10 years of Rainbow Direction!
Exactly 10 years ago a girl named Danny printed out this rainbow poster and took it to the first concert of One Direction's Where We Are tour:
Anniversaries are always a bit arbitrary, and Rainbow Direction's was always a hard one to pin down.
This blog is just a day or two short of celebrating 11 years and without it Rainbow Direction would have never existed, because the people who were at the start of it would never have met, but its purpose and setup were entirely different and RD was still far from being developed.
The suggestions that eventually took form in "Project Rainbow Direction" were first submitted to the blog in late 2013. The first brainstorm between Kat, Li and Ellis about it, and further strategy talks with Ed and Molly took place in the early months of 2014. The project was announced in February. Haven and Red submitted their winning poster designs in March. Amy developed a logo and opened a merch store for us in early April.
While we've often referred to that midnight brainstorm on a cold January day as the origin of rainbow direction, that was only its conception. We don't even have a record of which date it was. We could also have chosen any of the more pin-downable dates: announcing the project, announcing the poster contest winners, opening the store. But really, all that Rainbow Direction was at those moments, was an idea, a plan, the hope that we had that it was within our, the fandom's power, to change something for the better for the LGBTQIA+ fans in it.
For months all of us, and especially Li, had worked tirelessly to encourage people to sign up and commit to bringing a rainbow poster to a show.
And then the big moment was there. First day of tour. The moment of truth. Would the people we'd encouraged actually have the courage to take a rainbow to a show, and stick it up in the air? Would it matter to people? Would it actually change something?
10 years on, we know that it did. So much more than we could ever have imagined.
But that was was anything but self-evident at the time. We had no idea. We nervously monitored the wwa tag and the blogs of those who had signed up, and then, after a few days, finally this report appeared. Danny from Bogota shared the first Rainbow Direction fan report.
I think if you'd ask any of us who were here at the time, they'd remember fondly how knowing that someone had actually done it, something happened in the real world, and if one person had done it, more would, how that sparked a fire in our hearts. A ball of warm feelings, not quite the same feeling as before. Before, there had been buzz and excitement and drive, but this, this felt different. Hope. A sense of the personal strength, and collective power, that could come from this if we could make it grow. It took a lot of hard work from a lot of people who committed themselves tirelessly to the campaign, but grow it did.
Thanks to Danny. Thanks to all of you who at some point or other, crafted something rainbow at home, took a rainbow to a show, put a rainbow on your blog, showed that you believed in your own power to change something, and showed the LGBTQI+ people in the fandom that they mattered, and that you cared.
It has been quite the roller coaster ride. As the coordinating group, we've had many ups and downs, and by now, for most of us, our attention has been drawn away from the fandom by our real lives and new pursuits. But regularly, when one of us checks in and sees the rainbows at one of the boys' shows, we share, revel, and sit amazed at how this thing, that once took so much effort on our part to get one, two, three people per show signed up, has grown into a regular staple, with people spontaneously taking it upon themselves to organize for entire venues to light up in a coordinated rainbow pattern, to design new posters and rainbow outfits, or to hand out hundreds of mini rainbow flags in the audience. This community has taken it up as its collective responsibility - let's get those rainbows out. How beautiful is that?! You are all so so amazing.
Thank you, you beautiful people, for becoming a part of this, for making it your own, for making it better, for carrying it forward, into the future.
So long!
