Voices of Solidarity Podcast

About Voices of Solidarity Podcast

Voices of Solidarity is a worldwide collaborative, interactive arts & advocacy project weaving together a tapestry of stories of LGBTQIA+ resilience through the arts. An Official Event of WorldPride 2025. ourpride.substack.com (https://ourpride.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

LGBTQIA+ Artists & Activists

Category

arts · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

4 Mar 2025

Latest episode

6 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

20 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Oct 2026

   Telling Indonesia’s Queer Stories to the World

   What happens when we begin listening to stories that have rarely been heard? For filmmaker Alfred Pek, that question became the starting point for The Emerald Archipelago (https://emeraldarchfilm.com), a documentary project exploring LGBTQIA+ lives and experiences across Indonesia. Alfred, who was born in Indonesia and now lives in Australia, describes himself as someone who is passionate about storytelling. His work is rooted in documentary filmmaking and in the belief that stories can communicate across borders, cultures, and experiences. For him, filmmaking is more than simply recording what happens in front of a camera. It is a way of communicating when words alone may not be enough. It’s a way of bringing people and experiences into impactful conversations. Indonesia is more than one story The idea for The Emerald Archipelago (https://emeraldarchfilm.com) grew from Alfred’s own connection to Indonesia and from his growing awareness of the complexity of LGBTQIA+ experiences there. After WorldPride 2023, his interest deepened through encounters with people and ideas that challenged the assumptions he had carried with him. He also found inspiration in the work of Indonesian scholar and activist Saskia Wieringa. Indonesia is such an enormous and extraordinarily diverse country, greater than most of the world is aware. And Indonesian LGBTQIA+ communities can’t be reduced to a single experience or a single narrative. That diversity is really central to Alfred’s approach to his new documentary. Rather than having a predetermined story, he wanted to listen. Looking beyond the colonial story One of the themes emerging from the filmmaking project is Indonesia’s history before colonialism, and asking what might have been lost, changed, or reinterpreted along the way. Alfred’s exploratory conversations delved into precolonial practices and histories, particularly around gender and identity. They challenge the widely held belief that LGBTQIA+ identities are somehow foreign to Indonesian culture. The documentary also explores the ways religion and spirituality intersect with acceptance, rather than only as sources of rejection. These are complex stories covering history, culture, identity, faith, and the many diverse communities. The power of listening Alfred traveled through Indonesia and spent time listening to overlooked stories. In November 2025, he spent 35 days in Indonesia as part of the project. What emerged was both a collection of interviews and process of building trust. People shared stories about their lives, communities, and experiences of being queer in different parts of Indonesia. He discovered that those experiences could be remarkably different depending on where someone lived and their surrounding communities. That diversity is one of the film’s greatest strengths, as there is no single Indonesian queer story. A tapestry rather than a single story Alfred describes the project through several interconnected themes. One is the experience of women and gendered identity, while another is the histories that existed before colonial influence. A third explores religion and the possible acceptance within religious communities. Woven together into an expansive storyline, these threads create something much larger than a traditional documentary about identity. The film is a portrait of a country and people negotiating identity, history, culture, and belonging. The result is like a tapestry within which every person contributes another thread. From Indonesia to the world Alfred hopes The Emerald Archipelago (https://emeraldarchfilm.com) can encourage civic engagement, demonstrate the universality of human rights, and create stronger connections between Indonesia’s LGBTQIA+ communities and the wider global LGBTQIA+ community. The documentary is becoming part of a much larger conversation through which someone thousands of miles away can recognize an experience, question an assumption, or simply understand that they are not alone. The film is still in production The Emerald Archipelago (https://emeraldarchfilm.com) is still a work in progress. Following the filming, Alfred and his team have been working on post-production while continuing to raise support for the project while developing the film’s website, social media presence, and opportunities for festivals and distribution. So, the story is still unfolding, as the documentary is built around listening which doesn’t really end when the cameras stop, as the conversations continue. Use the privilege you have Near the end of his conversation with Voices of Solidarity podcast host Alex Storer, Alfred reflects on something that reaches beyond filmmaking. Those of us who have privilege, he suggests, have an opportunity to use it to help others, not by having all the answers, but by listening and opening a door. Sometimes it means using whatever platform, resources, connections, or opportunities we have to make room for someone’s voice. Alfred returns to the idea of a tapestry: individual threads coming together to create something stronger and more beautiful than any one thread could create alone. 🎧 Watch and listen to the full conversation In this episode of Voices of Solidarity, host Alex Storer talks with filmmaker Alfred Pek about The Emerald Archipelago, his journey as a filmmaker, the people he met across Indonesia, and his hopes for bringing these stories to audiences around the world. The film is still being made. The conversation is already underway. Visit: https://emeraldarchfilm.com (https://emeraldarchfilm.com) Get full access to Voices of Solidarity at ourpride.substack.com/subscribe (https://ourpride.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   2 Sept 2026

   LØU - Finding the Space In Between

   Some stories begin with a declaration. Others begin with a question. For Marie-Lou Sauter, who creates and performs as LØU, the questions began early. Growing up in a religious environment in Germany, Marie-Lou found herself wrestling with questions about right and wrong, belonging, identity, and what it meant to be different. Music became the place where she could ask questions she wasn’t always able to ask elsewhere. What began as a private creative practice eventually became something much larger: a life in music, activism, community-building and artistic experimentation. Today, Marie-Lou works across music and performance, exploring identity, emotion and the spaces between categories. Her multidisciplinary work includes music, theater, movement and visual elements. At Utrecht’s HKU, she developed The Last Meal, a multidisciplinary musical-theater work examining hope, grief, ambition and what happens when artists feel forced to abandon their dreams before they have had a chance to be seen. In this episode of Voices of Solidarity, Alex Storer speaks with Marie-Lou about her journey through music and activism, the feminist electronic music collective Xena, the power of vulnerability, her connection with Shishani, and the importance of embracing what exists “in between.” Music as a place to ask questions Marie-Lou’s relationship with music began when she was a child. Growing up, she played music in church. But the experience also introduced her to profound questions about morality, identity and belonging. As she grew older, music became a place where she could explore those questions. She describes her music almost as a diary—a way of revealing things about herself that she can’t necessarily express in everyday life. Music became a way to ask the questions I wasn’t allowed to ask. For Marie-Lou, vulnerability is not something to hide. It is part of the creative process. And ultimately, it can become a form of resistance. From music to activism Marie-Lou’s activism grew naturally out of her experience as a woman making electronic music in an overwhelmingly male-dominated environment. At 17, she joined with four other women involved in music to create Zena, a feminist electronic music collective. Their goal was not simply to create another event series. They wanted to create spaces where artists who were routinely overlooked could find one another, perform, experiment and build community. Zena organized events, parties and festivals and created a magazine and podcast series showcasing artists and their work. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the collective moved much of its activity online. The project grew to the point where clubs began approaching Zena asking them to create inclusive bookings. But Marie-Lou saw a problem with that. The goal wasn’t to become the people who did inclusion for everyone else. The goal was to change the mindset. “We want to change the core of how we approach things.” Real inclusion isn’t simply about finding someone who looks different and putting them on a stage. It’s about changing who gets invited into the room in the first place. The challenge of sustaining solidarity Marie-Lou also speaks honestly about something that anyone involved in grassroots activism will recognize: How do you keep going? Zena has been largely volunteer-driven, and Marie-Lou talks about the difficulty of maintaining consistency and endurance while also trying to make a living. It’s a familiar tension. People want to create change, but they also have to pay rent, build careers, maintain relationships and take care of themselves. Solidarity isn’t powered by an unlimited supply of energy. Sometimes it requires knowing when to slow down, when to make space for others, and when to return with renewed energy. Art that refuses to stay in one category That same refusal to stay inside a single category appears throughout Marie-Lou’s artistic work. As LØU, she describes herself as a genre-fluid producer and music-performance artist, combining elements of indie, electronic music and R&B with theater, movement and visual elements. Her work deliberately plays with the boundary between performer and audience. Her 2024 HKU project The Last Meal brought music, script, acting, movement and visual design together in a multidisciplinary performance. This isn’t separate from the philosophy she describes in the interview. It is the philosophy. The form itself becomes an exploration of what happens when we stop insisting that things must fit neatly into one category. Finding the space in between Perhaps the central idea of this conversation is the space in between. Marie-Lou’s artistic identity is deeply connected to this idea. We often organize the world into binaries: A or B. Left or right. Male or female. Pain or joy. But human experience doesn’t always work that way. Marie-Lou asks what happens when we allow several things to exist at the same time. “How can things coexist?” For her, queerness offers one way of understanding that complexity. There can be ambiguity, contradiction, uncertainty, grey zones, asnd there can be beauty in them. Her artistic work embraces that movement. A performance can take us from sadness to laughter, from softness to intensity, sometimes within minutes. We don’t have to choose one emotion and reject the others. We can experience them all. The work begins with ourselves One of the most powerful moments in the interview comes when Alex asks Marie-Lou what advice she would give someone who doesn’t have a creative outlet. Her answer is surprisingly simple: Start with yourself. Look at what you reject within yourself. What do you dislike? What do you hide? What don’t you want other people to see? And why? Marie-Lou suggests that the judgments we hold toward ourselves can become the same judgments we project onto other people. If we begin to develop compassion for those parts of ourselves, our relationship with the world can change as well. The result isn’t necessarily a simpler life. In fact, Marie-Lou suggests that life becomes more complex. But perhaps complexity is not something we should fear. Perhaps it is something we need to learn to hold. One thread leads to another Marie-Lou’s story also connects directly to another thread in Voices of Solidarity: Amsterdam-based Namibian-Belgian artist Shishani (http://shishani.nl). The two met at a music conference and quickly discovered a shared commitment to creating greater inclusion in music. Their connection soon became action. When queer rights in Namibia came under threat, Marie-Lou and Shishani helped organize a fundraising event in a matter of weeks, bringing artists together to support people doing the work on the ground. It was an example of solidarity becoming something tangible. Not just an idea or a statement, but action. That connection also opened the door to other creative collaborations. Marie-Lou has worked with Sites of Memory, an Amsterdam-based artistic initiative that brings erased and underrepresented histories of slavery and colonialism into public conversation through creative work. Her work with the organization has included marketing and communications for its productions. One connection led to another. One act of solidarity opened another door. And another thread entered the tapestry. ❤️ And sometimes solidarity changes our own lives There is another beautiful moment in Marie-Lou’s story. She describes having spent years feeling lonely, angry and frustrated. Then, through the connections created by this work, something unexpected happened. She met her partner. The work she was doing to create connection for other people ultimately created a new connection in her own life. It’s a reminder that solidarity isn’t always a one-way transaction. We give something. We show up. We create something together. And sometimes, in ways we couldn’t have planned, we find something we needed ourselves. A thread in the tapestry Perhaps that’s what makes Marie-Lou’s story such a powerful addition to Voices of Solidarity. Her message isn’t that we should move neatly from pain to happiness. Or from fear to certainty. Or from one identity to another. It’s that we can make room for complexity. We can hold grief and joy, vlnerability and strength, questions and conviction, difference and connection. We can live in the spaces between. And sometimes, the work of changing the world begins by looking honestly at ourselves. It begins with a question and becomes a song. The song becomes a connection. The connection becomes solidarity. And another thread enters the tapestry. 🎙️ Listen to Marie-Lou Voices of Solidarity is a podcast from OUR PRIDE exploring the people, stories, creativity and acts of courage that connect our global LGBTQIA+ community. Listen to Alex Storer’s full conversation with Marie-Lou above. Then explore more of her work as LØU and follow the journey of an artist who is refusing to choose between the categories the world has given her. https://www.instagram.com/lou.do.lou/ (https://www.instagram.com/lou.do.lou/) Keep weaving. If Marie-Lou’s story speaks to you, share this episode with someone who might need to hear it. And if you have a story, a voice, an image or a piece of art that belongs in this tapestry, we want to hear it. The tapestry is never finished. And neither is the work. One voice. One story. One thread at a time. Get full access to Voices of Solidarity at ourpride.substack.com/subscribe (https://ourpride.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   10 Jun 2026

   The Power of Softness: Shishani on Art, Identity, and Connection

   In the inaugural re-launch episode of Voices of Solidarity, host Alex Storer in London welcomes Shishani, Namibian-born singer, songwriter, producer, and activist from her home in Amsterdam. Together they explore identity, belonging, creativity, and the power of art to build connection across differences. Shishani reflects on growing up between cultures, using music as a form of healing and activism, and why softness may be one of the most powerful forces for change in a divided world. Topics include:• Art as activism• LGBTQIA+ community and solidarity• Identity and belonging• Colonial history and social justice• Building connection across differences Voices of Solidarity is a podcast celebrating the stories, ideas, and experiences that strengthen LGBTQIA+ communities and human rights movements around the world. Because every story is a thread. And together, we weave the tapestry. Learn more at OurPride.org (http://ourpride.org). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ourpride.substack.com (https://ourpride.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Who has been a guest on Voices of Solidarity Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Hans Senfuma
• Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr
• Omary Baajun
• Brother Zaheed
• Felipe Zurita Quintana

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 8 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

4

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32

Contact Voices of Solidarity Podcast

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.