Leicester Pride 2024… and our shop day out!
This year, Leicester Pride fell on Saturday 31st August and was hosted at Abbey Park for the second year running (previously held at Victoria Park). As a shop, we’d noted this day down in our diaries well in advance, took the day off from tattooing, grabbed our partners and friends and headed on down for a great afternoon!
To mark the start of the festival, the colourful and vibrant Pride parade always begins in the city centre, near to the Clock Tower and lasts about an hour before arriving at Abbey Park - a much bigger venue than Victoria Park - and the celebrations did not disappoint this year!
We couldn’t miss an opportunity to represent and promote the fact that, as a shop and a collective, we are proud to create a relaxed and friendly space that is fully inclusive for all body types, genders, ethnicities and an LGBTQ+ safe space… and what better way to celebrate and shout about the fact than with a fun shop day out at Leicester Pride… AND not forgetting our amazing, new addition for 2024… our Pride-themed t-shirts! They were an absolute hit, so much so, that we’re hoping to add these to our merch collection! Thank you to our Alice for organising the print run of our special Pride tees!
We kicked off the afternoon at the Tree, filled our bellies with chips (much to Jay’s delight) and then headed on down (via a quick pitt-stop at Primark to grab some matching team hoodies, as the weather had turned a little chilly).
Leicester always hosts a fantastic Pride event, packed to the brim with all you could imagine to keep you entertained… including a dance tent, merch stalls, food and drink vendors, a fun fair and main stage with tribute acts such as Adele, George Ezra, finishing up with fireworks at the end of the day!
This year coincided with a local event nearby, too - ‘The Victory Show’ - an annual WWII/1940s event, so we even had a Lancaster Bomber fly over, which Deb was most excited about #sorryaboutdeb.
We all had such an amazing day filled with dancing, food, drinks and most importantly, it was great to be a part of an event full of love and acceptance for all!
How Pride began…
The Pride celebrations we know today began from the Stonewall uprising - The Stonewall Inn was a Gay pub based in Greenwich, New York. During the early hours of June 28th 1969, police raided this pub, roughly removing employees and patrons out of the bar, which sparked 6 days of riots and became a catalyst for the gay rights movement throughout the world.
Stonewall became an important part of the community, but raids were still very much a part of life. On the one-year anniversary of the riots, people gathered to march from The Stonewall Inn to Central Park in Manhattan chanting ‘Say it loud, gay is proud’. This marked the first Gay Pride Parade.
Fast forward to today, in the UK, Pride is celebrated in London on the 29th of June each year and various other Pride events are held throughout the country. Leicester Pride follows a couple of months later, traditionally in August.
The LGBTQ+ Flag
The first version of the Pride flag was created in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, and originally had 8 stripes, each with a different colour - hot pink to symbolise sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green to represent nature, turquoise for magic and art, indigo for serenity and violet to represent the spirit of LGBTQ+ people. The iconic Pride flag has since been developed to include more stripes for people of colour; people who are transgender; non-conforming and intersex. There are many flags that represent all these different communities.
