Q Plus

As a society, we are getting to the point where being queer is more accepted and normalized; however, there are still many places where it is not. It is still harder for queer youth, especially in the south, to access sexual education focused on their specific orientations. Q Plus is a project that promotes inclusive sex education for everyone in the LGBTQ+ community. The lack of education that queer people receive during their early lives pushes them to find information on their own, which can be from very inaccurate sources, or to not seek out information at all. Q Plus combats this dangerous situation by providing a public web platform that allows people in the queer community to find the answers to common questions about sex and relationships in a non-heteronormative setting.

 

To determine what questions to feature on the website, and to further ground our understanding of why the project is necessary, we conducted interviews with locals in Boone, North Carolina who identify as LGBTQ+ about their experience with sex education. We asked them how they searched for sexual education outside of school, what they wished that they knew more about, and what they wished that they had known earlier. In exhibition, we presented segments of the interviews, as they stand as a strong testament to why better sex education is needed and what projects like ours can do to address the problem. There was also a die cut brochure with defined terminology used in the video as well as a brief project explanation so that those who interacted with it could keep up with the progression of the website. We felt that the installation was a great way to start spreading the word about this project and connect to people in the community in Boone. The interviews also helped us figure out what kind of information we needed to gather for the website —since they were conducted before the creation of the website.