Every year, one of the biggest events on the LGBT calendar is Brighton’s Gay Pride festival. This year on Saturday 3rd August, Brighton will be awash with fabulous floats, flamboyant costumes and wild events to celebrate diversity and inclusiveness. Everyone is welcome at the event regardless of sexuality or background for a place to celebrate without prejudice.
While Pride celebrations take place all over the country, Brighton, as the gay capital of the UK, definitely provides the biggest and best, and it’s well worth a visit. This year, it’s bigger and more colorful than ever before, and the Pride campsite is back for 2013 to ease the pressure on Brighton’s bustling B&Bs.
The main event is kicked off each year with a parade through the center of Brighton, ending up at Preston Park where the carnival takes place. The parade is a chance for community groups, colleagues and friends to get together and show off their creative side with fantastically fun floats and crazy costumes. This is well worth a watch, as it showcases why Brighton is such a brilliantly diverse place to be, and is always great fun for the tongue-in-cheek interpretations of the theme for the year.
The park event is one of the highlights of Brighton’s year. While it is now a paid event, this means that Pride is able to raise money for a variety of charities and to help fund next year’s event. The park is filled with marquees, dance tents, cabaret stages and fairground rides. There are also lots of information stands where you can find out more about the issues affecting the LGBT community, making the day informative as well as fun.
In the evening, lots of people take their celebrations into town, where Kemptown in particular comes alive with special Pride-themed nights. The gay bars and clubs are the hotspots of town, with most of the other clubs, pubs and bars joining in the celebrations by flying the rainbow flag and offering glorious Pride-themed celebrations.
If you’re thinking about heading down as a group, why not hire a coach to Brighton? The two main coach stops are in Patcham, a short walk from Preston Park, and Pool Valley, close to the start of the parade. This also prevents the issue of the massively overcrowded trains into Brighton on the weekend of Pride, and means you can be dropped off in a convenient location.
Carla Bowen is eagerly anticipating this year’s Pride celebrations and considers it one of the cultural highlights of her year, every year!
Gay pride festival is the main festival for the gay . They celebrate it with great energy and enthusiasm .