Manchester Pride Festival 2023: We take a look at the Gay Village as it prepares for the city’s famous Pride Parade and celebrations of the LGBTQ+ community

National World - LocalTV

Manchester Pride Festival is back for its annual celebration through the city centre streets.  The bank holiday weekend kickstarts with a bang as Pride takes place from August 25-28.  There are plenty of events during the course of the celebrations, including the famous Pride Parade on Saturday August 26.  The streets will be full of rainbows, pride flags and colourful costumes all weekend, and we spoke to local bar owners and workers along Canal Street to find out their thoughts on this year's festival.

Transcript

00:00 "I'm really excited to make the memories. I've had loads of pictures on the stage today. I'm so excited."

00:04 Manchester Pride Festival is back for its annual celebration through the city centre streets.

00:10 The bank holiday weekend kick-starts with a bang as Pride takes place from the 25th to the 28th of this month.

00:18 There are plenty of events throughout the course of the celebrations,

00:22 including the famous Pride Parade on Saturday the 26th.

00:26 And we spoke to local bar owners and workers along Canal Street to find out their thoughts on this year's festival.

00:32 "We've spent about two, three weeks getting this together just from our side, never mind Pride, the organisation.

00:38 For us as a business, there's a couple of bars, we have five outside bars. It's been ongoing.

00:44 And I say, are we tired? Yes, we are. But that's the downside.

00:47 The good side is we're about to kick off today from four o'clock

00:51 and we're looking at about 80,000 people about to hit Manchester's Gay Village,

00:55 which will be absolutely amazing. It doesn't matter whether it rains,

00:59 it doesn't matter whether the wind blows, it's just going to be one big party, come rain or shine.

01:03 I've been involved with it since 1989, in and around, actually working for Pride or running a business.

01:09 So this year is really good. What they've relied on, which I think is really good,

01:12 is made it, brought it back to its grassroots.

01:15 So made it all about the village and the people that use the village and the people that visit the village.

01:19 Pride is really important because it really highlights LGBT causes, really highlights

01:26 LGBT political situations and also raises the profile of Manchester's Gay Village,

01:30 because it is the only village in Europe. It is within a square mile and everybody can walk everywhere.

01:36 You don't need to get to a taxi to go to another venue because it's all here.

01:39 As you can see, we're not even open yet and there's either side of the camera here,

01:43 there's hundreds of people walking around, waiting for it to kick in.

01:46 So I've been told they're above and beyond ticket sales, so that should be fantastic.

01:51 Yeah, Pride is the most exciting, busiest weekend of the year. It's very busy because we're just on the

01:57 on the edge of when the parade finishes as well. So when that finishes, it's like, oof.

02:01 But yeah, yeah, it's a great weekend. Looking forward to it.

02:04 Just ticking everything off the list, getting everything in place, all the drinks are ready,

02:09 everything's ready now, so ready for the weekend.

02:12 Manchester's got such an amazing gay scene, LGBTQ scene, that Pride is just kind of an extra outpouring of

02:23 unity and happiness and yeah, people coming together.

02:26 We've been here 19 years now, so it's not our first rodeo, so hopefully things will go smoothly.

02:33 It should be a great weekend. We've got camp outside from 5 on the stage that is currently being

02:41 constructed now. We've got Clubland 90s 2000 inside and then we've got 25 Manchester Drag Queens on

02:48 Monday outside from 3 and also a drag show Monday evening.

02:52 It's just a no-judgement zone for anything really. It's not just about who you love,

02:59 it's just about who you are as a person and just accepting everyone.

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