Arcigay Gioconda has been the LGBTQIA+ association of Reggio Emilia since 1996. Its rooms are inside the Arci Gardenia club on Viale Regina Elena, north of the old centre, and it describes itself as open to everyone from sixteen upwards.
Come Out is its open meeting group and has been running for more than twenty years, for company or simply for somewhere to talk. A separate group meets for LGBTI+ migrants and racialised people, announced in Italian, English and French. The Punto Arcobaleno desk is there for anyone dealing with discrimination or violence, and sexual health and STI prevention work runs alongside it.
The association also keeps an LGBTQIA+ documentation centre: books, essays, novels, graphic novels and films, which anyone can consult on the premises without being a member. Beyond that it runs workshops in schools, a Theatre of the Oppressed project, inclusive story readings for families, and a rainbow housing project for people who have lost their home.
It organises the city's monthly LGBTQIA+ apericena and other queer evenings in venues around town. For a visitor that makes this the address that knows what is on.
The people in this picture are AI-generated.
