UK: Pride in London blasted for failing to 'grasp importance of diversity'

Pride in London’s Independent Community Advisory Board (CAB) has released a detailed report on Pride in London 2017, criticising the event for its lack of diversity and failing to recognise the importance of intersectionality.

The Board was also critical of Pride in London’s #LoveHappensHere marketing campaign, which was roundly criticised got being heteronormative, cis, and erasing of BAME [black, asian, minority ethnic] people, bi people, and trans people.

The group also suggested that bisexual people should be the focus of next year’s event, but Pride in London have questioned the accuracy of some of the feedback provided

The CAB, which is made up of people from different strands of London’s LGBT+ community, has issued a number of recommendations for future Pride events in the capital, which range from investment in underrepresented areas to issues with corporate wristbands.

The recommendations are as follows:

  • Full involvement and integration of BAME LGBT+ people into Pride in London is essential to achieve a cohesive and inclusive event, and recommends that the best way to achieve this is to support and resource UK Black Pride, and ensure that BAME LGBT+ people are represented not just at Pride in the Park, but on all stages and in all Pride events.
  • Pride in London should follow the example of Tel Aviv Pride this year, by making bi people the central focus of the Pride Parade in 2018 or 2019, which would require full engagement of bi people and groups in both planning and execution. Going forward, it may be appropriate that each year, one of the more marginalised sections of London’s LGBT communities – for example, BAME, bi, trans, and intersex people – should, on rotation, be given pride of the place in the Parade.
  • Membership of all panels must be arranged significantly ahead of time and should be constituted to represent the breadth of diversity of London’s LGBT+ communities.
  • Pride organisers institute a text message system for future years, enabling mass SMS advice to be disseminated to group leaders about any unexpected delays or issues.
  • Is there any need for wristbands or whether it may be possible to once again operate the Parade without the issuing of wristbands, which is in itself a potentially discriminatory process especially for small organisations, informal groups and individuals. who decide late in the day that they would like to take part in the Parade?
  • Organisers impose a limit on the maximum number of wristbands any one organisation can have, perhaps at 250.
  • Ways the poster campaign might have been made better were by using names that clearly were, for example, of people from a south Asian background, and by including the simple age and gender pronoun in brackets after the name.
  • Pride marketing campaigns should reflect the broadest extent of LGBT+ people’s lived experiences and not solely focus on the normative lifestyles of some. It is essential that such campaigns include people from all sections of London’s LGBT+ communities, and be reflective of their intersections with race, disability, gender, age or religion. 

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