‘Queer Kid Stuff’ is unlike any other show you’ve seen.
An educational web series about all things queer, this is the only show of its kind that is made for younger audiences. Aimed at kids 3-7 (but also great for young teens), Queer Kid Stuff is both informative and entertaining. I had the pleasure of speaking to creator and star of Queer Kid Stuff, Lindsay Amer. Lindsay is a self-identified queer little tomboy and an absolute delight, read our conversation below.
HelloFlo: How did you come up with the idea for Queer Kid Stuff? How did you get started?
Lindsay Amer: I’ve actually been making queer work for kids for about three years now, but I was primarily doing it in theater before. I was getting frustrated with theater and its limitations, particularly how many people you can reach at one time, and I was having difficulty actually finding my audience at all. Schools didn’t want to bring the plays I was doing to their schools. One day I was clicking around the Internet, like you do, and decided to google “what does gay mean?” like a child might who is curious about a new word. The only search results that came up were a dictionary definition and resources for educators and parents. There wasn’t a resource aimed at kids and I felt like I was in a great position to change that as someone who was already doing queer stuff for kids, just in a different medium.
HF: What is your writing process like?
LA: The content doesn’t exist out there for this age group so coming up with the topics is pretty easy mostly because there is so much to cover. What’s tough is prioritizing topics for episodes. Then once I have the topics for the season, I want to look at what tools I can use to make the topic relatable to a child and the ideas and objects that exist in their world. Teddy (Lindsay’s adorable sidekick teddy bear) serves as the child’s voice in the episodes, asking questions, digging deeper, and generally being curious. Then I use things like blocks, songs, stop animation, and dress up as modes for explaining concepts to keep the videos entertaining and engaging.
For next season I’m looking to bring on some guests to hopefully help me write episodes that might be a little outside of my expertise. For example, I want to do episodes on race and being asexual and I am neither a person of color nor asexual, so it’s important that people who identify as such can have a say in how I present those topics.
HelloFlo: What is your filming process like? Do you have a team or is it just you?
LA: For the official season of episodes I do have a team! They make everything pretty for me. Making the videos high quality is super important to me because it really levels the field with all the other content out there for this age group and I didn’t want anything to distract from the lessons themselves. I’m still working on upping the quality for the episodes for next season!
HelloFlo: What was your favorite episode from the first season?
LA: Oh, this is a tough one. I guess my two favorites are the episode about gender and about queer. The first because I was able to introduce the idea of non-binary genders and preferred pronoun usage which is so hugely important to understanding a lot of what I want to talk about. Teddy also came out as non-binary in that episode which was really cool. And then for the queer episode I’ve got an insanely talented composer on my team and she wrote this little ditty for us AND I got to wear my unicorn onesie so I think it was a win-win all around. Also, I love the word queer and it’s still very misunderstood in the larger community and it’s very important to educate people on why so many people use it as an intersectional identity.
HelloFlo: What are you most excited about for the second season?
LA: I’m really excited to expand the vocabulary we’ve been working on with the LGBTs series and to broaden the content, in particular making the channel more intersectional in its queerness, ie making videos about privilege and race and class and mental health, stuff that is super important when you’re talking about equal representation in children’s media that’s not talked about directly very often. I’ve been working on a metaphor for the privilege episodes that I’m hoping will help kids understand. Also, I’ve got my composer working on new songs and she’s brilliant and I’m very excited to see what she comes up with.
HelloFlo: Can you tell us more about your shirt campaign? What will the proceeds go to?
LA: YEAH! T-SHIRTS! Pronoun t-shirts! I’m running a campaign to raise some money to fund season 2! You can buy shirts that say “he” “she” or “they” on the front with “what’s your pronoun” and my logo on the back. In adult AND kid sizes! proceeds go directly toward paying my team: my director, sound engineer, DP, production designer, and composer. As an artist who does a lot of my work for free (unfortunately) it’s really important that I can pay the people who are helping me fairly. For season 1 we got a grant from the Awesome Foundation and I actually would not have been able to do it without that grant. You can buy t-shirts here.
You can find more about Queer Kid Stuff by visiting their website or YouTube.
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