Photos from Ponyboy, the hedonistic club night creating a trans utopia

Follow the metronomic stomp of boots on asphalt and you’ll end up down Glasgow’s winding sidestreets. Outside of one of the city’s basement venues, a pocket of queer community has spilled out of the venue. They’re dressed in provocative slogan t-shirts, string vests and barely-there bras. Their faces are flushed with smudged face paint, prosthetics and sweat. There’s a Ponyboy party happening – and you’re all invited. 

Taking its name from the iconic SOPHIE track, Ponyboy is a beauty collective creating club spectacles alongside high-impact hair looks. Created by Dill Dowdall and Reece Marshall, the duo work with local creatives to curate club nights that offer a space for the trans and queer community to explore their identities. 

In pursuit of their wider mission for trans world domination, Ponyboy creates a haven for trans people within Glasgow’s basement venues. Brick clad walls glisten with sweat as performers take to the stage, flashing strobes spotlight skin covered in entrance stamps and tattoos, and party-goers congregate almost biblically around the decks, worshipping as their bodies bow down as the BPM goes up. Recognising the dancefloor as a political space, Ponyboy’s events honour the trans identities that contribute to the city’s cultural landscape. Showing the beauty of being trans is in itself a form of resistance. Their latest event Clubkid, pays homage to the hedonistic expression of the NYC scene. 

We speak to Ponyboy about trans visibility, the Scottish creative scene and the beauty looks from Club Kid.

What is Ponyboy, and what do you aim to achieve through your work?

Dill Dowdall: Ponyboy is run by my partner Reece and me, but it’s really powered by a whole community of performers, artists, and primarily trans creatives who all contribute to what we do. I curate our events, while Reece curates the hair looks. Every event we do is unique from the last, but our overall goal is to create a glimpse into a trans utopia with the aim of this being actualised in some way. 

We work with photographers to document our events and create content and prints to amplify the community and contribute to the archives of trans beauty and storytelling. It’s about building worlds where trans stories can be told through a collaborative effort, exploring different themes, and offering a space for the trans and queer community to explore their identities. We collaborate with trans casts to create hair looks, supported by a team of make-up artists, nail artists, and designers. The aim is always to make the artists feel fully realised in whatever fantasy they’re creating for the night.

Growing up, did you have queer spaces like Ponyboy? How did your experiences shape your commitment to creating these environments?

Dill Dowdall: No, I didn’t. And I can say the same for Reece. We both spent most of our lives not feeling accepted or safe, and sadly, that feeling lingers. When I moved to Dundee for uni there wasn’t actually a queer scene either, there were very few actually openly queer folk. I didn’t actually start going to underground queer spaces until I moved to Glasgow and attended nights at the art school here. I used to have panic attacks and cry in the bathrooms before I realised I was neurodiverse, which has deeply influenced how I now curate events. 

You recently launched the Ponyboy billboard campaign. Can you share more about this project and your choice to present it on billboards around Glasgow?

Dill Dowdall: Neither myself or most of the trans people I know feel safe walking through the streets here and so I wanted to produce a series of billboards in the style of vintage perfume ads as a way of taking up space and honouring how much trans people contribute to the cultural landscape here. I wanted to showcase the beauty of being trans as a form of resistance. I pitched the idea to JACK ARTS Scotland at Build Hollywood and they were quick to support the project.

As the world becomes more intolerant toward trans folks, the risk is that we all start to feel a pressure to conform to pretty rigid beauty expectations to feel safer and water down ourselves. It therefore felt important to also have a series with a cast that express their transness in very different ways.

What themes or concepts are you exploring with your upcoming event, Club Kid?

Dill Dowdall: For other events, the value in building looks has often been more about working with each artist to achieve a sense of gender euphoria in relation to how each person wishes to be represented. For our clubkid event, the value was a lot more about disrupting and breaking down our ideas of our identity and building a world with your body. 

What do you think is the importance of beauty for trans and non-binary individuals, and how is this reflected in your work?

Dill Dowdall:  Trans and non-binary people better than anyone recognise the power we have in actualising our own senses of self and identity.  We pioneer so much of the cultural shifts/trends we see within beauty because we’re already on a journey to explore and actualise ourselves. As much as our work concerns ensuring our cast feel beautiful, we never want this to feel constricted to rigid beauty conventions because often these conventions are rooted in prejudice.

Venue closures and a lack of funding are pressing issues in the Scottish creative scene. How do these challenges affect Ponyboy?

Dill Dowdall: Honestly, Reece and I were on the verge of being placed in homeless accommodation before we got a social house recently. For two years, we were barely scraping by. I remember not being able to afford a drink at my own club nights or a taxi home because upfront costs had wiped us out financially.

With venues closing, there are now no dedicated safer spaces for trans people in Glasgow since Bonjour shut down. It puts more pressure on promoters, which also costs more money. We recently received some Creative Scotland funding, which has helped, but the situation remains tough, and there needs to be more support for queer promoters

What’s next?

Dill Dowdall:  Our next event is on November 1st to celebrate our second birthday and Halloween, with Namasenda headlining. We also have our NYE party coming up, which we’ll announce soon. We’re planning to move to a new salon in Glasgow later this year, and beyond that, we’re just going to keep pushing to platform the trans community. 

We’ve had a film crew following us for just over a year to film a documentary on Ponyboy that will be released at some point soon. We’re currently developing the second Ponyboy print which we’ll be releasing towards the end of the year as well as a mix series. 

We want to see the artists we work with succeed—whether that’s in magazines, on runways, or DJing internationally. We want to curate stages for festivals all over the world and continue finding ways to connect our community with other communities, encouraging cross-city collaboration. Ultimately, we’re aiming for trans world domination!