CityLife

Main event: Manchester Pride Fringe 2010

An image from Ed Swinden's Life Of Pride exhibition

August 20 to 27, 2010

Like all great festivals, Manchester Pride has spent the last 20 years getting bigger and better. Since its inception as a parade and fund raiser, Pride has become a nationally celebrated event that attracts thousands of global visitors year on year.

“Last year, we had 42,000 people attend the Pride site for the Big Weekend,” says festival director Jackie Crozier, who has headed up the festival for five years.

“Each year we try to encourage as many people as possible to put on events in the six days leading up to the festival.

“It’s an opportunity for community groups, organisations and businesses to show not just what’s going on in Manchester in those six days but also through the rest of the year.

“We want to encourage people to come back not just to Manchester Pride but also to the rest of the city.”

In 2010, the festival runs for 10 full days, beginning with the Pride Fringe today – a creative complement to the party-hard Big Weekend, with more than 40 arts, theatre and cinema events running until Thursday. The Big Weekend takes over next Friday for four full days of music and entertainment.

It is a loud and proud festival – which is just as it should be; the message of Pride is about acceptance, of understanding how all communities can enrich each other’s experience of life in Greater Manchester.

But it’s also about fundraising for HIV charities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) groups in the region.

In 2009, Pride raised a record charity pot of £135,000. All that money benefits groups in Greater Manchester, which in turn benefits the region as a whole. As Jackie explains, Pride offers 10 days of entertainment and cultural enlightenment, but Pride’s work doesn’t finish on August 30.

“It was absolutely fantastic that we managed to raise so much money last year,” she says. “After we’ve worked out the costs of staging Pride, the money is split up into four sections to fund HIV and LGBT groups in Greater Manchester.

“We’re committed to giving 25 per cent of the money to George House Trust, another 25 per cent to the LGT condom and lube scheme, and over 25 local LGBT groups were given money.

“It’s absolutely fantastic that we can help so many community groups.

Obviously, what we can raise is dependent on ticket sales, but it would great to raise over £100,000 again.”

There’s a serious message to Pride, no doubt, but it couldn’t have found a more fun way to get it across. And such is the rising profile of Pride that even its Fringe Festival has a fringe these days; this year’s calendar started as early as August 4 and, across the whole of the Pride Fringe, most events are free.

A quick scan of this year’s calendar shows up two major features in 2010. Firstly, there are more events than ever before in advance of the Big Weekend, but secondly the organisers are finding more and more interesting ways to make Pride into a collective experience for everyone.

Pinpointing that change is Rachel Joseph’s exhibition Welcome To My World, which opens today at Selfridges & Co, in Exchange Square (free). Joseph, a respected celebrity photographer whose work more commonly appears in the pages of OK! and Heat magazines, has gathered a group of musicians and TV stars to identify themselves with the gay community.

‘I am gay’ declares one image held by an anonymous mannequin, ‘my friend is gay’ another; still others identify mothers, brothers, sisters and partners – their aim being to normalise being gay or having someone close to you who is gay.

The Gossip’s Beth Ditto, chat show host Graham Norton, actress Patsy Kensit, Coronation Street’s Shobna Gulati (CityLife’s front cover) and Antony Cotton, Shameless’ Tina Malone and musician Marc Almond appear.

“Getting a message of acceptance out is difficult, but it’s amazing the power of celebrity,” says Jackie. “It’s OK when you live in a big city with a vibrant gay community like we have in Manchester, but if you’re living out in the middle of nowhere, looking at an exhibition like this and seeing celebrities say it is OK to be gay is reassuring.

“If that gives the confidence to one person to be comfortable with their sexuality, this exhibition is definitely worth it. It’s a fantastic way to start Manchester Pride.”

Much of the Fringe’s arts programme adheres to that principle. Rachel Adams’ The Modern Lesbian (opens today, 52 Princess St, free) examines how gay and bisexual women have shaped Manchester’s cultural, commercial and social history for over 50 years, while LGF’s postcard book – If These Walls Could Talk – sets free hundreds of women’s secrets contextualised by a screening of The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister (Monday, Lesbian and Gay Foundation, Princess House, free).

Amnesty International’s Love Is A Human Right (Monday, venue TBC, free) invites panellists who have been victims of discrimination to discuss their experiences and encourage others to support a United Nations Declaration of Human Rights that respects sexuality and gender identity.

The Imperial War Museum North focuses on the 10th anniversary of the removal of the ban on homosexuality in the armed forces via a series of talks and personal accounts (ongoing, free) and also turns its regular A Closer Look tour into a LGBT-themed event, with stories from gay serviceman Jo Kirk and Patrick Lyster-Todd, who served in the RAF and navy consecutively (Tues/Thurs, 2.30pm, free).

But among the more unusual Fringe events is Pride’s vibrant sports calendar.

It’s a tie-in without gender or sexual identity informing it, but it does encourage people to think about issues of health and lifestyle. Jackie says Pride was approached by community group Large Outdoors to include the sporting activities and agreed that it would be a novel way to get people together – as well as highlight and support Manchester’s leisure services in the long term.

“I’m going canoeing next week to take a couple out hours out of the Pride madness,” laughs Jackie. “It’s great to take a couple of hours out to discover climbing or skydiving; it shows you can live that healthy lifestyle in a fun way.

“It’s good that we have a variety of events, from comedy to sport. And there’s the Pink Dog Show, of course (Sunday, Sackville Gardens, free/£1 to enter), which is very camp but a really good event put on my Manchester Dogs’ Home.

“Anybody can come along to any of the events and we’ve got so many events going on this year that we can really showcase what Manchester has to offer.”

Various venues/times/prices, but most events are free. See www.manchesterpride.com/whatson/fringe for a full schedule and downloadable brochure.