Prom – or ‘the debs’ as it’s more commonly referred to in Ireland – means different things to different people. For some, it’s a chance to be crowned king or queen, for others, it’s a chance to get dressed up, and for most, it’s a last chance to party with school friends. But for many queer people, it wasn’t that simple, which makes the Bealtaine Festival’s queer prom all the more special. Han Tiernan gets the lowdown on one of the festival’s highpoints.

All photos by Dean O’Sullivan.

Prom is a marker for the end of school and the first steps into adulthood. While this rite-of-passage is celebrated by wider society, it is not always a ceremony that LGBTQ+ people are able to fully partake in. For many, they feel ostracised, unable to be their true selves or unable to share the momentous occasion with the ones they love.

Inspired by the short US documentary – Senior Prom: LGBTQ+ Seniors Get the Prom of Their Dreams the organisers of this year’s Age and Opportunity Bealtaine Festival decided to try something new. They spun tradition and gave members of the LGBTQ+ community a chance to celebrate prom the way they want to.

Age and Opportunity Arts Programme Manager and Artistic Director of the festival, Dr Tara Byrne, shared, “I think for us, one of the things we're always trying to do is to be as diverse a festival as possible in terms of the kind of events we put on and to think as widely as possible about people that we want to come to our events… Diversity is really important because age is something that people are lumped into in one big homogeneous group, so it's about breaking that up.”