Dialogue Project, the current exhibit in the Julian Scott Memorial Gallery, presented a lecture on February 13, 2008. The project’s intention is to bridge the generations of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Vermonters through a number of personal interviews between elders and youth of the community.

Tracy Penfield, founding director of the issue based organization SafeArt, guided the lecture with help from high school students Chelsea Palin, Galen Milchman, Zack Allard, Nathalie Trottier, and Kaleb Oldham. SafeArt performed a number of short dance, skit, slam poetry, and readings from the transcripts included in the exhibit. Their performance displayed the issues—‘coming out,’ a man trapped in a woman’s body, civil union, and safe sex—of the LGBTQ community.

The longest skit in the 20 minute performance was developed from an interview transcript of a LGBTQ community member’s coming out experience. The plot showed a mother cooking dinner for her daughter whom she just found out is a lesbian. The mother saw her daughter’s ‘lesbianism’ as a curable disease, a prevalent issue for those in the LGBTQ community.

The exhibit consists of visual artwork and interview transcript. One interview transcript with Emiry from Burlington who was born in 1980, said, “I was a pretty stereotypical little boy for somebody born in a female body…. I remember in first grade I wrote in my journal… ‘I’m changing my name to Alexander.’ …some of the kids were making fun of me in first grade and they said, ‘Oh, you want to be a boy! You want to be a boy!’ And I said—you know, something—it was like: What are they talking about: I want to be a boy? I was, like, that doesn’t make sense ‘cause I just felt like I was a boy.”

The Dialogue Project, an idea manifested by a number of organizations such as SafeArt and RU12?, is a tasteful blend of performance, visual artwork, and written word that opens communication within and beyond the LGBTQ community. Dialogue Project is on display until March 1, 2008, and will be archived at the Vermont Folk Life Center in Middlebury.