The Fat of the Land – Saturday 3 October, London

fotl.gifIf you’re looking for a Harvest festival celebration this year in London, The Fat of the Land sounds good:

London’s fat queers and their pals are coming together to challenge the greed of the diet industry and body fascism within the gay community by producing a food festival that celebrates body diversity.

The Fat of the Land: A Queer Chub Harvest Festival is a DIY food fest, synthesizing interest in slow food, recession-busting, sustainable food, ‘make-and-do’ and craft culture with a fat queer sensibility. It is intended as a secular fat queerifying of a traditional harvest gathering, and the organizers positively welcome multicultural interpretations of the theme.

The Fat of the Land is child friendly and open to people of all sizes and sexualities.

It will feature:

  • Activities: crafting, traditional games, competitions for best jam, best chutney, best cake, best produce, best vegetable monster and more
  • Stalls, refreshments, and information about Health At Every Size
  • Art: Allyson Mitchell’s grotto will be open for visits
  • Evening Performance: including a group rendition of The Fat Queer Harvest Hymn, written especially for the event, and special surprise act by Chopin Gard

    Visitors are encouraged to bring along a tin of unwanted food to be donated to a prominent diet guru – the respondent will be chosen on the day.

    Co-organiser and fat queer activist Charlotte Cooper explains: “We see The Fat of the Land as a celebration of the abundance of harvest time and our connection to the rhythms of nature and creativity, albeit executed in our own idiosyncratic, outsider, warped, prankish, punk, 21st century, Wicker Man style.

    “It is a defiant celebration of abundance and plenty amidst a ‘healthy living’ agenda in the UK that is often reductionist, fatphobic and mean, and is thus health-enhancing for people of all sizes.”

    Details

    fotl2.gifThe Fat of the Land: A Queer Chub Harvest Festival

    Saturday 3 October 2009

    St Anne’s, 55 Dean Street, Soho, London.

    This is an accessible venue.

    £5/£2.50 concessions.

    2-5pm stalls and activities

    5-6pm competition judging

    6-8pm performances

    3 October 2009 is the weekend of this year’s Harvest Moon.

    We are seeking volunteers.

    The Fat of The Land is being principally organised by Charlotte Cooper, and Naz Jamal and Jason Elvis Barker of The Queer Institute. It has been made possible by a Small Projects Across the Land loan by NOLOSE, the US organisation for fat dykes and their allies.

    The Fat of the Land seeks to capitalise on the success of the Chubsters event at the 2009 London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which witnessed a fierce outpouring of fat-queer activism in the UK and a hunger expressed by many of the participants for more events of such a nature.

  • Photo and logo by Jason Elvis Barker