When Manchester Pride announced a rebrand in 2019 - featuring a new Progress flag incorporating black and brown stripes - there was backlash from some people who felt it was ‘unnecessary’.
Mark Fletcher, the CEO of Manchester Pride, said it was this experience that further demonstrated to him just how much progress still needed to be made even in a city as progressive as Manchester.
Speaking at the launch of Manchester Pride on Friday (August 27), alongside Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, Mark said he was proud to unveil what was a different, 'queerer than ever' event.
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“Pride, in my opinion, is not for anybody until it’s for everybody,” Mark told a packed out room at Whitworth Locke.
“We are so proud to celebrate a rich and diverse community. We are all different and we have to stand together.”
Mark says that some of the changes that were made in 2019 have now been elevated for this year’s celebrations, in part due to the pandemic and the response to last year’s digital-only event.
He said it was a deliberate decision to ensure that this year’s event was the ‘boldest, brassiest and most queer celebration of LGBTQ+ life that Manchester Pride has ever presented’.
This year, Pride will be celebrated via various locations across the city centre including the Gay Village, Sackville Gardens and Homeground.
It’s the line-up for the Gay Village Party that Mark says he is the most proud of.
“I’ve often been told that we need to further scratch the surface of the queer talent that we’ve got here in Manchester,” Mark told the Manchester Evening News.
“Coming off the back of the pandemic, we saw an opportunity to provide a platform for artists that hadn’t worked throughout the pandemic and had suffered from the fact that the Village had been closed for over a year.
“We wanted to make a conscious decision to be as inclusive as we can.
“It’s the first time that 78 queer artists have appeared on the stage - it’s a record for us, we’ve never had an entire queer lineup before.
“You can’t not be proud of the diverse line-up we have, it’s a true taste of what it is to be queer in Manchester.
“We have the stalwart drag performers from the Gay Village performing alongside alternative queer talent and then we’ve got large, well-known profiles adding to that and elevating the attention to what is going to be a diverse programme of entertainment.”
For Andy Burnham, Pride is a chance to shine a spotlight on Manchester and show how people here do things differently.
“There’s more pride in this Pride programme than ever before,” Burnham said.
“We are conscious that Pride is a flagship of what this city is about. It’s a fantastic reminder of our common humanity, celebrating what we have in common but also our diversity. It’s what makes life interesting.
"I think this weekend will create a space for people to put difficult times behind them and come back together and remind themselves of what we’re all about.
“We are making progress as human kind. We are going to stand together, we’re going to do that this weekend and come together for a brilliant Pride.
“Let’s make this a weekend that really sets us up to come back stronger as a city after the pandemic.”
Earlier this year, Pride announced it would not longer be able to financially support LGBT Foundation’s Safer Sex scheme and the George House Trust.
Due to the pandemic, it was also announced that the annual parade through the city centre would be replaced by a series of smaller, participant-only ‘equality marches’.
There are people that have questioned why Pride is a paid-for event.
“Sometimes we get criticism that you have to pay to go to Pride,” Mark says.
“We have to put on some paid events to subsidise the free events, but it’s important to say that we have two paid events amongst 18 free events across the region.
“Some people feel that the pop concert is not for them or feel the Gay Village is not for them. We have to observe all of that and represent all of our communities.
“There’s always so much we can do and so much more to learn and we always need to be plugged into our communities.
"It’s important to recognise that we don’t own Pride. I’m the custodian for Manchester Pride as the CEO, I do the job that I'm tasked to do by a board of trustees that respond and listen to our audience through genuine engagement.
"It doesn’t belong to me, I'm also a queer person of colour and a member of this community.
“We’re always listening to feedback so as long as people want to celebrate Pride and they tell us how they want to celebrate it, that’s what we will continue to do.”
Mark says it's been wonderful to see the city coming together already.
“It’s an odd time, there’s so much intensity out there right now,” he explains.
“We’ve been locked down for such a long time that we’re literally a bursting bottle waiting to get out there.
“Seeing thousands of people coming into the city centre today just to be part of this celebration has been really emotional.
“It’s important to remember what it is we’re doing. I truly believe pride is not for everyone until it is for everyone.
“As one of the world’s leading Pride organisations, it’s a big task to ensure we’re moving forward.
“We’ve really worked hard at a time, against all odds, to present that this weekend.
"It feels so surreal that we’re here and I can’t wait for people to see what we’ve done.”
