Drag is art.
Drag is activism.
Drag is community.
FULL COLLECTION COMING SPRING 2024
Featuring interviews with:
Mo Betta
Wet Betty
Sapphira Cristál
Crystal Electra
Icon Ebony Fierce
Eric Jaffe
Luna Thee Jawnette
Miss Lisa Lisa
Brittany Lynn
Manny Lovett
Asia Monroe
Beary Tyler Moore
Deej Nutz
Iris Spectre
Volkie Leigh Versace
VinChelle
Yari
“But what if drag remembered its histories of dissidence? What if drag had permission to move across categories and media? What worlds, more just and beautiful worlds, could drag make possible…”
-Kareem Khubchandani/LaWhore Vagistan, Decolonize Drag
The Drag Arts Oral History Project (DAOHP) is a new multimedia social impact project that aims to fill significant public and professional knowledge gaps around the lived experiences, views, needs and histories of drag artists and queer performers.
Founded in Philadelphia in 2021 through the generous support of the Independence Public Media Foundation and Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, the DAOHP aims to get down to the roots of “drag” by centering narrative power with its community of practitioners (with an emphasis on QTBIPOC voices), connecting the drag artists with developmental resources and exploring the genre through both an artistic and activist lens.
Project Elements
LEARN.//ORAL HISTORY//
Using multimedia tools and oral history methods to gather, preserve and interpret the voices, views, needs and lived experiences of drag artists. The DAOHP is a proud member of the Oral History Association and is committed to adhering to the field’s best practices related to preparation, interviewing, preservation and access - all through a narrator-centered approach.
CONNECT.//CAPACITY + NETWORK BUILDING//
Utilizing collective impact models to support capacity building and professional development efforts that address expressed wants and needs of artists. In doing so, we hope to be able to foster network and community building for artists locally, regionally and nationally to the benefit of their personally wellbeing and to the flourishing of their work.
GROW.//RESOURCE GENERATION//
Working to change the traditional economic model of drag by exploring ways to connect artists to funding opportunities typically reserved for “traditional” artistic disciplines and institutions. We hope to experiment with alternative funding frameworks like fiscal sponsorship, collective crowdsourcing//giving circles, participatory grantmaking and trust-based philanthropy in order to advance self-determination by artists and sustainability of their careers and work.
“…oral history with […] historically undervalued communities entails making historical and generational discontinuities explicit. It necessarily disrupts historical paradigms that do not or will not acknowledge the existence of bodies, genders, and desires invisible to previous historical traditions.”
– Nan Alamilla Boyd + Horacio N. Roque Ramírez, Bodies of Evidence: The Practice of Queer Oral History