Exhibition News December 2022 | Page 25

DIVERSITY

RuPaul opening the 2020 event

Queen up

The world ’ s biggest celebration of drag and queer culture , RuPaul ’ s DragCon , will sashay down to ExCeL for the very first time in January . Co-founders of organisers World Of Wonder Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey told Emily Wallin how their exhibition brings an ‘ incredibly diverse show with an incredibly diverse audience ’ to life

RuPaul DragCon UK was first held at Olympia in 2020 and is returning to ExCeL 6-8 January . What can visitors expect from the 2023 show ? Fenton Bailey : It is amazing that after a couple of years hiatus due to the pandemic , we ’ re able to get back together again .

We ’ ve got RuPaul herself flying in oversee the entire event and they ’ ll be spinning some of their favourite tracks
from the main stage .
It ’ s also going to be the largest gathering of drag queens from the RuPaul ’ s Drag Race franchise in herstory . Randy Barbato : There are going to be over 150 drag queens from all over the world attending .
There ’ s also a couple of differences between this iteration and the previous event . It will be bigger -
“ Diversity is the corner stone of the Drag Race show . The convention just amplifies that . It ’ s a melting pot of all different types of people ”
there will be a much bigger main stage with more performances ; the event will be across three days rather than two ; and , because the RuPaul ’ s Drag Race television show has expanded into numerous territories across the world since 2020 , there will be drag queens in attendance from at least 10 of the countries we have shows in .
It ’ s going to be an
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