Surprising as it seems, Ireland has never had a gay music festival. Next month it gets its first one, organised by two friends who set out to fill the niche

BANANARAMA. Samantha Fox. Right Said Fred. At first glance the line-up for Milk, the cheeky newcomer on the music-festival circuit, sounds like a fromage-tinted tribute to all things 1980s. Throw in three cocktail bars, a rainbow tunnel and a yellow brick road winding through the stunning grounds of Ballinlough Castle, in Co Westmeath, and it becomes clear that, Toto, we are not in run-of-the-mill festival land any more.

According to the two women behind the event, Milk – named after the US campaigner and politician Harvey Milk – is the first music festival in Ireland to target the gay market. Really? The first? “I know, it’s surprising but it’s true,” says Emma Jane Dunne, a 27-year-old Dubliner who was a mortgage broker in “the good times” but for the past two years has worked with her friend Valerie Reaney on organising the event, which takes place on August 14th.

“Most people we’ve approached about the festival say that they are really surprised something like this hasn’t been done before. When we first started doing our research we realised that a commercial music festival targeting the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender audience didn’t actually exist. There are plenty of festivals with gay elements but nothing like this solely targeting the gay market, so it seemed like a fantastic opportunity to create something new.”

People might wonder why gay people need their own music festival. It’s a question that’s often posed about the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival. Don’t music and art transcend sexuality? The pair say that, from their research in Ireland, Britain and mainland Europe, the community felt there wasn’t enough of a variety of festival events that aimed at them.

“That’s not to say gay people aren’t included and welcomed at other festivals, but there was a demand for something new and different for the gay community, a festival that targets gays but is also open to the straight community instead of the other way around,” she says.

This inclusivity is important to both of them. “Although it is a gay and lesbian festival it is open to all our straight friends and to anyone who enjoys the kind of Mardi Gras feel-good atmosphere that the gay community creates no matter where we go.”

The women, who have been friends for 15 years, recount mostly positive experiences of growing up gay in Ireland. Dunne, a “rebel teenager” in Finglas in Dublin, came out at 16 to general acceptance from her family and friends. “I was in Dublin Youth Theatre as a teenager, and that was where I would have seen openly gay people for the first time, so that openness really helped me to be open in my own life.”

Reaney who is also from Finglas, and got to know Dunne through playing netball, took a little longer to tell family and friends. “It wasn’t until I left school and travelled a bit that I felt confident enough to tell people. I was worried that people wouldn’t accept me for who I was. But my family and friends were 100 per cent behind me. Coming out was an amazing experience, so liberating and such a relief to be myself. It was the start of my creative side blossoming. It was as though I’d been keeping aspects of myself hidden along with my sexuality,” she says.

Financing the festival was their first challenge. Their business partners are Donal and Siobhán O’Malley, an entrepreneurial husband-and-wife team who came on board, says Dunne, because of their passion for the concept and their belief that Milk was a solid business opportunity.

Reaney, a former visual merchandiser, is the artistic director of the festival, responsible, among other things, for all the “Alice in Wonderland meets Wizard of Oz” visuals that will transform the grounds of Ballinlough Castle. Giant teacups. Tree cosies. Huge candy canes.

Dunne, who is Milk’s business development director, spent months on the phone to entertainment agents to secure the acts, who also include Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Alexandra Burke, Seb Fontaine and Róisín Murphy. An alternative tent features the comedian Katherine Lynch, and in a chill-out zone called the Blue Lagoon a band will play soothing reggae. The whole thing will be MC’d by the queen of Irish drag queens, Panti. Revellers can camp overnight, but several local hotels and BBs have festival accommodation packages.

It may be a one-day event now, but the friends have ambitions to expand it to a two-day festival that, if all goes to plan, says Dunne, will become “the number-one event on the European gay calendar”. As the unofficial festival slogan goes, why not milk it?

See milk2010.ie