Highland Pride organisers delighted with much-changed but ‘really successful” 2024 programme
Highland Pride organisers have hailed a “really successful” 2024 after their summer programme of events came to an end.
This year’s festival was forced to look different than previous iterations, with both Bught Park and the Northern Meeting Park being unavailable due to renovation works.
That meant that instead of a day full of celebration, the parade – which close to 1000 people attended towards the end of June – and post-march party were separated into two different events, leading to a six-week calendar of events across the Highlands.
It was a change that seemed risky to organisers, with no way of knowing how much interest there would be in individual events without something bigger to hang on to, but it has been well-received.
“It’s been a really successful way of doing things this year,” Highland Pride chair Sand Owsnett explained.
“We weren’t able to do what we did last year, so we had to do something completely different, but we think it’s been really successful.
“The parade was a really good day, the stalls all had really good engagement that day and again at Eden Court the stalls had really good engagement too.
“It has given people the opportunity to have a new audience, and that’s what the space was for.
“Overall it was more than what we had hoped for.
“Luckily our committee member Krissy managed to get a whole month of events in the Victorian Market, which was an amazing amount of work that brought in a whole lot more engagement with the local community and businesses.
“The whole thing has been really successful because we’ve been able to get a whole lot more people involved over the last six weeks.”
While Pride month is in the past and the Highland Pride calendar has officially been completed for 2024, LGBTQ+ people will not be disappearing for the next 11 months until next June.
Owsnett says they hope that the success of their 2024 schedule will lead to more support and visibility over the coming months, even without the influence of Pride.
“We want it to lead to continued support through sponsorship, people coming forward to put on more events throughout the year and donating,” they added.
“It also raises visibility for people to know they are not on their own.
“Some of the stalls we had were groups for queer people, so it’s really good visibility and I hope that will increase in the future as well as having more events.”
