I don’t get to London often, but when I do, it tends to leave a mark… and this weekend was no exception. I’ve come home sitting with a feeling I’m still trying to properly articulate, somewhere between gratitude, inspiration, and a (not so) quiet hunger to do more.
It started on Friday afternoon at the Chancery Rosewood, at the tenth anniversary of the Peugeot X Attitude Pride Awards Europe, supported by British Airways. I was there as the guest of my friend Carl Cashman, and without his invitation I wouldn’t have been anywhere near it, so I can’t thank him enough for taking me along!
The Pride Awards focus on the ones doing the work in communities, in schools, in activism, in sport, often without the visibility their efforts deserve. Among this year’s ten winners were Ryan O’Neill and Kaue Garcia, the Keighley Cougars owners who have made trans inclusion central to a rugby league club’s identity, and Dean Atta, the BAFTA-winning poet whose work centres Black queer stories with real craft and tenderness. You can read the full list of winners on Attitude’s website.
The Pride Icon Awards went to Placebo, Cat Burns and ABC journalist James Longman, and the evening was hosted by Emma Willis with performances from Delta Goodrem and Heather Small. Russell T Davies was in the room, which, given everything I’d written recently about Tip Toe, felt VEEERRRYYY significant… gutted I didn’t take the opportunity to speak to him!
Being surrounded by people who have spent years doing the work, taking risks, building platforms, creating space for others, does something to you. It’s humbling in the most specific way, not in a self-deprecating sense, but in the sense of being reminded how much is possible and how much further there is to go.
I left wanting to be in more rooms like it, not for the sake of it, but because I genuinely believe that the more visible Proudly Said becomes, the more people it can reach and the more space it can create for voices that don’t always get to be heard.
The following morning was the Pride in London parade, marching for the first time alongside Carl and the Attitude and Peugeot group, and it was something I hadn’t quite prepared myself for emotionally. The scale of the crowd, the noise, the visible weight of support lining the streets, affected me more than I realised.
Check out my wee Instagram reel here.
What struck me most was how many organisations, city bodies, employers and institutions were there out of simple, genuine desire to be present. There was an infrastructure of allyship on display that felt hard won and something that had been worked at for a long time. The anti-LGBTQ+ messaging on the streets was almost invisible, though a glance at the online commentary told a very different story, and that gap between the physical reality and the digital one is important to take note of.
But I want to be careful not to romanticise it entirely, because London is London. The scale of what happened on Saturday is a function of being the capital, with funding, population, political weight and cultural infrastructure that Liverpool cannot replicate in the same way, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. The more useful question to bring home isn’t how do we do this, but what are the underlying conditions that make it possible, and how do we cultivate those locally in a way that’s true to what Liverpool actually is.
The Will and the community is there. The infrastructure and institutional buy-in is a more complicated conversation, and one worth having openly and honestly.
I came home from this weekend feeling inspired and a little hungry for what comes next, which is usually a sign that something was worth doing. There’s work to do, locally and beyond, and weekends like this one are a good reminder of why it matters.