Welcoming Wednesday – Around the hot pot: creating a neighbourhood of care

For Feifei Liao, founder of Our Point 3, a hot pot is more than a meal.

Growing up in Sichuan, a province celebrated for its spicy food and lively mahjong tables, Feifei came to understand the hot pot as a symbol of reunion. People gather around a shared centre, each bringing something different to the table. They eat, talk, pause and spend time together.

This sense of shared warmth inspired the theme of this year’s Your Queer Neighbours Festival: Our Neighbourhood of Care – Hot Pot.

It was not about creating a literal hot pot. Instead, Feifei brought her own cultural memories into conversation with the feelings of displacement, rootlessness and uncertain belonging experienced by many international students, migrants and queer people living in Melbourne.

At its heart, the festival asked a simple but important question: what might it feel like to find a neighbourhood of care when you are far from home?

Making visible a community too often overlooked

Our Point 3 is led by and for LGBTQIA+ international students, alumni and allies. Its work responds to the complex intersections of culture, sexuality, gender, migration and belonging.

“We already have many activities that reflect the living conditions of other communities,” Feifei said. “But many international students remain invisible.”

For some participants, the festival was not simply a place to celebrate an identity they had already claimed. It was also a place to encounter new language for understanding themselves.

Feifei recalled people reaching out to say they had not previously understood what “queer” meant. Through participating in Our Point 3’s activities and meeting others with similar experiences, some began to recognise that the word might also describe part of their own identity.

This process of discovery does not always happen loudly or immediately. Sometimes it begins through a conversation, a creative activity or the quiet recognition that someone else has lived through something similar.

The festival created room for those moments without demanding that anyone arrive with a label, an explanation or a finished understanding of themselves.

From workshops to a festival

The idea for Your Queer Neighbours Festival was first raised by Our Point 3 Community Development Officer Qiran Wang, who is now based offshore following the expiry of her visa.

The team had seen how Our Point 3’s workshops brought people together. Participants were not only attending an activity; they were finding connection and wanting the space to continue. The team began imagining how that feeling could be sustained for longer, and the idea of a community festival came to life.

Last year’s festival welcomed around 80 participants and brought together artists, collaborators and community members. It was a success, but it also put enormous pressure on the small team behind it.

“We did everything on our own,” Feifei said.

That experience shaped the way the team approached this year’s festival. Care could not only be something offered to participants; it also had to extend to the volunteers and community members making the event possible.

“We are now very aware of the wellbeing of our volunteers’ wellbeing, for this year and the next,” Feifei said.

A festival made through trust

This year, collaboration transformed what was possible.

Elle Pham, Coordinator of The Couch International Student Centre, supported the festival with a team of 11 volunteers. Sasja, Community Development Coordinator at Trans Sisters United, helped connect Our Point 3 with performers and communities, becoming a trusted bridge between the festival and the broader sector.

Alongside the work of artists, mental health organisations, multicultural groups and LGBTQIA+ organisations, these partnerships distributed the practical and emotional labour of bringing the festival to life.

For Feifei, this external and internal trust was one of the festival’s proudest achievements. The event demonstrated what can happen when organisations do more than lend their names to an initiative—when they share relationships, people, knowledge and responsibility.

Designing care into the experience

The festival’s structure was deeply intentional.

Organisations including Mental Jam and The Iceberg Foundation brought mental health education into a queer community setting through approachable, creative experiences. Switchboard Victoria, the Lost & Found Corner, connection tickets, games and other activities invited people to explore wellbeing, identity and support without turning the festival into a formal or clinical environment.

Mental health awareness was present, but it was not imposed. Instead, it was woven into opportunities to play, reflect, create and connect. This allowed participants to consider their own wellbeing and inner lives at their own pace, while helping to reduce stigma around mental health conversations.

Accessibility was considered in the atmosphere of the festival, too.

“We intentionally removed all the background music,” Feifei said.

In many social spaces, constant music and noise are treated as essential to creating energy. Our Point 3 chose a different approach. Without background music, participants could engage more comfortably with the environment, including those who experience sensory overload or find busy social settings difficult to navigate.

Craft tables offered another form of gentle participation. People could sit quietly, make something and simply spend time in the space. They were welcome to talk, but they were never required to introduce themselves, approach a stranger or perform sociability.

They could engage. They could observe. They could rest.

They could simply be present.

Welcoming beyond words

Your Queer Neighbours Festival offers a powerful reminder that welcome is not only expressed through greetings, speeches or invitations.

It can be found in the absence of overwhelming noise. In a craft table where conversation is optional. In mental health information shared through play rather than instruction. In volunteers who are supported rather than stretched beyond their limits. In organisations willing to share their networks and resources. In a gathering shaped by the cultural memories of the people it exists to serve.

“Welcoming is non-verbal,” Feifei said. “It is a way of curating a safe space for each and every person in society.”

Like a hot pot, that space is created collectively. Everyone brings something different. Everyone can participate in their own way. And, for a little while, those who have felt unrooted can gather around a shared centre and experience what it means to belong.