Perth’s first openly queer martial arts school could be taking part in WA’s biggest pride festival after a successful crowdfunding campaign.
Open Path Martial Arts will soon find out if it will march in PrideFEST’s 2024 pride parade after the Leederville-based karate club raised more than $1500 through GoFundMe.
Founder and instructor Beatrix Samuelsson opened the school last August “out of necessity” to create a safe space for queer people to train and learn karate.
“It’s an unfortunate reality that martial arts is a very masculine industry,” she told PerthNow.
“It’s a very cis and heteronormative environment to be in, and there’s nothing explicitly wrong with that, but myself and a few of my students have found ourselves in situations where we just haven’t been able to stick around with our own schools because it just didn’t feel like we were being accepted.
“It’s heart-breaking to hear that, so while society hasn’t made the massive changes that I would love to see, I am in some instances the only option.”
Almost a year later, Open Path Martial Arts has more than a dozen students.
In February, Ms Samuelsson travelled to Sydney to represent the school in the Mardi Gras Martial Arts Championships.
“(In Sydney) I met some lovely school learners all around Australia doing the same stuff that I do because there was no one near them doing it,” she said.
“I just want to build a community and friendships are a brilliant way to get people to come back (to train at Open Path Martial Arts) … if their friends are training, they want to stick around.”
Earlier this month, Ms Samuelsson started a GoFundMe in an attempt to crowdsource $1100 so she and the club could attend PrideFEST’s pride march and Fairday in November.
According to PrideWA, community and sporting groups are expected to pay at least $175 and $300 to march in the parade and be a Fairday stallholder respectively.
The GoFundMe reached its target in just 24 hours.
“I had a couple of students express to me that they would love for us to get involved in the Fairday and march in the parade … so I thought ‘all right, let’s see if we can actually make this happen’,” Ms Samuelsson said.
“We started in August last year so we’re not exactly massive and we’re not making massive amounts of money … but I started the GoFundMe and we met the goal in just under 24 hours, I was not expecting that.”
“The community has just come out in droves … and what has been incredible is that there were people that don’t even know me personally that were like ‘yes, that is something I would love to support’.
“It really, really warmed my heart.”
The club will hear back from Pride WA in September if it has made the cut.
Any money that isn’t used at PrideFEST will be put towards future projects such as seminars and interstate visits to its sister school in Sydney.
“I’ve been lucky enough to find a community around me who’s willing to help me do what I love and that’s teach karate,” Ms Samuelsson said.
“To attend the Fairday with these incredible students would mean more to me than I could possibly say.
“All I can say is thank you; that money that we raised will not be going to waste.”
