Q12

So I did an interview with the youth media producer of the Q12 Tour which is supported by Rainbow Youth and PrideNZ.com and here was the result...

What is the Q12 Tour exactly?

Q12 the tour is a tour about sexuality and gender identity it is a series of audio interviews that was collected around the north island involving the lgbt youth.

What do you do as the youth media producer?

I practically did everything apart from publishing it online, pridenz.com did that, I arranged for travel accommodation budget and lined up interviews, visited lgbt youth groups and did the interviewing.

It seems quite widespread? How did that happen?

Well it was originally only an Auckland project then I proposed that I took it on tour around the north island of New Zealand.

Are there plans of taking this into schools and stuff? if allowed? maybe you could try something like that?

I wasn't able to get the funding for the south island nor did pridenz.com, we're interested to publish another tour. This year i have done 3 lectures on what happened on my tour one lecture at AUT university, one in Rotorua and one in Wellington.

So is Q12 active at the moment?

Q12 the tour is officially finished and wont be coming back however the resources are published and is on pridenz.com and free to anyone to listen.

So in conclusion what was the result of the tour?

In the end I managed to get over 70 interviews including a labor MP Maryan street which is somewhere else in the pridenz.com website. However it was very exciting anyway the results was that everyone has a different story and that they were so happy that they got to get heard, however homophobia is still a big issue in this country for example there were abusive stories about people still being beaten up for there sexuality. Another thing I would like to add is that there needs to be more support available especially for the transgender community because there isn't allot and not a lot of funding for there surgeries, and for the lgbt community as a whole the support that is offered already isn't doing a very good job. For example people from Napier or New Plymouth have called and emailed rainbow youth multiple times and gotten no reply. The three main cities the contributed to the Q12 tour are Auckland with over 20 interviews and Palmerston north with over 15 interviews and Wanganui with over 10 interviews.

Thank you for your time,

Anytime

To know more about Q12 and Benjamin Watt check out the link's below:

http://www.pridenz.com/q12.html
http://www.pridenz.com/rainbow_politicians_maryan_street.html
http://www.pridenz.com/q12_benji_watt.html