Out in the Open

Out in the Open connects rural LGBTQ+ people across Vermont and Maine to build community, visibility, knowledge, and power. Out in the Open works to build a resilient network of rural LGBTQ+ communities and advance a multiracial, multi-issue movement for social justice. Through community gatherings, organizing, and capacity-building, the organization creates opportunities for rural LGBTQ+ people to connect, support one another, and work toward more just and equitable communities.

Looking Forward Fellowship brings rural LGBTQ+ history into the present through community-based social practice, creative research, and performance. Over two years, Fellows will explore historical materials and stories of rural LGBTQ+ life in New England, working alongside Lead Artist Derrick Miller-Handley and Out in the Open executive director HB Lozito to create new, immersive performance works. Miller-Handley’s interdisciplinary practice draws on visual art, performance, ritual, and collective experience to explore identity, ancestral memory, joy, and belonging. Through performance, storytelling, visual art, ritual, music, and other forms of collective experience, the Fellowship expands ideas about who can be an artist and what a performance can be, while creating opportunities for rural LGBTQ+ histories visible within the broader story of Vermont communities.