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Scene magazine.Now with added Birmingham
On Friday, February 19, the Pride House project for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games was formally launched. The project aims to create a community hub – an inclusive space – to raise awareness of LGBTQ+ issues in sport and the wider Commonwealth. Pride House will welcome LGBTQ+ athletes, spectators, officials and their allies before, during and after the games. It will be a physical space for people to experience the event with others from the community, and to build a relationship with mainstream sport.
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As a concept, Pride House launched in Vancouver in 2010 when the local community established an LGBTQ+ safe space at the Winter Olympics. Since then, there have been more than 20 Pride Houses at international sporting events around the world. Created in association with Pride Sports – the UK-based LGBTQ+ sports organisation – Pride House Birmingham 2022 will showcase the very best in LGBTQ+ sports, providing education and encouraging participation in sport and physical activity across the West Midlands. Piero Zizzi, one of the Pride House Birmingham organisers, said: “As a Brummie, I am hugely proud to be leading on this project.
Pride House Birmingham will celebrate the fantastic diversity of England’s second city, explore our relationship with the Commonwealth and create a lasting legacy for LGBTQ+ inclusion in sport.” To mark the launch of the Pride House project, organisers are welcoming their first elite athletes – all hoping to compete in the upcoming Commonwealth Games – to the programme. Dutee Chand is an Indian professional sprinter and the current national champion in the women’s 100m event. Michael Gunning is a Jamaican swimmer and currently holds the national record for the 200m butterfly. Tom Bosworth is a British race walker, a Commonwealth Games silver medallist and six times British record holder. Scottish wheelchair basketball player Robyn Love, a Paralympian and a World Championship silver medallist, commented on her role as an ambassador. She said: “I’m honoured to be an ambassador for Pride House Birmingham. I think it will be a fantastic space in which we will not only celebrate the diversity of athletes participating in the Commonwealth Games, but welcome all members of the LGBTQ+ community and their allies in a safe, welcoming and educational environment.” Pride House organisers believe that this project has a particularly important role to play due to the global attention that will be on the Commonwealth Games in 2022. In a press release, they highlighted the initiative’s goals to draw attention to LGBTQ+ rights globally, particularly given that homosexual activity is still a criminal offence in 35 of the 54 sovereign states of the Commonwealth. Pride House is working closely with the Commonwealth Games Federation “to ensure that this initiative builds on Pride Houses at previous Games and forms part of wider plans for equality, diversity and inclusion across the Commonwealth Sport Movement”.
Birmingham LGBTQ+ community reveals plans for permanent HIV/AIDS memorial
Birmingham community groups, businesses and individuals are working together to raise money for a permanent AIDS & HIV Memorial in Birmingham’s Southside District within the LGBTQ+ village. Garry Jones, an artist living and working in Birmingham, explained the moment the idea for the memorial came to him. “It all happened after watching It's A Sin on Channel 4, I just posted on a Facebook page whether anyone would be interested in getting together, during this pandemic, to remember the forgotten pandemic in the 1980s and I got an amazing response.” Garry was 21 in 1981 and when the HIV/AIDS pandemic first hit the UK he remembers: “Just as you were finding out who you were, this awful disease hit the scene. You just saw people disappear, you didn't know where they were, whether they'd died or gone home. "I'd like the memorial to be a legacy, a suitable memorial for all those forgotten people.” Garry added: “I think it will be a symbol of hope for the future too. I don't want them to be forgotten, it will mean the world to me.” While there are no details on exactly where the memorial will go or what it will look like, Phil Oldershaw, co-founder of Birmingham Pride, said: “For obvious reasons, many people would like to see it on the top of Hurst Street, near where the new Hippodrome Square will be, which is a central point to the gay community and Hippodrome Theatre because a lot of people in the 1980s and 90s lost their lives that worked in the theatre industry. “However, we've got to work with officials in the city to find a suitable spot, which is convenient for all, that is the right place for a landmark to go.” Plans for Birmingham’s HIV & AIDS Memorial are still in their early stages of planning but fundraising is already well underway. Last month, the Nightingale Club raised over £4,000 with a live-streamed, star-studded drag show featuring Ginny Lemon from season two of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK and The Fox Bar hosted a back to the 80s night. Phil Oldershaw stated: “It's about time Birmingham had a place for people to acknowledge those lost, acknowledge those suffering… The community has now got together to come on board and help get this project and turn it from a thought and vision and make it a reality.”
To donate to the Nightingale Club fundraiser, visit: www.gofundme.com/f/
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Scene in Birmingham is a new page sharing LGBTQ+ community news from the city and the West Midlands.
