Bristol Pride Festival 2021 featured a programme of events that spanned two weeks from Saturday 3rd July – Friday 16th July
During the two weeks, favourites from our usual programme of events took place in venues across the city. Bringing the city alive with Pride as we helped to support one of the hardest-hit sectors and ensuring we still celebrate Pride together.
Other events across the two weeks of the festival included a new spectacular drag Cabaret Night on Friday 9 July with headline performances from Divina de Campo and Tia Kofi from RuPaul’s Drag Race UK as well as favourites from across the UK circuit.
Our Comedy Night on Thursday 15 July featured Jayde Adams, Jessica Fostekew, Larry Dean, Sophie Duker and The Quimprov Players
We welcomed the return of the popular Circus Night, Theatre events and Queer Vision Film Festival.
Pride Day and Parade March were unable to go ahead in July due to Covid-19 and were postponed to later this year.
We have closely monitored the COVID rate nationally and for Bristol and the surrounding areas, we’ve also continued to have meetings with a safety advisory group. Your safety, health and wellbeing are paramount to us.
With all of these factors taken into consideration, it is with a very heavy heart that we cancelled the Parade March and Pride Day for this year.
There are various measures that we would need to put in place in order for us to be able to proceed with our plans, they include, full ticketing with a very limited capacity and we would need to ask for Covid Passes which can only be obtained by confirming your vaccine status or, from a negative COVID-test. We have been told it’s not possible to hold the parade or Pride Day without these measures which are in place for a valid reason.
The restrictions these procedures put in place go against what Pride is, some people would be able to come and others would not. These rules are not inclusive and to put further limitations in place, particularly for the march, means it is not open to everyone when it should be. Pride is about a community and people who are excluded. We don’t want to make it an event that increases the divide and, makes more people from our own community excluded.
Read our full statement here
If you want to, you can buy a Supporter Wristband. Priced at £5, they enable future events like Pride Day to remain accessible to those, who for socio-economic reasons, may not be able to afford to attend an exclusive ticketed event. It also helps to support us through these challenging times when we are struggling to hold fundraising events.
