Reflecting on Reading Pride 2022
It’s that time of year again where many LGBTQ people and businesses are creating, nurturing, finalising and realising our plans for the year’s Pride events. That of course means putting in applications for wristbands and plots, reflecting back on what went well last year and what could be done differently. Some Pride events have already happened so I’m sure the people involved with those are already doing some of this reflection for this year. I was looking back the other day to my stall at Reading Pride’s Love is Love Festival 2022 and I found myself wanting to share some of the touching moments from that day.
Let me set the scene a little for you first.
Years before I had a stall there, Reading Pride was the first ever Pride event I attended as a member of the public. For this reason it will always have a very special place in my heart. There’s always a feeling of joyous celebration coupled with recognition of the prejudice, discrimination and danger that members of the LGBTQ community are subject to across the globe. It’s not just a party and I will have moments quietly shedding some tears for those of us who have been victimised simply for being who we are.
Getting ready at Reading Pride 2022
Being local to Reading and working with LGBTQ, polyamorous, ethically non-monogamous and kinky people, it was a very natural thing to look at having a business presence at Reading Pride. Honestly, I loved coming up with ideas for things to help me stand out from the sea of stalls that populate the fields of Kings Meadow each year. Getting everything together was a mixture of excitement, frustration and, yes, nerves. Do you have any idea how many things can go wrong when you’re getting ready for something like this - in real life as well as in your head? 😂
One of those ideas was to have some chalkboards up that invited people to share responses to a question. I was lucky to have my partner for help coming up with, bouncing ideas off of, refining and choosing what to put on the boards. It took some time but together we came up with “What do you like about your life?”. I had wanted it to have a positive focus, to be related to my work and to be a potential conversation starter for people - either with me or with each other. I decorated the board with some drawings of the intersex inclusive progress pride flags and I was then just left hoping that it would go down well with people.
I needn’t have worried though, the boards were a hit and some lovely things were being shared. Below you can see how well populated they were at the end of the day and a word cloud I generated from them.
On the day I found working at Reading Pride was overwhelming in the best of ways. There were some heartwarming demonstrations of love I got to witness ranging from the families there to support their LGBTQ people to the friends who were going round together sporting their individual flags to the people on their own who were speaking about the love they had lost. As I sit here now, my eyes are welling up thinking about the ways that my own people showed me their support and love.
I will be back at Reading Pride again this year but with a different question on my boards so make sure you stop by to say hello 🙂
