'On 13 March 2021, I attended The West Ball II held at Casula Powerhouse, an arts and performance venue in Liverpool, New South Wales. Liverpool was the city I grew up in and where I was appointed to for my first teaching job. I attended school there, hung out at the Westfield shopping mall and lined up for hours for donuts at Krispy Kreme when it first opened. I spent what feels like most of my undergraduate degree at The University of Sydney explaining where Liverpool was and why I couldn't just get a taxi home after a night out in the city. In a promotional piece for the ball, one of the hosts, Xander Silky, sets up the ball as 'reclaiming' safe space in Western Sydney for queer people, as ‘no one’s ever thrown queer parties in Western Sydney', and people from the area are forced ‘to travel into the inner West or the city to find safe spaces'. In identifying the ball as an opportunity to reclaim space, Xander is calling out to people from Western Sydney to take up space in their local community and to claim it as safe space for their queer community.'(Publication abstract)
