TMU EngOut fundraises $1000 at Lee’s Palace Queer engineering community unites students with live music at charity event

of fell into place,” said Temelkos.

CONNIE founders and third-year creative industries students Cameron Carolan and Church Reid played not only their first school-affiliated show at Jam Out but also their biggest show yet.

“Cameron and I were actually talking about our dream venues and our bucket list venues and Lee’s Palace was, between both of us, just the absolute number one,” said Reid.

The venue has famously hosted bands like Nirvana, Oasis and The Smashing Pumpkins.

By Kinza Zafar

At Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU)’s takeover of Lee’s Palace on Feb. 17, over 150 people got to mosh the night away at one of Toronto’s most historic venues.

TMU EngOut is an engineering group dedicated to the advocacy and inclusion of fellow 2SLGBTQIA+ students. Their first-ever live music event, Jam Out, attracted a turnout over three times their average attendance. EngOut hosts a variety of professional networking and social events geared to empower queer students and foster community on campus.

The Jam Out event’s $1000 profit will be donated to The Lambda Scholarship Foundation, a charity creating scholarships to advance the research of 2SLGBTQIA+ and queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of colour studies nationwide, according to their website.

This event featured three Torontobased genre-exceeding bands including CONNIE, The Howlin’ Gales and Berner Trail.

“Lee’s Palace was an exciting show for us, playing with two great bands at an iconic venue can’t be beat,” said Berner Trail in an emailed statement to The Eyeopener. The band said performing for charity “made the night even more special.”

EngOut president and fifth-year biomedical engineering student Diana Temelkos said she fully devoted herself to Jam Out and planned meticulously for several months.

“The fact [Lee’s Palace] even responded and were so excited was mind blowing,” she said.

Temelkos did their best to spread word of the event, from asking friends with large social media followings to share the poster, to circulating promotions herself in random university subreddits and Facebook groups.

Lee’s Palace offers a discount on venue fees for charity events and non-profit organizations. “It all kind