Daniel Witthaus

Before even receiving a tertiary qualification in psychology, Daniel Witthaus had commenced supporting young gay and lesbian people in regional Australia. Heading up the first local government-funded project of its kind in Australia, Daniel worked with hundreds of young people questioning their sexual identity and/or experiencing homophobic harassment and abuse in Geelong, Victoria.

Ignoring popular belief and a conservative approach to dealing with sexual diversity, Daniel fought to commence working in local secondary schools to challenge the homophobia of the student population. Such was his success in engaging educators that, much to the surprise of most, the pilot school for the popular challenging homophobia program, ‘Pride & Prejudice’, was an all-boys Catholic school. This is believed by leaders in education to be an Australian first, if not a world-first. Clearly some rules needed to be broken.

To read more about Daniel click here or watch the video on the left.

About ‘Your Story’

Collected during Daniel Witthaus’ Beyond ‘That’s So Gay’ 266-day challenging homophobia tour of regional, rural and remote Australia, the stories are brought to life by maestro cartoonist, Kenton Penley Miller, and award-winning filmmaker, Jonathan Duffy. Voice artist, Emma Gibbs, and production assistant, Christian Bürkle, rounded out the small yet committed team.

The hope is that this will inspire more LGBTI people from regional, rural and remote communities to share their stories online in either a visual, cartoon and/or animated way. The way the National Institute for Challenging Homophobia Education (NICHE) sees it, the more stories that are told of life for LGBTI people outside of metropolitan centres, the better. NICHE’s motto is ‘TALK, SHARE, CHANGE’.

Join the challenge

The challenge is set for LGBTI people and their allies to get working on their own stories. Create your own, work as a group or seek out an LGBTI story to profile in a visual, cartoon-ish or animated way.

The guidelines to be included in the NICHE YourStory Campaign?

1. Love to hear a story of an LGBTI person from regional, rural or remote Australian community (or with a connection to such a community).

2. The stories are usually best if they are a maximum of 3-5 minutes long.

3. For this campaign N.I.C.H.e would love to see people working together to make something with a highly visual, cartoon and/or animated format.

4. Love the stories to focus on LGBTI journeys and how LGBTI people have overcome challenges (suggested questions below).

5. There's no hurry (quality over haste) however N.I.C.H.E. are excited to hear from you when your stories are ready.

Daniel would love you to share them online: He’ll add the stories over the coming months to the collection so everyone can enjoy them (and share).

Contact the NICHE YourStory Campaign: niche@thatssogay.com.au

About N.I.C.H.E.

The National Institute for Challenging Homophobia Education (NICHE) supports lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) young people in rural and remote areas of Australia, to help prevent rural LGBTI youth suicide and make the lives of all young people in these areas safer.

NICHE aims to:

• Gather the best ideas, people and resources in challenging rural homophobia and supporting LGBTI young people; in doing so, NICHE can map what’s working, what’s not and identify gaps;
• Work with, and build upon, successful, effective projects and organisations in regional, rural and remote Australian communities;
• Partner with mainstream and philanthropic organisations to leverage their resources for regional, rural and remote Australia.

Cartoonist
Kenton Penley Miller

Filmmaker
Jonathan Duffy

Voice Artist
Emma Gibbs

Production Assistant
Christian Bürkle

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C31 / DIGITAL 44 @ 10.00pm