Birmingham Pride returned to its usual May Bank Holiday weekend slot for 2023 with the theme of Power in Pride. Friday night saw the free community event return for a third year. While on Saturday and Sunday, Birmingham Pride held their festival on the Smithfield site with a line-up that included: Sugababes, Gabrielle, B*witched, Eurovision’s Mae Muller, Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard, cabaret stages with local drag acts, and much more.
Saturday was also the day for the Pride Parade which made its way from Centenary Square at 12pm to the LGBTQ+ village with over 75,000 people marching through the streets and many more watching its journey. The parade procession was led by Garry Jones, a Birmingham-based artist who – with the Birmingham HIV and AIDS Memorial Group – raised £180,000 to create a memorial which was unveiled in December last year.
Alongside the memorial sculpture, Jones also created the memorial quilts which have been on display across various venues in the city over the past months. Jones walked alongside these quilts to lead the parade in 2023, and back in 2000, he also led the first Pride Parade in the city.
Garry Jones told the BBC: “Being given the opportunity to display the Birmingham AIDS and HIV memorial quilts to lead the parade is a real honour.”
Over Pride weekend, Birmingham also played host to a range of other LGBTQ+ events in the city including; the Bullring late-night Pride event with Gaydio; the Brum Buzz Cut Queer reading festival, which was a collaboration from the Back to Backs and Back to Books; cabaret and drag bingo at the Birmingham LGBT Centre’s café space; Fatt Butcher’s disco bike in Grand Central Station; and much more for the LGBTQ+ community and their allies to enjoy.
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