The Pride London Festival is a non-profit organization that runs the anniversary celebration of the LGBTQ+ community.
A new logo, more interactive events, and uniting the LGBTQ2 community are just some of the goals Pride London has set for 2021.
Pride London logo/ pridelondon.ca
Amanda Pearson, the organization’s new vice-president, is the first transgender person to serve in the role. She says the main goal for the new leadership group is to help members of the LGBTQ+ community feel welcome.
“For the last few years, we’ve had a very successful Pride Week in July with lots of events. Last year with COVID, we had to switch to virtual events, which went over well. It gave our community something to look forward to. Our plans for this year is to continue with pride in July the way it has been for the last 10 years, but we’re also planning for a virtual event. What’s more exciting about this year is we’re also planning to do events throughout the year. One of the things we’re excited for is that since we’ll be doing a lot of streaming, we’re going to create a thing called the Pride London Network. We’re going to set ourselves up so that we can do streaming more efficiently with a higher quality and we hope to have that started in January.”
Pride London Festival’s mission is to provide an opportunity to generate cultural, artistic and educational events which declare the lives GLBTT2 people with awareness of sexual and gender diversity. She then shared why she wanted to get involved with Pride London and the LGBTQ+ community.
“When I began my transition, I lived in the area and I made frequent trips to London for support. Eventually I moved here, I started to attend the parade and the celebration in the park plus some of the week long events that were going on. I continued that for a number of years. And then last year, there is a vacancy on the board. So I ran for one of the vacancies to finish out the year. And this year, I was still on the board and I was selected to be vice president. I see this as a natural evolution in my involvement and pride. Initially, I took part in it, I was impressed with the events that I saw and I thought that I would like to be part of the events moving forward.”
She then shared how proud she is to be the first transgender person to serve as Vice-president for Pride London.
“I think it’s a great symbol for our community. When I first started to come out to pride seven years ago, the transgender community wasn’t ignored, but it certainly didn’t have the spotlight that it deserved. Over the seven years that I’ve been coming to London, I found that things were getting better. I myself spent a lot of time doing classroom talks at the University of Western Ontario. While I was there, I began speaking in various classrooms. I’ve continued that after I graduated. I see this is as the next step in what I needed to do to help transgender community improve its profile within the greater community. Being the first transgender Vice-President, I think this is a symbol to other trans men and women, that they can step out of the shadows and they can take an active part in society.”
The organization has plans to display a new logo for Pride London Festival and they will be looking to members of London to help create the design.
The Pride London Festival is scheduled to start July 15 and run until the 25th. If you want to get involved with Pride London, make sure to check out their website www.pridelondon.ca
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