What is the Queer Black experience like in the UK? One Pride festival is looking to find out.
UK Black Pride has launched a Community Survey, according to Yahoo News. The survey is being supported by the Stonewall Charity group and data analytics agency Kantar. It is looking for responses from Queer Black folk living in the UK to understand the needs and concerns of the community. Then, UK Black Pride’s first Community Action Plan will decide where funding should be invested to support the community.
UK Black Pride co-founder Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, more commonly known as Lady Phyll, raved the survey as a “labour of love.”
“Our communities remain overlooked and underestimated, but it may be that the right people aren’t doing the asking,” she explained. “So we’re stepping up to ask what the communities we represent feel, need and find joy in.”
She later added, “We’ll commit to delivering funding to organisations that are doing great work in the community to help LGBTQI+ Black people and people of colour live full, joyful and healthy lives.”
UK Black Pride is the largest celebration in Europe for LGBTQ+ people of color. The festival was inspired by a 2004 trip made by 200 members of an online group of Black Lesbians from the UK.
“At the end of that event I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this feels so empowering, so liberating, so beautiful to connect with people. It feels like a Black Pride’,” she told Reuters in 2020.
Since then, the organization has been slowly building into the flagship event it has become today. Last year, the event was held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic. The theme for that year was “Home.” Meanwhile, this year’s UK Black Pride will be themed “Love and rage” “to honour what has been a tremendously difficult year for so many in our communities.”
Source: Yahoo News, Reuters,
