Pride London is the name of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender registered charity which arranges LGBT events in London, most notably the annual gay pride parade which is held in June/July. The most recent Pride London was on 2 July 2011. The 2010 event was attended by 1 million people, making it the largest outdoor event in the UK.[1]
Pride London is a registered charity[2]. The organisation is run by volunteers (including the board of directors). The stated aim of Pride London is to produce a highly professional Pride Festival and an annual Pride Day comprising a Parade through central London, a politically based Rally and free entertainment in central London.
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The upcoming Pride London Parade is World Pride and will happen on Saturday 7th July 2012 at 13:00[3]. The details of this are to be confirmed owing to outside sources, such as Westminster Council needing to arrange routes and logistics. The Pride London Festival Fortnight (below) also has dates arranged with further arrangements to be confirmed.
Pride has been organized by several organizations since the first official UK Gay Pride Rally which was held in London on the 1st July 1972 (chosen as the nearest Saturday to the anniversary of the Stonewall riots of 1969) with approximately 2000 participants.[4][5] The first London gay marches were in November 1970 with 150 men walking through Highbury Fields in North London.[6] The controversy of Section 28 from 1979 lead to numbers increasing on the march in protest. In 1983 the march was renamed "Lesbian and Gay Pride" and in the 1990s became more of a carnival event. There were large park gatherings and a fair after the marches up until 2003.[6]
Pride London itself was formed in 2004. Since 2004 a political rally in Trafalgar Square has been held straight after the parade, and more recently Pride London has organised several other events in the centre of London on Pride Day including in 2006 'Drag Idol' in Leicester Square, a women's stage in Soho and a party in Soho Square. In 1992 London was selected to hold the first Europride with attendance put at 100,000 [7], London again held Europride in 2006 with an estimated 600,000 participants. In 2004 it was awarded registered charity status.
Large numbers of LGBT-friendly people (including a significant number of family, friends and supporters) from all walks of life take part in the parade. Since 1991, the Friends of Dorothy Society of Change Ringers have rung the bells of the church of St Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square during the morning of Pride, and as the parade passes through. For many the most iconic image is of a long rainbow flag, in 2006 this was carried by members of the Metro Centre. In 2010 it was jointly carried by EDF Energy and Tesco's staff network groups.
Since 2006 Regent Street and Oxford Street have been closed off to allow the parade to pass through. This is seen by many in the LGBT community as a sign of wider acceptance, although the parade once marched down Oxford Street illegally in protest in the 80s.
Groups who participate include The OutZone Youth Project for gay and bisexual young men (Project for Advocacy, Counselling and Education), Mosaic LGBT Youth, Queer Youth Network(formally The Queer Youth Alliance), OutOnThursday, Metro Centre, Youth@Pride, The Pink Paper and Transport for London. Since 2004 the Mayor of London, both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson have participated by walking part of the route with the rainbow flag.
Pride London has a volunteer stewarding system for the parade which is used as an example by many other pride events. Every single person, including all directors and trusties are entirely voluntary. License conditions set by Westminster Council requires a minimum of 250 stewarding staff, which for 2011 consists of 50 Senior Stewards, who manage 5 teams of stewards. There are around 10 Area Managers currently, who generally work for the Operations Team of Pride London to plan the event.
All volunteers are rewarded with a Pride Privilege Card[8] which businesses, mainly in the gay hub of London, Soho, provide a various number of rewards and discounts. The main sponsor of this Pride Privilege Card is Nandos[9].
The volunteering aspect is in two sections, Operations Team and The Board. The 'on the day' stewards and volunteers is as follows;
Generally those Area Manager and above work within the Operations Team of Pride London. This team meets throughout the year to make the parade happen. They work under the non-operational and non-logistical directive of The Board of Director and Trusties who each have an area of responsibility. Each member of the Operations Team also has an area of responsibility.
There are hundreds of people involved in making Pride London happen, however there is no available exhaustive list of persons involved.
The Pride London Festival Fortnight started in 2006 when London hosted EuroPride. It re-emerged in 2009 as groundwork was laid for hosting World Pride in 2012.
In 2009 the festival opened with The Bad Film Club presenting Can't Stop the Music at the Prince Charles Cinema on Saturday 20 June. It closed on 5 July 2009 with a performance from the London Gay Symphony Orchestra.
The upcoming Pride London Festival Fortnight is on 23rd June to 8th July 2012[10] with details to be confirmed.
The headline sponsor for Pride London for 2011 and 2012 under a 2 year contract is Smirnoff. Other sponsors include TUC, Mayor of London, VroomVroomVroom.co.uk, Out at Tesco, Ku Bar, Fire and Coca-Cola GB.[11]
Steward staff have, in 2010 and in preparation for 2011, worn lanyards bearing the Coca-Cola logo and in previous years have worn RMT lanyards. The Vitamin Water Company in previous years have been worn as the sponsor on the right breast of the stewards t-shirts.
Nandos are currently sponsors of the Pride Privilege Cards given to volunteers who work with Pride London.[12]
Pride London has had several famous patrons including:
London Pride, has come under criticism from socialists within the LGBT community, for instance, Hannah Dee argues that it has reached "the point that London Pride - once a militant demonstration in commemoration of the Stonewall riots - has become a corporate-sponsored event far removed from any challenge to the ongoing injusticies that we [the LGBT community] face."[13]
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