What are your favorite pride traditions?
Just spending time with the people you choose to call your family and be grateful for them.
What does pride month mean to you?
Pride month has been so commercialized it is easy to lose track of its meaning. I think everybody gets what they want/need out of it. I choose to see it as progress regardless of all the profit corporations aim to make out of it. It means progress, and hope for much needed additional progress. The LGBTQIA+ community is not only the L, the G, and the B.
Who are some of your LGBTQIA+ role models?
The stonewall riot protesters did so much for what we have nowadays. I cannot even imagine what it was like at the time and I am blessed to be able to enjoy the fruit of their struggles today. There are many good role models nowadays, working on normalizing LGBTQIA+ everyday, but I think it’s important especially for young people to know why we are able to live out in the open today. Not that everyone is able to do that, that’s why we still need to continue progress.
How are you planning to celebrate pride month this year?
I am currently living in China, but soon moving away. For the first time in my life I was blessed with an amazing friend group of LGBTQIA+ people here. I am quite sad to leave them soon. I will celebrate this pride month with them, my chosen family.
What are your favorite pride traditions?
I love to go on pride marches if possible. The last pride march I went on was in Berlin and it was an amazing experience.
What does pride month mean to you?
Pride month is a moment for me to celebrate my identity as a gay man along with all the unique identities of my LGBTQIA+ siblings. It’s so important that we all come together as a community and celebrate together.
Who are some of your LGBTQIA+ role models?
The British artist, filmmaker and activist Derek Jarman (who I was lucky enough to meet a few times when he was alive) was and still is a huge role model for me. The French writer Jean Genet is also a source of fascination for me currently.
How are you planning to celebrate pride month this year?
I will be in Greece for pride month this year, living with my husband in our caravan in an olive grace in the Peloponnese. He will be volunteering at a local dog sanctuary and I will be painting and I think that will be a perfect way to celebrate pride month.
What are your favorite pride traditions?
Nothing beats celebrating with friends.
What does pride month mean to you?
Pride is power. Pride is about honouring the struggle and the sacrifices made by our queer forbearers. It’s about commemorating the achievements and the progress gained. It’s about being cognizant of the contemporary threats our community faces and it’s about resisting those who seek to oppress us.
With the start of summer heralding the beginning of Pride season I feel this renewed sense of joy and resilience, it reminds me that I belong. For those of us who spent a long time feeling like we were on the outside looking in, the visibility is vital; it’s seeing and it’s being seen.
Who are some of your LGBTQIA+ role models?
Amongst many my current favourite is Natalie Wynn. She has a ferocious intellect. Her video essays are immaculately presented and thoroughly researched and her analyses of complex social issues are piercing and nuanced. She is a disarming and perceptive debater, and uses her work to educate, entertain, raise awareness and inspire action. She’s hilarious and beautiful too aghhh.
How are you planning to celebrate pride month this year?
I love film – this year to mark his passing I’m going to have a viewing party of some Kenneth Anger films.
What are your favorite pride traditions?
Pride parade takes place in Hamburg every year. All participants meet in the street “Lange Reihe”. It is a great pleasure for me to experience how the Pride family meets, how a cosmos of its own is created full of exuberance, freedom and joy.
What does pride month mean to you?
Pride month reminds me to celebrate myself and my life.
That it is a gift to express yourself freely. That we all, as different as we are, can achieve a lot together.
Who are some of your LGBTQIA+ role models?
For me, everyone is a role model who has a big heart, who can question themselves and laugh at themselves. Who is open to others and ready to develop further.
It doesn’t matter which community he comes from.
How are you planning to celebrate pride month this year?
I haven’t planned anything now – I’ll let it come to me spontaneously.
What are your favorite pride traditions?
Simply getting together with friends, and the emphasis on that is one of my favourite Pride traditions. Many people can forget the importance of a “Queer Family” or “Pride Family”, it’s a place to feel safe and accepted as so many queer people feel discomfort in being themselves around their family of origin.
What does pride month mean to you?
Pride month means a lot to me, most importantly it’s about visibility. I find the commercialisation of Pride by various brands and businesses to be distracting and disheartening, there can even be appropriation going on. I love to see community LGBTQI+ organisations making events for young people. Pride month should be a reminder that Pride continues to be a Protest and a fight for human rights worldwide – not just a party in the West. Pride month reminds me to take a moment of gratitude towards the older queer generations who carved this path for me, and fought for my rights …
Who are some of your LGBTQIA+ role models?
My current role model is the visual artist Zanele Muholi. They make exquisite photographs of mainly black and marginalised queer people. Their work is a form of activism and protest. It is incredibly inspiring. I just saw their show in Paris this May.
How are you planning to celebrate pride month this year?
Dublin Pride aligns quite nicely with my birthday every year! So I’m throwing a party!
What does pride month mean to you?
Pride represents for me, a time of the year where being queer and different is celebrated and embraced. It’s a time of community as well as a shared sense of resistance to binary norms in our society.
Who are some of your LGBTQIA+ role models?
In the Arts, there’s a few artists that are black and queer I’ve looked to for guidance and inspiration. Artists like Ajamu X, Rotimi Fani Kayode, Lyle Ashton Harris, Marlon Riggs, Essex Hemphill to name a few. I’m constantly learning and drawing from these generational sources that in turn inform my work.
How are you planning to celebrate pride month this year?
By being in community with other black and queer artists and friends in London and beyond.
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