Events tagged with "Birmingham Pride"
Angels
Initially opened by Laurie Williams in 1996, as a private members bar called Laurie's International Club. Later brought by Gareth Scratchard and reopened as Angels. It was the first gay bar in Birmingham to have plate glass windows open to the stree...
Birmingham LGBT Community Trust
Birmingham LGBT Community Trust was founded in 2002 to continue the work of the dormant Birmingham Pride Forum. Initial funding was a legacy from the Birmingham Pride festival. The trust consists of twelve trustees who have worked voluntarily to...
Birmingham Pride
Birmingham hosted the first Birmingham Pride festival in 1997 and has held the event annually since. The first event was organised by a group of business and community volunteers called the Birmingham Triangle CommitteeThe roots of the event can be t...
Birmingham Pride 2005
Birmingham Pride 2005 took place as usual over the May Bank Holiday weekend, organised by the Gay Business Partnership. There was the parade on the Saturday, a Village Green for community events on the Sunday and Monday and a full programme of ...
Birmingham Pride 2006
2006 saw a change in Birmingham Pride's previous format. A wrist band system was introduced with a charge of £10 to access the Village area, which was cordoned off with entry points, and to Cannon Hill Park, which hosted the main stage, a range of be...
Birmingham Pride 2007
The annual Birmingham Pride event took place from 25th to 28th May.The Pride Parade took to the streets on the Saturday with the theme 'shocking pink'....
Birmingham Triangle Committee
The first Birmingham Pride came about from an alliance between gay commercial interests and interested members of the wider gay community who formed the Birmingham Triangle Committee and worked together to organise the first event.The first pride com...
First Pride Ball held in 1998
The Birmingham Gay and Lesbian Pride Ball was originally established as a fundraiser for the second city’s gay Pride festival, an event which first took place in 1997. The first Ball in 1998 was initially organised by the Birmingham Pride committee m...
Five Days of Fun
Five Days of Fun, also known as 'Gay Brum'. The annual event took place for five days over the August Bank Holiday, the first taking place in 1983. Teams from different community and commercial ventures took part in 'It's a knockout' type games. The ...
It's a Knockout
In the mid 1970s a competition was organised between the Grosvenor House Hotel on the Hagley Road and the Nightingale club, then in Witton Lane. The event was held in the gardens of the hotel. This event eventually grew to become Five Days of F...
Out of the Shadows
In 2007 a multi-site art exhibition featuring LGBT artists drawn from Birmingham and the surrounding region was launched to coincide with Birmingham Pride....
Pink Picnic
Pink Picnic 2007 was organised by the Birmingham Pride Community Trust. The event was billed as an antidote to the commercialism of the current Birmingham Pride and called on members of the gay community to simply turn up to Cannon Hill Park and occu...
Rainbow Voices
Rainbow Voices is Birmingham's choir for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people and their friends. It was set up in 1995 as the initiative of a group of enthusiastic would-be choristers including Paul Naylor, who was the choir's musical dir...
Memories tagged with "Birmingham Pride"
AIDS crisis and the media
“Birmingham didn’t seem to be so highly affected by the HIV crisis as London or Manchester partly because we didn’t have such a vibrant gay scene as places like at that time. There wasn’t a lot of money going into outreach work with gay men. There wa...
Birmingham Pride Community Trust’s origins
“Birmingham Pride Community Trust grew out of the Birmingham Pride festival as a number of us were frustrated that the festival was somewhat losing its political edge and becoming something of a three day beer festival. What we wanted to do was recog...
Documenting the Queer Community
Sally Payne talks about documenting trans and gay life through her photography.Sally has been taking photos since she was ten years old, encouraged by her stepfather she has always studied and enjoyed it. When her marriage ended and she was living on...
Fun and games on the Village Green, Pride 2005
“'Will you organise a two day programme of community events for Birmingham Pride?’ I was asked by the Birmingham Pride 2005 organiser, Paul Steeples, acting for the Gay Business Partnership. The brief was to include some of the fun elements such as a...
Hotch potch of gay businesses
“That’s not to knock the entrepreneurs because Bill Gavan’s had an important role – a hard-nosed business person with an altruistic underbelly who has made an important contribution. Then we’ve got a hotch-potch, ranging from opportunist, 'let’s put ...
Important role of the Nightingale
“The big picture in Birmingham is the presence of The Nightingale and its history. It was established with a constitution like a working men’s club, by and for its members, for 30 years or more. It acquired its name from a former Indian restaurant, o...
It's a Knockout
"Birmingham's "Five Days of Fun" originated in the Grosvenor house Hotel. It was the Grosvenor against the Nightingale, I think when that happened, the Nightingale was still in Aston (pre-1981). This became the precursor to Pride, so the Grosvenor st...
Making the Fox friendlier
Hilli said she wanted to make The Fox a more friendly venue. She started to organise entertainment, and won awards e.g. Best Lesbian Bar. The Fox started to attract a wider range of people, with the pub becoming more of a community venue, and less of...
Mud, mud (not-so) glorious mud, Pride 2006
“Having organised the community events at Pride 2005 I thought I had the experience to do an even better job at Pride 2006. This was the controversial year that involved £10 wrist bands, security gates and the Saturday events in Cannon Hill Park. It ...
Over my dead body
Bill Gavan discusses Digbeth Police Station's attitude to the first Birmingham Pride event, “So I was elected to approach Birmingham City Council and West Midlands Police, and went to the Chief Constable at the time and he said ‘There’s no problem wi...
Pride too commercial
“I don’t go to Pride, it’s too expensive and I can’t afford it. It’s free to go but a drink costs £4. I went to the first Birmingham Pride in 1997 and it was great. It’s not a social event anymore it’s a business and I don’t like that, its too commer...
The first Pride Ball in 1998
"Out of the first Birmingham Pride, to fundraise came the Gay Pride Ball. I suggested we all invite our solicitors, accountants, doctors, dentists, hence why the Ball is 50% gay, it’s friends, families, associates, it’s become a business. The first P...
The right time to launch Midlands Zone, in 1997
Martin Monahan has been Midlands Zone editor since its inception in April 1997. "I launched Midland Zone in April 1997, at a time when life in Birmingham’s gay village was changing dramatically. Angels Cafe Bar was just about to open, complete with ...