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We're very excited to share that, thanks to all your votes, we are the first LGBTQ+ event to win Best Large Festival at the UK Festival Awards.
The shortlist included the likes of BST Hyde Park, Reading and Leeds Festival, Download Festival, TRNSMT, and Isle of Wight Festival but Manchester Pride came out on top after going to a public vote.
The Manchester Pride Festival 2022 was co-designed with you, Greater Manchester’s LGBTQ+ communities, so we share this accolade with each and every person that contributed. This year saw stage takeovers from the likes of Black Pride MCR, Trans Creative and Drag Race UK winner, Danny Beard.
The Pride In Our Future report released earlier this year revealed a desire from Greater Manchester’s LGBTQ+ communities for the city’s Pride celebrations to focus on its activist roots and we were delighted to be able to welcome back the Manchester Pride Parade for the first time since 2019 after Covid-19 restrictions put a halt on the march in recent years.
Held each year over August bank holiday weekend, Manchester Pride Festival also includes elements such as Human Rights Forum, the Gay Village Party and the Candlelit Vigil – all which were identified as vital in furthering the cause of community-led activism.
This year we're proud to say we delivered our most queer and diverse programme to date, with over 86% of our artists being queer, more than 53% being women, over 52% people of colour, over 46% of our performers were trans or non-binary, and over 10% of our artists were disabled.
To win Best Large Festival means so much to all of us here at Manchester Pride, given only half a century ago we still had to hide who we truly are. The work of Pride organisations and other LGBTQ+ charities isn’t over. Hate crimes towards our communities here in the UK have doubled in the last five years, our trans siblings have to fight just to live their lives authentically, and there are still 69 countries with laws that criminalise homosexuality.
