The party putting accessibility and politics centre stage

From streaming DJ sets in their kitchen during lockdown to the stage at Wembley arena Queer House Party have taken the world by storm whilst always staying true to who they are.

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. 

Harry Gay
Passer
Taali not Charlie

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 7th 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 7th 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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