It was the 14th June 2016 and Southampton Guildhall Square held a vigil for the tragic loss of life from the Pulse shooting in Orland. Hundreds of people turned up to pay their respects on thie sombre occasion. Following the vigil, two women met and had a conversation about the fantastic turn out and discussed why there hadn’t been a Southampton Pride for over 20 years. A couple of days later they put a call out on Facebook for people to help and discuss the possibility of putting on a Pride event in the city. About 100 people turned up and out of those 6 people formed the Southampton Pride committee. They decided to get going straight away and 9 weeks later Southampton put on the first Southampton Pride. The weather was windy and wet but all the hard work paid off and over 5,000 people came to celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion.

We are now in our 8th year and last year saw approximately 17,500+ from all over the South come out to make the best Pride we’ve ever had.

Julianne, Danny, James, Matt, Mikey, Jay, Orlagh and Karen work hard all year round as volunteers with full time jobs, working to make every year better than the last. It’s not always easy but seeing a sea of rainbow colours and smiling faces makes it all worth-while.

We couldn’t do it without the support of local business and organisations, fabulous volunteers and the support of the city but each year as we grow, it becomes even harder to raise the funds to support this large-scale community driven event.

We NEVER want to charge entry into our event and we are proud of keeping Southampton Pride completely financially accessible for every single member of the community, but we do need your support. If even half of attendees last year donated a single pound to our fundraising pots, we would cover a significant chunk of our costs for the year.

Not everyone can donate but for those of you who can, please help us in our mission to make Southampton a safe space for LGBT+ people and give them an event to truly celebrate their identity each year.

#StandUP #StandOUT #StandPROUD