Louisville Is Hosting One of the Biggest LGBTQ+ Conferences in the Country.

A ballroom in the downtown Louisville Marriott was decked out in many colors last week, when organizers at The National LGBTQ Task Force, an advocacy nonprofit met with local LGBT organization leaders to kick off the road to a national event.

The initial reception brought together local, state and national leaders to begin conversations and strengthen Kentucky connections ahead of the 2027 Creating Change event, which will be held in Louisville on January 27-31, 2027. 

Local musicians and drag performances book-ended a mix-and-mingle event where the Task Force staff revealed the theme for Creating Change in 2027. The event theme is “Radical Imagination: Building Our Destiny.” 

Alicia Hurle, co-executive director of Common Ground Kentucky, made sure to instruct visitors how to pronounce “Louisville.” 

“Loouvull, like you got marbles in your mouth,” she said, to scattered laughter. 

Louisville has a long history of activism, something that Chris Hartman, executive director of Kentucky’s Fairness Campaign, immediately recognized when he stepped up to speak. In 1999, Louisville was the first city in the Commonwealth to pass a fairness ordinance to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination. In 2026, organizers defeated every one of the anti-LGBT bills proposed in the Kentucky legislative session. 

Fernando Lopez, Director of Creating Change, praised Kentucky for “having organizing in your blood,” and said they wanted the rest of the country to learn from Kentucky’s successes. 

“I know coalitions are messy, but we work together when it matters,” they said. “If you have an idea, a connection, if you want to bring that into this work, if you have something to teach, we have a lot to learn. Submit your proposals. We want to connect to your volunteers. Our job is to leave every city better than where we found it,” Lopez said.

What is Creating Change? 

The Creating Change annual event will bring the nation’s foremost political and leadership experts to Louisville for skill-building day-long institutes, keynote presentations, awards and workshops. The event aims to allow leaders to share strategies, sharpen skills and build the relationships that power the Creating Change movement. 

The event started in 1988, one year after the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Today, Creating Change draws about 3,500 attendees from all over the country. Previous speakers have included civil rights activist Julian Bond, National Farm Workers Association co-founder Dolores Huerta, political activist Ben Jealous, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Labor Secretary Shaun Donovan, Bishop Yvette Flunder, journalist and immigration rights activist Jose Antonio Vargas, and transgender actress and LGBTQ+ advocate Laverne Cox.

Proposals for events at Creating Change are open now until Sept. 15, 2026, and registration is available at a variety of levels, including assistance for those with financial difficulties.

“We have a crisis of hope” 

When Task Force President Kierra Johnson finally got up to speak at this event, the room got much quieter .

‘We are living in a moment unlike any we’ve seen before, and we have a crisis of hope on our hands,” she said.

“People are confused, they are scared, there is a gaping hole of mistrust and plenty to go around: mistrust of government, mistrust of schools, mistrust of corporations, mistrust of nonprofits,” Johnson said. “And this is the work that we signed up to do. The work is to fill those gaps.” 

Over the last five years, Johnson said the state organizations the Task Force has worked with have asked the coalition to come back, which is “not always how things have been.” 

Johnson said the task force has learned to be different: to understand “the difference between being transactional and extractive versus being relational and additive.” 

She stressed the importance of doing things differently now, especially within the faith space, because LGBTQ folks “overwhelmingly identify as spiritual and religious.” Right-wing opposition, she said, is already organizing on a faith path, and “they know how to strategically use faith, and what people think faith is, as a weapon of mass destruction.” 

“The national LGBTQ Task Force is committed to being real with you, to being authentic, to being provocative, which is really hard,” Johnson said. “But we believe you can’t shy away from hard conversations, so we just set the table and say let’s have ‘em.” 

Johnson looked around the room with pride on their face.

“It is resistance to dream right now to claim our destiny, and our agency to build it ourselves,” they said. “This is our home and it is up to us to do it. And we refuse to let anybody else take that away from us. I can’t wait to get into some good trouble with you,” she said.