po­rary accom­mo­da­tion or at home with their pho­bic par­ents have access to queer com­mu­ni­ty. At our next event on 7^th Decem­ber we are rais­ing mon­ey to sup­port The Out­side Project to open their recent­ly announced Trans+ Win­ter Shel­ter; and we will always ensure that those we are rais­ing mon­ey for will gain free access to our events.

Peo­ple engag­ing in queer lib­er­a­to­ry pol­i­tics, activism and cam­paign­ing are the only rea­son we are able to do what we do. We want to hon­our that his­to­ry and think it’s our duty to con­tin­ue the fight; it’s not over.

Har­ry: Despite all the atten­tion, we’ve stayed true to our pol­i­tics, keep­ing them cen­tral to every­thing we do. That’s meant we’ve nev­er ful­ly inte­grat­ed into the music indus­try — I like to say we’re ​“indus­try-adja­cent.” The usu­al tra­jec­to­ry for a col­lec­tive like ours hasn’t been pos­si­ble. We’ve turned down count­less oppor­tu­ni­ties and end­ed pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships because we refuse to com­pro­mise or fil­ter what we have to say. Most recent­ly, we’ve been cam­paign­ing and fundrais­ing for Gaza, despite the ​“script” of what’s deemed accept­able to say. We refused to stay silent, and in turn, some peo­ple have refused to work with us. That’s not some­thing that will ever change.

Acces­si­bil­i­ty is a big part of Queer House Par­ty, what does that mean to you?

Pass­er: Beyond the obvi­ous I think our events are so acces­si­ble because we real­ly try to lis­ten to com­mu­ni­ties needs and act upon them. That means, for exam­ple, mak­ing sure we always have low­er income and free tick­ets for those who usu­al­ly can’t attend club nights. It means hav­ing the incred­i­ble safe only as our wel­fare team with us at every par­ty to make sure every­one knows there is always some­one for them to talk to and a qui­et space if they need a minute as clubs can be over­whelm­ing spaces for many peo­ple. It means hav­ing one of our rooms at our events ded­i­cat­ed to being a calmer space where you can sit down and make a badge with badge café or do some­thing with our oth­er incred­i­ble ven­dors and with our com­mu­ni­ty that is a bit calmer before you head back to the dance floor if you choose to.

As inde­pen­dent par­ty throw­ers and pro­mot­ers, do you find it dif­fi­cult to be able to meet the diverse needs of your audience?

Pass­er: Of course it’s dif­fi­cult. We don’t always suc­ceed in try­ing to meet the range of needs of our audi­ence, and we’re always try­ing to improve. There’s no such thing as ​‘ful­ly acces­si­ble’ because some people’s access needs con­flict with oth­er indi­vid­u­als and the facil­i­ties to meet the needs aren’t always present with­in London’s venues. But that’s not stopped us try­ing our best, find­ing workarounds, gath­er­ing feed­back and imple­ment­ing it, always evolv­ing, being flex­i­ble and humble.

London’s venues, on the whole, aren’t very acces­si­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly many of the queer venues. Because it costs a lot of mon­ey to make the alter­ation to make a venue acces­si­ble and queers have been pushed to the mar­gins, geo­graph­i­cal­ly and finan­cial­ly. But I think, inher­ent in that expe­ri­ence of mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion, and for us par­tic­u­lar­ly hav­ing start­ed in a very DIY way, means that we know how to be adapt­able and get shit done. So yes it is dif­fi­cult, but it’s worth it, no question.

Describe a QHP event to us! What makes it so unique?

Taali: For me, what makes Queer House Par­ty unique is the dif­fer­ent ele­ments our events bring and who we book for our events. We take a lot of time curat­ing each event, mak­ing sure it’s a dif­fer­ent vibe and expe­ri­ence for every sin­gle one. The music gen­res and fusions are dif­fer­ent each time, we make sure to book tal­ent­ed DJs, gogo dancers and per­form­ers that have worked hard and made a name for them­selves. We book peo­ple who are incred­i­ble and at the start of their jour­ney, and those who should be being booked more but due to racism, colourism, trans­pho­bia, fat­pho­bia and/​or ableism aren’t.

We also book per­form­ers from sub-sec­tions of our com­mu­ni­ty that con­sis­tent­ly have their cul­ture stolen by club nights but are rarely booked like those from the ball­room scene like Haus Of Tel­far and sex work­er col­lec­tives like Cybertease and Sex and Rage. We always have queer and trans ven­dors at our events which bring a whole­some excit­ing ele­ment, and we still have our events live-streamed so any­one who for any rea­son can’t attend irl can stream in and be part of the night. We’re by no means the first to have some of these ele­ments at a club night, but hav­ing them all def­i­nite­ly makes our crowd one of the most spe­cial and we will always give flow­ers to the events we’ve learnt from like Pxssy palace and Mis­ery par­ty.

Whats next for Queer House Par­ty? What does 2025 look like?

Har­ry: First­ly, we have our last par­ty of the year on Decem­ber 7^th fea­tur­ing Tash LC and Tom Ras­mussen as head­lin­ers along­side Nadine Noor from Pxssy Palace, Thempress, Sana, a new south lon­don punk-absur­dist-drag col­lec­tive POMP! And as always we’ll have a take over from Haus of Telfar.

We’re turn­ing five next year, which is absolute­ly wild! Every­thing has hap­pened so quick­ly, and it gen­uine­ly feels like yes­ter­day we were open­ing up Zoom every Fri­day night dur­ing lock­down. I’m so proud of what we’ve built togeth­er and how we’ve man­aged to carve out a space in London’s queer nightlife — a space that draws in so many peo­ple who might not oth­er­wise be out queer club­bing in the city.

We’ve just finalised the line­up for our March birth­day event, and it’s ridicu­lous­ly huge. It’s all about fam­i­ly and friend vibes, fea­tur­ing loads of peo­ple who’ve been part of the jour­ney with us and have gone on to blow up in their own ways. We’re also plan­ning to hit the fes­ti­vals hard again next year, although there’s noth­ing we can announce just yet.

Right now, we’re real­ly focus­ing on mak­ing our Lon­don events the best they can be — it’s some­thing we all care about deeply. We haven’t had much of a plan these past five years; we’ve just tak­en things as they’ve come. I reck­on next year will be more of the same: big­ger, queer­er, and bet­ter than ever!

Tick­ets for Queer House Party’s next par­ty are avail­able here.

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