Pride in London was recently hosted by partners BT at an icon of the London skyline, the BT Tower, where the volunteer-led team revealed the official campaign theme for 2022: “#AllOurPride'' as the kick-off to this year’s events and programming. Created in partnership with the LGBT+ led team behind WPP Unite, the campaign commemorates the 50th anniversary of the original march in the UK by uniting the collective past, present, and future of pride from every corner of the LGBT+ community, culminating with a powerful statement of shared experience: #AllOurPride.
“This campaign celebrates the true LGBT+ spirit of London, with all its diversity and its glory. This spirit has filled this city’s streets every year, and with this campaign, we commemorate it living on loud and proud for over 50 years,” said Christopher Joell-Deshields, Executive Director of Pride in London.
#AllOurPride is a unifying campaign that connects the present with five decades of powerful LGBT+ moments, celebrations, and historic community events in London. With a core focus on the importance of the Pride March, the campaign uses black and white historical imagery from archive collections that capture vignettes of the march’s significance, representing all LGBT+ voices from every era. It explores the community’s fight for respect, decriminalisation of love, and the challenging but ultimately victorious battles around Section 28 and the ban on gay men donating blood. In a time of tremendous adversity for the community on many fronts, #AllOurPride reflects the multitude of battles we have been fighting as a country and as a city. It also offers a platform to the community’s ongoing struggles, such as the fight to ensure a ban on conversion therapy for all members of the LGBT+ community.
“The iconic LGBTQ+ individuals in our campaign represent the unique span of our communities living, protesting, and thriving in our incredible capital city” said Asad Shaykh, Director of MarComms for Pride in London. “We are honoured to weave these lived moments from the past 50 years that bring the movement into the present, blending queer joy and protest into a historic campaign, powered entirely with LGBT+ creativity for this year’s momentous Pride.”
On Saturday 2 July, after a two-year hiatus, the 2022 Pride Parade returns to the streets of the capital with nearly 40,000 applications from all sections of the community and over 400 community groups. The parade pays homage to the 1972 march, passing significant sites from the UK’s first LGBT+ movement. This year, the parade kicks off at Hyde Park Corner, the terminus for the first momentous 1972 march, where mining communities showed solidarity with the LGBT+ community in 1985. From Hyde Park Corner, the parade continues down Piccadilly, through Piccadilly Circus. The parade then turns south on Haymarket, through Trafalgar Square, before culminating at Whitehall Place.
Among this year’s major events is Proud and Loud: Celebrating 50 Years Of Pride, an unmissable and powerful fundraiser concert at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday 4 June 2022. Proud and Loud will raise the roof with spectacular music performances and LGBT+ icons celebrating the past 50 years of Pride in the UK, with a look at what the future holds for the LGBT+ community and raising money for Pride in London’s Unity Fund Groups. The first acts to be announced are huge UK singer-songwriter Calum Scott, who rose to fame with his incredible cover of Robyn’s Dancing on My Own in 2015 and has gone from strength to strength ever since and trailblazing LA-based pop star, LGBT+ icon and advocate, Hayley Kiyoko who both perform as part of an incredible line-up at the historic Royal Albert Hall. Additionally, Pride Lates at the Science Museum, a free event that is completely open to the general public, will make its long anticipated in-person return on June 29th, 2022, for an evening of exploration and celebration of Pride’s 50-year history in the UK.
“Our approach for developing the campaign was as important as delivering the campaign itself,” said David Adamson, Unite Founder & Co-Chair. “Any LGBT+ creative from any WPP agency was invited to come up with the idea, and we built an entirely LGBT+ team from across our agencies to build and deliver it. At this scale, it’s an industry first. Everyone who has touched the campaign from creative, strategists, designers, media buyers to PR is from the LGBT+ community and poured their genuine experiences and opinions of pride into its creation.”
Pride in London gives back to the local community through volunteering and awarding grants to local LGBT+ serving organisations. Pride in London is accepting applications for the Unity Fund grant this year, which is focused on financially assisting non-profit and community organisations which serve and are led by the LGBT+ community in London. In 2021, £100,000 raised via commercial sponsorship has been awarded to grassroots community organisations in this space including Aesthesia CIC, Black Trans Alliance CIC, FTM London/TransM London, House of Rainbow CIC, Living Free UK CIC, London Gay Symphony Ochestra, and Out & Proud African LGBTI.
We will come together and cry, WE MARCH, for #ALLOURPRIDE
