Bristol Pride have announced the full lineup for this year’s festival which will culminate in an outdoor community arts and music festival in Castle Park.
BRISTOL Pride will take place on Saturday, July 11. Entry to Pride Day is by a £3 donation entry and will feature a local food and market zone, on site bars, community area for services and groups, a performance hub, cabaret stage and an expanded family area with bouncy castle, lawn games and kite making workshops.
The festival in Castle Park boasts over 40 acts performing across 3 stages with main stage acts including Tina Cousins, Kym Mazelle, Amelia Lily, Ryan Dolan, La Voix, Nicki French, Justin Utley, new girl band Salute and a secret afternoon headliner who were one of the biggest UK pop groups in the 80s scoring three number one hits.
The main stage will also feature a performance from Ladytron’s Marnie with her band and will be headlined by Heather Small of M People who has amassed an incredible 10 top 10 hits and will have everyone singing along to her iconic anthem Proud.
Whilst entry to the festival is by donation, organisers are calling on everyone who can to get a £5 supporter wristband to support the cost of staging the event.
Wristbands offer discounts on site including on food and the bars, priority re-entry when at capacity and free travel on Pride Day with First Bus.
Joint evening tickets are available for £15. All ticket sales help to keep the event, which doesn’t receive funding, to happen.
Pride Night will see a takeover the O2 Academy for the official Pride after party headlined by Smokin’ Jo, the only ever female to be voted international DJ of the year.
Bristol clubnight’s D-T-Y-M and Psycho Drama perform along with London’s Eurofest who will be taking over room 2 with Eurobeats and 2 live PAs from Eurovision finalists. There will also be roaming performances, aerial performances from Circomedia students and interactive installations from local artists and Harry Clayton-Wright.
Pride ‘Week’ runs from the July 3-12 and will use venues across Bristol to showcase the LGBT community, use the Arts to champion equality, tackle community issues and develop a platform to support local talent.
Highlights of the week include the Pride Theatre Night (Wednesday, July 8) at the Bierkeller, Comedy Night (Thursday, July 9) with Jayde Adams, Joe Sutherland and headlined by Zoe Lyons and even a special collaboration with the Shakespeare Festival blending Midsummer Night’s Dream with The Rocky Horror Picture Show as the Pride Team celebrate 40 years of this cult classic with a special outdoor event.
Be sure to catch the Pride Dog Show at Make Sunday Special on Sunday, July 5, a week-long film festival Queer Vision at the Watershed and new gaYming event for computer gamers.
The festival which attracted over 31,000 people to its events last year was also named the UK’s No2 Best Pride event (Coop Respect Awards) and was calculated as boosting the local economy in Bristol by £953,000 in 2013.
As the UK’s first ever EU Green Capital Pride the team have been working hard to make it one of the greenest festivals in the UK this year with a re-usable cup scheme, food recycling and generator free stages supported by EDF Energy. The waste from the festival port-a-loos will even be used to the power the first ever Bristol Bio-Bus.
Organiser Daryn Carter, said: “Pride is a vital and fantastic event for the city, we’re one of the biggest Prides in the UK and I am proud of all the events and artists we’ll be bringing to Bristol this year. I’m also very proud that even without core funding we’ve still managed to keep Pride an event that’s open to everyone, but it’s been very hard work.
“Pride is an exciting and celebratory event but also has a more serious message. It’s the chance to make a bold, visible stand for equality and to tackle issues both here in the UK and to support those in countries around the world. Young people are still being made homeless by prejudice, LGBT hate crime is worryingly prevalent within our city and globally there are countries that still have archaic laws and even death sentences for LGBT people, Pride shows that sadly there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
Bristol Pride is a celebration of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and as well as an opportunity to combat the rising incidents of hate crime taking place in Bristol and the UK, aims to highlight the plight of LGBT+ people across the world especially in EU countries.
Pride Day starts with a parade through the city, which has been extended this year, and organisers want as many people as possible to come together to make a proud and visible statement of solidarity and equality, for all. To celebrate Green Capital, Pride have introduced the theme Green Rainbow whilst still calling for global equality especially across the EU and want people to create placards and outfits for the parade.
Whilst receiving no funding from Green Capital, Pride is a Green Capital partner event and will be one of the greenest festivals in the UK this year with a number of initiatives and events planned including powering the UKs first ever Bio-Bus with the festival portaloos, reducing overall energy consumption whilst being generator free across the stages and creating public water stations and re-usable cup scheme to reduce plastic waste.
Event: Bristol Pride
Where: Castle Park, Bristol
When: Pride Week July 3-12: Pride Day, Saturday July 11
Twitter: @wearefest
Facebook: www.facebook.com/brispride
For more information on Bristol Pride, click here:
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