University of Helsinki
Ovi is an association for gender and sexual minorities and it works under the University of Helsinki Student Union. Ovi holds weekly events where everyone is welcome. In the early spring we received a grant from the University of Helsinki Student Services for organizing a project, and now we want to share with you our experiences of this project’s early stages.
The project is an international queer conference. Participants will come from our umbrella organization ANSO’s (Association of Nordic and Pol-Balt LGBTQ Student Organizations) member organizations around the Northern Europe. The conference will be held in early August in Helsinki. The point of the organization is to provide organizations a chance to network and cooperate. For individual participants the conference will teach and offer more information and understanding of queer politics, accessibility and spreading acceptance and community.
Conference has taken most of our spring. Because the organization team includes a couple of ANSOnians bringing in their know-how and because of one of the local organizer had gone to Kenya for the spring and the other to Ireland, the meetings were held via Skype. This of course brought out problems – if the network worked in rural Kenya, it was certain what at least the time of the meeting had been decided in CET instead of GMT+2 and everyone arrived randomly…
Because the Student Services grant alone was not enough, we have been waiting anxiously to hear from our Youth In Action grant application while at the same time with great confidence booked a hostel and encouraged the organizations to choose their participants. Now the grants have finally been ensured and we are pretty much ready with the organizing part (well, the cook dropped out – but luckily we have found a replacement!). Finally we can fully concentrate on finalizing the content and study outcomes of the lectures and workshops. Intersectionality, non-discriminating pedagogy and grass root activism – here we come!
The evening program has also been planned. There will be both a movie and game night. I’m at least anxiously looking forward to the international guests’ first sauna evening (naturally gender neutral one)! August is already pretty much here and soon it’s the time for the conference to start. Next blog update will be written from there!
On behalf of the Queer Politics conference prep team,
Noora Pyörre
ovi-hallitus(at)helsinki.fi