It’s all rhinestones, glue guns and dance moves this week as the Coastal Twist Festival team puts the finishing touches to its float for this year’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade.
“This is our fifth year participating,” chief organisers Leigh Rijff and Shane Milson said.
“During that time we have had massive global visibility as well as being recognised as finalists in the best float design.
“It’s such a buzz seeing our float, costumes and community across the world press as well as across all the Australian media.”
This year’s mardi gras theme is Our Future, which embodies a commitment to inclusivity, acceptance and optimism, celebrating past achievements while illuminating the path to a dazzling future.
Coastal Twist Festival creative director Glitta Supernova said the Coast team’s float theme was Rise and Shine, a vibrant take on the phoenix rising from the flames.
“This theme encourages all people to rise up to our full potential and shine by being who we are,” she said.
“Your authentic self is a term that we hear a lot; this is literally walking the walk – rising up above ignorance, exclusion and isolation like a phoenix, transformed and strong.
“It’s a strong message of resilience that we belong, we matter, and we have a right to live here, raise our families and celebrate.
“Resilience is at our core; that is what it’s taken being a LGBTIQ person growing up, moving to and living on the Coast in the bad old days.
“The broader support from Central Coast residents, schools, politicians, parents, pensioners and sports clubs has been beyond what we ever could have hoped for across the past five years.
“A happier, healthier and more welcoming Central Coast is now a reality for many, if not most, LGBTIQ Coasties.”
Many months of preparation have gone into the float from a callout for participants to designing and conceptualising, sewing and blinging the costumes, putting the design on the truck and organising choreography and light design.
“The costume designs this year return to the Coastal Twist mascots – the rainbow lorikeet, which mirror the new festival key artwork by queer artist Megan Oliver.
“With rainbow wings and crowns on our heads and the base colour of silver to shine our radiance with the world, this year as well as the truck we will also have two giant lorikeet puppets; it will be quite the spectacle,” Leigh Rijff said.
If you can’t make it into Sydney, the Fun Haus Factory in Gosford will host an official mardi gras viewing party from 5pm-11pm on Saturday, March 2, with local acts and a DJ.
Tickets are available at naughtynoodle.com.au