Dublin Pride 2008 – a review

Dublin Pride 2008 – Always the Bridesmaid, never the Bride

Pride ’08 came to an end last weekend, culminating in a wonderfully attended parade, post-parade show, and Pride night party. Despite the weather, people showed up in their thousands, which was a wonderful reward for all of the volunteers who have put in so much effort over the last few months. I want to take this opportunity to briefly explain why LGBTQ communities all over the world still feel the need to hold Pride festivals, and I also want to do a little review of Pride ’08, responding to some of the criticisms of Pride this year, and also outlining some of our improvements from previous years.

Why does Pride still exist?

This is by far and away the most common question I am asked during my involvement with Dublin Pride, and it deserves a more complete response than that detailed below. Nevertheless, I hope that the below points will serve as an overview of why Pride festivals are still organised the world over:

Safe spaces – from my perspective, one of the single most important roles of Pride festivals, is that they provide safe spaces within which LGBTQ people can explore their sexual identities, and openly embrace those identities without fear of repurcussion. By providing such spaces, we aim to empower people, so that they can return to mainstream society with the confidence to assert their own identities, rather than continuing to feel forced to hide their identities in order to form part of the perceived homogenous mainstream.
LGBTQ people are not treated equally – while our choice of theme generated some negative feedback (which I’ll deal with later), our intention was to highlight one of the inequalities experienced by LGB people – that their relationships in Ireland are not held by the state as being equal in value to those of opposite-sex couples. Pride festivals provide our communities with an opportunity to highlight some of the inequalities which LGBTQ people continue to face. We can highlight ongoing hate-crimes, the lack of gender recognition legislation, homophobic bullying in schools, increased levels of poverty among LGBTQ citizens, employment discrimination and failure to provide adequate health services, among other issues. More often than not, our voices are not heard on these issues, and Pride festivals provide our community organisations with an opportunity to have their messages amplified. While Pride is often seen as a big party, it is fundamentally political, and has a major advocacy and political facilitation role.
Celebration of our culture – this is an area that Dublin Pride hopes to focus on a great deal in the coming years. LGBTQ people have a unique culture within our society. This was recognised by the Irish state last week, when the National Library of Ireland accepted the Irish Queer Archive (which has long been maintained by Tonie Walsh and the National Lesbian and Gay Federation) for archival within the Library. In future years, we hope to have a curating committee, which will assist us in curating artistic exhibitions, conferences and displays, as well as helping us to recognise the history of our movement. There’s a lot of work to be done in improving this area, but our venue for next year are very supportive of our efforts in this regard (more on than later in this post).
Increasing diversity within our capital – The Dublin Pride Parade is now the second-largest annual parade in the country (behind only the St. Patrick’s Day parade), and we our immensely proud of our place in the capital city. Our parade is an incredible display of diversity, as people from all backgrounds, nationalities and identities gather to take to the streets of Dublin. And just as we are enriched by the experience, I believe that the city is also enriched in a similar way. We benefit enormously from having such a parade to be a part of, but Dublin also benefits from such a display of diversity (not to mention the accompanying increase in tourism!).

Where has Pride gone wrong?

Pride has been subject to some criticisms of late. While some of them have certainly been valid, I want to take this opportunity to provide my responses to some of the major ones:

Pride should not be in favour of marriage – we have been criticised for our position calling for an extension of marriage-rights to same-sex couples. This position is the one overwhelmingly held by our volunteers, and that was the motivating factors. On a personal level, I have fundamental issues with the institution of marriage, rooted as it’s history is in misogyny and patriarchy. However, I can recognise the arguments of those who claim that we need to be provided with access to the institution, at which point we will be on a stronger position to question the institution. It’s not my personal view, but it was the view of our members, which is why Dublin Pride took that stance.
Pride ’08 theme was sexist – The argument has been made by both Suzy and Marie, that our theme of ‘Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride’ was sexist, and downright insulting to women. Firstly, that was certainly never the intention of Dublin Pride, and we can only apologise for any offence caused – it was intended only to be catchy, and to emphasise our theme of pushing for equal access to marriage this year. Secondly, the theme was suggested by one of our sub-committees, and approved by all levels of the organisation, without a single objection. That said, we moved from publicly selecting our theme last year, to doing so privately this year. The complaints that have been made highlight the fact that not making our selection in public prevents us from hearing such criticisms prior to selection of a theme, and we will move back to public selection in future to try to avoid a re-occurence of this issue.
Dublin Pride do not cater to families – this is an argument I have heard from many quarters, and it particularly revolves around Pride’s decision to hold our Post-Parade rally in the Wood Quay Amphitheatre, where there is no space to provide family entertainmment etc. Firstly, I think it’s important to acknowledge the number of family-friendly events organised by Dublin Pride in 2008. From the Viking Splash, to the trip to the Zoo, to the Family Picnic and Sports Day, we really tried to ensure we were catering to families this year. Secondly, I have to state very publicly that returning to the Wood Quay Amphitheate was not our choice this year. Quite the opposite in fact. We had desperately hoped to relocate to Dublin Castle or Iveagh Gardens or Merrion Square this year, but none of those options were opened to us, and we were forced to return. However, we were delighted to be able to announce on Saturday, that we have found a new home for Pride ’09 (and onwards) – IMMA. The grounds of IMMA are fabulous, and will allow us to look at having proper food stalls and picnic areas, as well as mini-carnivals and other forms of family entertainment. We sincerely hope that this will provide a much more family-friendly environment for the Post-Parade rally/party next year.
Pride do not cater to those with disabilities – again, I want to begin by highlighting some of the work we have done in this area. The Dublin Pride website, has a number of accessibility provisions for those with visual-difficulties. Our programme contained a disability key, identifiying which events were wheelchair-accessible etc. We provided sign-language interpretation for a larger number of our events than ever before. We improved the location of the wheelchair-accessible area at the post-parade rally (though we had issues with securing this area which certainly need to be addressed). And we provided spaces on the Labour LGBT bus for those who have walking difficulties or needed a rest during the parade (a facility which we were delighted to see used). Still, we recognise that this is nowhere near enough. To that end, we will be establishing a standing committee over the next few weeks, whose purpose it will be to provide us with advice on doing accessibility audits of all Pride activities. This committee will be made up of disabled people who wish to help advise Pride on future development, and we look forward to improving our record in this area.

Where Pride ’08 got it right

Despite all that I’ve written above – 2008 has been an incredible year for the Dublin LGBTQ Pride Festival, and overall, we have improved immeasurably on previous years. Below I want to highlight some of those improvements:

Improved PR – from getting front-page coverage on the Irish Times of our Programme Launch (thanks to securing John Gormley as a speaker) to getting Six-One coverage of the Pride Parade, we moved forward in huge leaps this year in comparison to previous years. Credit is largely due to our outstanding Press Officer, Amy O’Keefe.
Social Networking – facebook and bebo were used in a much more efficient way by the Pride organisation, to build a ‘buzz’ around Pride, but also to drum up numbers for our events. Most notably of all, our own decidated YouTube channel provided community members with an opportunity to say why Pride was important to them, and further served to increase the ‘buzz’ around Pride.
Sponsorship – this is one area I’m particularly delighted with. Firstly, we secured great sponsorship from both Google and IBM, which showed very clearly that Pride has the ability to attract sponsorship from multi-national companies. But equally impressively, it looks as though we’ve increased our public funding (thanks to grants from groups such as the City Council) to a level where it matches our private sponsorship. I firmly believe that acheiving a balance between public/philanthropic and private funding is essential to ensuring that we protect the identity of Dublin Pride.
Getting the big events right – there are five major events on which Pride’s success hinges – the Festival Launch Night, Dyke Night, Parade, Post-Parade rally and Pride Night Party. This year, we got each of these events spot on. While I ended up hosting Launch Night, it actually went really smoothly, with a nice tight show featuring Ladyface, Eden, Kristin Kapelli and Paul Ryder, before Bucks Fizz came on stage to finish the night. We packed out the George, and were completely thrilled with the event. Dyke Night was a spectacular success. We were a little concerned about this one, as were competing against both Kiss (the monthly lesbian club in Dublin) and Q&A (the monthly LGBTQ indie night). But we sold-out completely, which was terrific for our finances! The parade went really smoothly, leaving us arriving at the post-parade show 10 minutes early (an unprecented event!), while the post-parade rally was pared back to an 80 minute show. It was all nice and tight, and having Maria McKee and Brian Kennedy was just the icing on the cake! And finally, the Pride Night Party in the Tivoli. Again, this was a sell-out, with hundreds of people turned away from the venue. The feedback was amazing, with a couple of people telling me it was the best Pride Night Party in a decade. When these five events fo this well, everything else seems to fall into place!
New venue secured for Pride 2009 – this was one of the bext board achievements of the year, as we were able to announce IMMA as our venue for the future. This gives us genuine room for expansion of the festival, as well as giving us a huge boost to help drive the cultural side of the festival forward.
Increased turnover – we’ve managed to substantially increase the company turnover again this year. In 2006, the turnover of Dublin Pride was in the region of €24,000. In 2007, in our first year as a community-run organisation, this doubled to approximately €48,000. And if current budgeting projections are accurate, that will rise again to approximately €75,000 for 2008. At this rate, we hope to have a turnover of over €100,000 in 2009, and that really gives us scope for enlargement.
Increased number of volunteers – in 2006, there were less than 10 people really involved in the organisation of Pride. One the festival was taken over by the community in 2007, this rose to 30 people or more. And in 2008, that figure has roughly doubled, with 50-70 volunteers heavily involved in the organisation. All of whom did astonishing work in pulling things together in an organised way this year (particular mention to our Newbie of the Year, Niamh Nolan and the Pride of Pride [Overall Volunteer of the Year], Alan McArthur).

Everyone involved is taking a much deserved break for a week or two. But we have lots to do for next year! A bigger venue than ever before increases the scale of all of our activities. We need to massively increase our funding and the number of volunteers we have. We need to nail down our issues with accessibility and being family-friendly. We need to massively expand our artistic and cultural programme. We need to further open ourselves to community involvement, building on the links we have made this year. We need to develop our new relationships with other Pride organisations (in Ireland and abroad) to help us to grow into the future.

All of these and much, much more are possible. Feel free to drop me a line if you fancy jumping on board and helping us down this road