Your city. Your Pride
With just four days to go before this weekend’s Pride festivals in Belfast and Leeds, colleagues up and down the country are getting ready to celebrate.
A record 55,000 people came out for change at Ireland’s biggest LGBT+ festival last year and this year, organisers are hoping to make an even bigger statement.
‘Rights Now’ is the theme for Belfast Pride 2019, which takes place on Saturday. The inspiration for this comes from one of the key figures in the Stonewall uprising, pioneering Trans activist, Marsha P. Johnson, who when asked why she was protesting in favour of an Equal Rights bill, answered, matter of factly, ‘Darling, I want my gay rights now.’
Billed as the ‘UK’s friendliest Pride’ and Yorkshire’s ‘biggest celebration of LGBT+ life,’ Leeds Pride takes place on Sunday. Central Yorkshire colleagues have been given exclusive access to the club lounge at ‘Mission’ – one of the biggest clubs at the centre of Leeds Pride. There will be a limited supply of wristbands allocated, so if you would like to attend, please email operations manager Adam Sutcliffe at adam.sutcliffe@royalmail.com.
Our Royal Mail ‘Summer of Prides’ is currently in full swing, with hundreds of colleagues having already attended Black Pride, Pride in London, Trans Pride Brighton, and the Northern Pride Festival in Newcastle as well as a ‘slightly soggy but fun day’ at Liverpool Pride (pictured) last Saturday, where colleagues were joined by our charity partner, Action for Children.
HR business partner Sarah-Jane Bell, who attended the Northern Pride Festival in Newcastle, said: ‘It was our first time at Pride in Newcastle and we had a brilliant turn out of around 40 people, including both frontline colleagues and managers from across the North East.’
As one of the UK’s largest employers, we are committed to putting equality and diversity at the heart of our business. Supporting Pride is another way we can celebrate our differences, reflect the communities we serve and promote Royal Mail as an equal opportunities employer and a true champion of LGBT+ colleagues and the wider LGBT+ community.
Remember, all Royal Mail colleagues and their friends and family are invited to celebrate the below Pride events:
- Swindon and Wiltshire Pride – 10 August
- Cardiff – 24 August
- Newry Pride – 31 August
We want people to sign up to attend the Pride of your choice as early as possible as places are capped. To secure your places, please email pride@royalmail.com with your name, the number of people attending with you, which Pride you would like to attend and whether you would like to be on our much-loved Royal Mail rainbow float.
