Over the past few months, GAY TIMES and Channel 4 have partnered up for #ProudAllOver, a campaign which turned the spotlight on local Pride celebrations outside of Britain’s major cities, showing how communities up and down the country commemorated Pride this season.
Smaller Pride celebrations outside of major cities are vital in ensuring that LGBTQ+ people in every corner of the UK feel welcome and able to access their communities.
We spoke to the organisers of some regional Pride events to learn more about how they brought together a queer community in Britain’s small towns.
The campaign took us to the most rural parts of Britain, where communities donned their rainbow flags in celebration.
In Shetland, residents celebrated the island’s first ever Pride and Channel 4 marked the event by floating a barge off the coast of Lerwick.
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Elsewhere, photographer Kuba Ryniewicz captured the underrepresented LGBTQ+ people of the North East in a moving photo series.
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Argentinian-born, London-based photographer Emil Lombardo created this photo series documenting the importance of Pride to trans and non-binary immigrants in the UK.
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Through the campaign we also heard from locals who took us along to their town’s Pride and shared why the celebrations were important to them.
In Wales, Talk to Coco showed us Llandovery Pride and Ellis Lloyd Jones showed us how Llanelli marked Pride.
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Down in Cornwall, we saw how the people of St. Austell celebrate Pride, whilst up in Edinburgh Vaila talked us through how their first time at Pride led them to form their own queer collective.
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Prishita explained the importance of the nightlife scene for Oldham’s queer community and Liverpool’s Alex Ogden Clark showed us a Pride inspired makeup look. In some communities, Pride celebrations are fairly new.
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In Stockport, Ki explained how in the five years since it started, Pride celebrations in the town have gone from strength to strength.
Spoken word artist Tanaka also reflected on what Pride personally means to them with a powerful poem about resilience and queer joy.
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Queer people are everywhere. Whether it’s along the coasts of Cornwall or up in the mountains of Scotland, LGBTQ+ people are coming together.
Locals of the nation’s smaller towns have also showed that allyship for the queer community is growing stronger than ever.
Gone are the days where finding LGBTQ+ acceptance meant moving to a major city, Channel 4 and GAY TIMES have shown that Britain is #ProudAllOver.
