CREATING CHANGE 2026: Washington, D.C.
Creating Change carries a legacy of bringing together LGBTQIA+ leadership from all over the nation to one city- to teach, learn and experience each other for the last 38 years. Stepping into a space that holds 2-3000 people who have embraced their Queerness and often made it an extension or the centerpiece of their work isn’t an experience that is easy to adequately verbalize. Breaking the 4th wall a bit to speak in 1st person as an individual who has shared that space, opposed to just a journalist that is reporting on it, feels important. Creating Change and the hotel it lives inside of each year feels like a living, breathing thing. After so many days together, you almost feel like you live there. Each day full of activities from sunrise to nearly sunrise again makes every day feel like three. All of those people that climb out of your email, DMs, and zoom calls- to standing in front of you, arms outstretched to embrace you is more beautiful and overwhelming than I know how to put words to. Creating Change feels more like a city than a conference. It is an ecosystem that only includes community and that is both refreshing and staggering. There are co-workers, friends, enemies and exes. There are lovers, strangers, former business associates, allies, accomplices, entities with competing goals, shared dreams and shared fears. There are endless possibilities and endless work to be done. There is a space to teach and endless things to learn.
I’ve always marveled at how Creating Change seems to seamlessly integrate the larger city that surrounds the conference. As a lover of culture, the historical context of San Francisco, the vibrancy of Vegas and the joie de vivre of New Orleans made stepping out into the city and experiencing the Queerness it shares, an integral part of the experience. The local folks on the ground, doing the work, participate in the week and invite us into their worlds making the journey just that more rich as we step outside of the walls of the hotel and into the pockets Queerness inhabits in those cities. The Taskforce encourages you to not just live in the bubble of the conference and sit in meeting rooms, but dance and laugh through the after-hours events that they produce as well as reach out into the night life and take in the city. My team and I hit a karaoke spot, and a popular gay bar and danced until the overflowing crowd spilled into the cold night trying to find their rides. We toasted to being together in one spot to break bread and having survived the craziness the world is currently offering. DC is and will always be a vibe. DC Black Pride is my favorite pride and DC one of my favorite cities. This year felt different though. Walking through the spots and shops along 18th was the first time we encountered a line of National Guard troops in formation. I grabbed Victoria and we walked to a bus stop in case they inquired why we were standing there. The second and third time, it was walking from Thurst Lounge to Nellies. They didn’t bother us and the night continued but outside began to feel like enemy territory. As many marches and protests, actions and police encounters I had been involved in in my work and just being Black in America, I had never seen soldiers walking down a city street. We had come from red states and blue states but not states that were yet under occupation.
Inside the safety of the Creating Change ecosystem against a landscape of the impending massive winter storm Fern, attendees listened to powerful addresses from Executive Director, Kierra Johnson and Senior Strategist & Creating Change Director, Fernando Lopez. Their tone was serious but resolute. They warned of missteps when aligning with the powerful instead of standing with the people for a prize of proximity. They lamented the complacency that can come with wins and the way those losses can invigorate the opposition. The message unilaterally was connection. We all- activists, clinicians, advocates, experts, media, seekers, creators and healers have been flying our flags, fighting the fight and holding on uneven ground from our corners of the country. It all mattered, it all moved the needle, it all created change. So the beauty, the overwhelm and the magic of the space were in relationships. The ones forged in fire, blowing tattered in the wind, discovered amongst the ashes and solidified in joy. The people you meet, fellowship and build with are what make Creating Change more than a conference, it is life sustaining.
Blaque/OUT’s Creating Change team hosted a session amongst incredible institutes and classes that featured collectives of nearly every culture and identity one could name. In ours, we shared ways organizations could engage media as well as the Blaque/OUT Magazine origin story and the complex journeys that brought myself, Tee Douglas, Roni and EL Winston to become a part of the Blaque/OUT Magazine family. It was standing room only and endless participants came up to thank us for the tips and gush about how much they had learned. Later in the week I had the honor of sitting on a panel moderated by Communications Director, Cathy Renna and featuring renowned LGBTQ journalists to delve deeper into the Public Relations and narrative crafting that comes with this work. Relationships. People teaching and helping one another to the next level, creating change.
By the time the Agents of Change Ball and Kaberet had come around, the crowd had thinned as many made an early departure to beat the highly anticipated storm. Those that remained settled deep into just finding joy in the madness as our community, both Black and Queer have become experts in doing through generations. Icons of Ballroom judged, hosted and coached both the novice and legends through one of Black Queer Culture’s most precious traditions. And who doesn’t love a glittery trophy? The beautiful Dominique Jackson of Pose fame made both the ball and Kierra’s Kaberet a ki as a myriad of performances and DJ Honey lit up the last official night of the conference for the folks who weren’t stranded on travel delays.
I typically attend Creating Change alone. Last year, I hit the very beginning of the mishaps of airline mismanagement which came from mass layoffs, new softer FAA regulations and less competent management of the industry and ended up being forced to turn around mid-flight and miss the conference entirely. I came to be grateful as the year lumbered on, that I was only hit with inconvenient delays instead of another aircraft. My team held it down without me and Blaque/OUT still had the opportunity to cover the event and give you, our readers, a taste of the experience of Creating Change Vegas. Thinking back now, it was the last thing before the Executive Orders started dropping, before it got to the worse we knew was coming but somehow worse than we could have ever truly imagined. There were reports that Trump made his way to Vegas while the Conference was there last year. This year the conference came to him. All of these points to say, the city felt like less of a playground than a backdrop and the Conference felt like less of an institute of higher learning and more of a family reunion. I needed to meet the people I met and see the people that I saw, even the ones that I didn’t like, because it felt somehow safer than the world does right now. Before when you taught classes it felt like information to collect. This year it felt more like desperation to know what secrets the most marginalized had found to survive in a country we have always felt disenfranchised from.
The Blaque/OUT Team conducted some incredible interviews before and during the conference that we are incredibly excited to share with you. Throughout February you’ll see conversations with organizations, icons and change-makers that Tee Douglas, EL and Roni Winston sat down with. Watch and allow them to pour into you the way they did us throughout the week.
The highlights for me personally, beyond just being present in the space, were spending hours in the lobby chopping it up with fashionista, legend, and media mogul, Diamond Collier. Victoria Von Blaque and I spent late nights and early mornings sharing laughs, drinks, trading stories and just absorbing the magic that is her. She is beautiful, brilliant and an absolute ki. It was an honor to share space with her and now call her a friend outside of emails and zoom meetings.
Meeting with Jay Gilliam and Gina Rupert from the Mayor’s Office and learning about the archival and culture based projects their office is leading was inspiring. We meet so many people and to see the work intersect and forge on in these challenging times is so necessary, so important.
Sitting down with Chasity Bowick of the Marsha P. Johnson Institute and learning about her journey and her work. Finding ways to support the Institute and invest in her vision. Connecting Blaque/OUT to make sure that we don’t miss any of their projects and pulling the org into the fold of our Blaque/OUT family is crucial to our separate and shared success. Those connections create change.
Watching the live recording of the Leadership Lounge Podcast hosted by Dr. Shanesia Davis. The opportunity to witness an elite collection of Black power-lesbians discuss presentation, representation and existing beyond the stereotypes through knowing nods of recognition and laughter.
Sharing space with the living legend, Andrea Jenkins. She interviewed with my team, chatted about the magazine and told us her story. Creating Change is where I’ve met and developed relationships with Miss Major, Ms Jenkins and so many other greats and my life has been forever changed. As with all big machines there are hiccups, folks are disappointed, things go undone. There is no accounting for weather, delays, or no-shows. “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” as they say. But I’ve never experienced anything in my community that is as important, that works towards being as accessible, that covers as much ground or brings so many people together as Creating Change.
Next year, the conference is off to Louisville, Kentucky, January 27–31, 2027. Home of the legendary Ms. Sweets and the Strange Fruit Podcast. 2027 feels like a hundred years away and will feel like a day by the time it is upon us. Who knows what life will look like when we meet again. We hope to meet you all in the Bluegrass state for good conversation over a glass of bourbon. Maybe there will be a cute function and fabulous Derby hat in my future.
“We leave with these truths.
The future is not just digital. The future is relational.
The future is together. The future is in person.”-Fernando Z. López
Read the February issue of Blaque/OUT Magazine for reflections from the full Blaque/OUT team and more photos by Teddie Faerie of BLAQ5683 LLC, Neha Balachandran, Cariha Mask, Jeevan Portraits and Tamara Leigh
