Why we still need Chester Pride
"It's kind of like history is repeating itself."
Those are the words of Warren Allmark, chair of Chester Pride, who says the annual community celebration is as important in 2025 as it has ever been.
To chart the progress of Chester Pride, alongside the evolving experience of those within the community, Chester Nub News sat down with Warren and community engagement officer, Rachael Roberts.
We met in the Rainbow Tearooms on Bridge Street, a Pride-affiliated venue known as a year-round "safe space" - ahead of the yearly event set to take place next month.
Chester Pride started in 2013 on Town Hall Square, with around 2,500 attendees. Just nine years later that number had grown to 21,000 people.
With a number of Pride events cancelled this year, such as Southampton, Plymouth and almost Liverpool, Chester's resilience shines in a climate of uncertainty across the UK.
Both Rachael and Warren acknowledged that the celebration has "changed dramatically", citing the once "joyous event" is becoming increasingly more of a "battle" financially and politically.
These changes, fuelled by Pride funding cuts and growing online hate, have influenced the necessity for more safe spaces in the city, the pair said.
Rejecting the belief that Pride is no longer needed, or that it has served its purpose, Rachael referenced certain "nuances" that most people will never experience outside of the community.
"It definitely is needed," she said, "Just because Pride happens doesn't mean we're taking away from another marginalised group."
Warren added: "It's that one day of the year where you know full well, on that site, you can be whoever you want to be."
He recalled a conversation one year with a woman who had brought her step-daughter to Chester Pride, after telling her dad she was a lesbian.
The step-mum revealed to Warren that she received three fractured ribs and a broken jaw in response. At the event, she could understand who she was in a space free from shame or violence - where "she could be herself".
"Her own father attacked his own flesh and blood because his daughter is different to what he wanted her to be," Warren added.
"About two years ago I got a tap on the shoulder from the same girl who was there with her partner. They had just started an adoption process to take a kid on.
"This isn't an isolated story; it is for Chester, but across the world there are so many families kicking out children because of who they are.
"It's little things like this that are why Pride exists."
In charting the progress of Pride over the years, and the wider experience of being gay in the city, he argued the bulk of discrimination faced within the LGBTQ community has found a new target.
He added: "In the 50s and 60s, gay men were marching just to be able to not be put in prison for being gay. Now we seem to be doing it for trans people.
"It's a whole reset that's happened again, and it's very strange."
The chair listed patterns in the media to explain how LGBTQ hate speech has moved to issues of trans men and women.
"It was about gay men in the past, now it's about trans men, trans women. It's the same sort of narrative being pushed out there," he added, "The same sort of hate".
Education is at the forefront of reducing hate crime, they argued, stating "there's always a pushback about things when people don't understand".
Warren said: "The natural defence is to push back against it, It's not to come along and learn.
"The younger generation have an open mind; they're very much willing to learn and very much willing to try to understand. That can only be a good thing."
With numbers looking good for next month's festival, and the likes of Chesney Hawkes, Liberty X and more taking to the stage, the duo remain rooted in the belief that Chester Pride is needed more than ever.
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