Creating Change staff and co-chairs from the 2019 conference attended Detroit Pride last year to generate interest in the event. (Photo courtesy of Creating Change)

Creating Change host committee launch party is Monday

Tammye Nash | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com

The National LGBTQ Task Force’s 2020 Creating Change Conference is set for Jan. 15-19 at the Sheraton Dallas hotel, and Task Force organizers are asking local advocates to get involved with the planning process by becoming part of the conference host committee.

Planning begins in earnest with an event to launch the host committee on Monday, April 8, at Resource Center, 5750 Cedar Springs Road. The event begins with dinner at 6 p.m., followed by a meeting at 6:30 p.m.

Evangeline Weiss, director of leadership programs for the Task Force, that a team of four Creating Change staff members, including her, will be at the meeting to explain the role the host committee will play in organizing the conference.

“We are calling all queers and all allies and all people who care about social justice,” Weiss said. “The whole process begins Monday, and we are looking four co-chairs for the host committee.”

She said each of the co-chairs will take responsibility for one portion of the planning process — hospitality, special events, fundraising and recruiting and marketing.

“Host committee members will be our ambassadors” to the North Texas community, she said.

“Members of the host committee are really an outreach branch of [the Task Force], and at the same time they bring with them to us knowledge of the community and the people in North Texas,” Weiss said.

“It is important to us to highlight the work that is happening in the community and the people who are doing that work,” she added. “We can do that through plenary sessions focusing on local issues and by recognizing local people with awards at the conference. We need to the host committee’s input to be able to do that.”

The first Creating Change Conference was held in 1988, organized to help build on the momentum of the national march on Washington, D.C., for LGBT equality held the previous year in October. Andy Garcia, director of the Creating Change department at the Task Force the purpose remains to build community and keep the LGBTQ community’s momentum moving forward, nationally and in local communities. That’s why, he said, the conference is held in a different city each year.

“We could hold the conference In D.C. every year. That would be easy for us since that is where we are headquartered. But we very consciously don’t do that,” Garcia said. “A large part of the magic [of the conference] is working with people locally, learning the issues that impacting these communities and the people who are working to address the issues.

Weiss said that requests for workshop and plenary panels for Creating Change 2020 will be issued in July, with the deadline for submitting proposals “right around Labor Day. One of the functions of the host committee is to help identify fantastic workshop proposals. In early November, we will notify people whether their workshops were accepted.”

Garcia added that organizers will give deference to locally-driven content in choosing workshops. “The range of topics is whatever people want to submit to us. What drives Dallas? What are the challenges and the opportunities there? In submitting proposals, think about what Dallas — and Texas, more broadly — can offer the movement.