Latest news with #UKPON
BBC News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Portsmouth hosts UK Pride 2025 celebrations
Portsmouth will take centre stage later as it hosts the UK Pride 2025 Hampshire city was chosen out of more than 260 community-run Pride organisations across the UK "with a strong majority", said UK Pride Organisers Network (UKPON).The celebration will "shine a national spotlight on the work of a volunteer-run local charity organising one of the biggest, completely free and unfenced Pride events in the country", said Portsmouth festival is a celebration of LGBTQ+ communities and the event is free and open to all. Thousands of people are expected at the main event, described as the focal point to the pride season by UKPON, on Southsea Robinson, from Portsmouth Pride, said: "What we do is unique".Portsmouth Pride is "fully volunteer run, fully community run, completely free and completely unfenced on a scale that nobody else and does," he said."We thought that's the opportunity, to use the UK pride title to show off that work." 'Year of work' The event is open to everyone, said CP, adding: "The bigger we can make it, the more people we can impact. "It's not about us as an LGBTQ+ community necessarily just coming together and doing something, it's about saying to the rest of the city of Portsmouth - and anyone else who wants to come and visit us - this is us, this is our community, this is our work, this what we do."The celebration on Saturday will be the "product of a year of work", said CP."Pride is not just that one day, we're running programmes and projects and initiatives year round, with sport and health and HIV and sober spaces, drug and alcohol addiction recovery services – the day is the celebration of all of that work." Nadine Coyle from Girls Aloud will be headlining at the event, alongside entertainment from Ru Paul's Drag Race UK winner Kyran Thrax and alumni Victoria Scone and River Medway, plus Katie Price and Sabrina Washington from Mis-Teeq. You can follow BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
6 days ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Trump's attack on DEI hits UK as corporate sponsors abandon LGBTQ pride
The Trump administration's attack on US diversity, equity and inclusion policies is reverberating across the Atlantic, with corporations abandoning sponsorships of Britain's Pride festivals, threatening key funding for events this summer. Three quarters of more than 100 Pride organizers have seen a decline in corporate partnerships this year and a quarter of them have seen funding from sponsorships drop over 50 per cent, according to exclusive data from the UK Pride Organisers Network (UKPON). That's hit smaller parades particularly hard, with several canceling events that were planned for Pride Month, which is celebrated globally each June in memory of the Stonewall protests. Sponsorship withdrawals have been particularly pronounced from American businesses, according to Pride in London. The UK's biggest LGBTQ parade relies on corporate sponsors to cover the £1.7 million ($2.3 million) it costs to host more than 1.6 million attendees during its July 5 festival. But this year, longtime sponsors have stepped away, said Christopher Joell-Deshields, chief executive officer of Pride in London. 'Across the Pride movement, there is a very different feel this year,' Joell-Deshields said. 'Some of our sponsors are global partners and we're seeing the effect of those who are based in the US who have seen the roll back of DEI. We're having to push harder in terms of sponsors and getting them to understand the importance of the Pride platform.' Companies doing business in the US have rushed to appear politically neutral after President Donald Trump signed executive orders demanding the end of what he calls 'illegal DEI.' The order was a culmination of a broader blowback against what some US conservatives have dubbed 'woke capitalism,' with activists calling for boycotts against firms that give money to causes like LGBTQ rights and racial-equity programs. The pullback in LGBTQ support is a trend already documented in the US, where a survey of corporate executives revealed that two in five were scaling back Pride Month engagement this year, leaving organizers scrambling for funds. Earlier in May, New York City Pride announced it was looking at a $750,000 budget shortfall and launched a community fundraising campaign to keep the event free to attend. Still, it's not all the Trump effect, according to Jamie Love, the marketing director for Pride in Edinburgh. The UK's intensifying debate over transgender rights, with the Supreme Court recently ruling that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, has caused some brands to sidestep Pride partnerships altogether to avoid controversy, he said. 'The ones that want to engage, want to engage really meaningfully, but there are fewer of them,' said Love, adding that this is proving to be 'the driest year' for sponsorships. The website for the festival in the Scottish capital now displays just five partners, including German supermarket brand Lidl and the UK's Tesco Plc. Last year, the site boasted 13 sponsors. The page for the London festival has recently been updated with a list of 2025 sponsors and advocates, among them is headline sponsor Pridepay, a UK-based payment processing platform for the LGBTQ community. However, other brands that have featured repeatedly in recent years are missing this year. Still, the biggest impact has been on smaller festivals. Some Pride events were canceled in Southampton, Hereford and Taunton, while Plymouth's official parade has been replaced by a community-led one. Looking forward, Pride organizations may have to diversify their revenue streams, seeking more grant funding from councils or turning free parades into ticketed events, said Dee Llewellyn, the chair of UKPON. In the interim, LGBTQ+ organizations will have to adapt to the new environment, said Ian Howley, CEO of health and wellbeing charity LGBT HERO. Even if larger brands ask to sponsor events again once the dust settles, he said the community won't easily forgive firms for abandoning them this year. 'The damage is already done and we don't forget,' Howley said. 'We will remember that they weren't there when we needed them the most.'
Bloomberg
6 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Trump's Attack on DEI Hits UK as Corporate Sponsors Abandon LGBTQ Pride
The Trump administration's attack on US diversity, equity and inclusion policies is reverberating across the Atlantic, with corporations abandoning sponsorships of Britain's Pride festivals, threatening key funding for events this summer. Three quarters of more than 100 Pride organizers have seen a decline in corporate partnerships this year and a quarter of them have seen funding from sponsorships drop over 50%, according to exclusive data from the UK Pride Organisers Network (UKPON). That's hit smaller parades particularly hard, with several canceling events that were planned for Pride Month, which is celebrated globally each June in memory of the Stonewall protests.
