In September 2019, while volunteering at Bromsgrove Youth and Community Hub, myself and the team took our LGBTQ+ youth group to Worcestershire Pride. It was a small community event, very different to the large pride events I’d attended previously, such as Birmingham Pride. While there, I thought to myself, “what if I set up a small pride event in Bromsgrove?”. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I took the idea to my manager the same day, and with the help of her and a couple of other staff members, Bromsgrove Pride was born. We quickly started having meetings, we came up with ideas and included some of the young people from our LGBTQ+ youth group. By the end of 2019, Bromsgrove Pride’s core team had been established. We had a committee, lots of ideas, and plenty of enthusiasm. We started planning an event to take place in Summer 2020. However, something we couldn’t have anticipated was the pandemic. Once Covid-19 hit, our plans were derailed. It would be another year before we could run an event.

So, on a rainy Saturday in October 2021, after two years of hard work, we held the first ever Bromsgrove Pride event on the high street. Despite the bad weather, we had a great turn out. Hundreds of people enjoyed the stalls, musicians and performers. The event was desperately needed, we had people telling us it was the first time they felt ‘seen’ and that the event meant a lot to them.

We are now in the final stages of planning our second event which is due to take place on the high street again, on Saturday 9th July from 11am-3pm. We are hoping to continue growing each year, and we are very excited for the future.