There’s a photo of me outside Liverpool Experience Campus (LEX, formerly ACC Liverpool) holding my Proudly Said notebook, grinning in the May sunshine. To most people, it’s just a nice picture outside a big venue, but to me, it marks a return, and one that feels very much on my own terms.
Let me explain.
I first got involved with Liverpool Pride as a volunteer in 2016. I wanted to do something locally, something LGBTQ+ related, and Liverpool Pride felt like the natural fit. I started out handling social media and content creation, and apparently couldn’t help having opinions about everything else while I was at it (shock), which, it turns out, was exactly what the board was looking for. By 2017 they asked me to become a trustee, and by 2018 I was Co-Chair of what became the biggest Liverpool Pride festival to date.
That same energy, the belief that Liverpool Pride could be something bigger, something that both acted as a means to convey the message of Pride BEYOND Pride, whilst also drawing the national LGBTQ+ community to our city for a whole weekend, was part of what drove the co-founding of LCR Pride Foundation in early 2019. One of our ambitions from the very beginning was a “Pride at the Arena” moment: a large scale, ticketed event that would help sustain and support the delivery of the free Pride festival, while putting Liverpool on the map as a destination for the national LGBTQ+ community. A flagship event that said: come to Liverpool, see how extraordinary this city and this community is.
I stepped down from the LCR Pride Foundation board later that year, and life, as it tends to do, took over. I moved to Northern Ireland in 2020, where I faced my own challenges and demons, before returning to Liverpool in 2023. Throughout all of it I remained a vocal LGBTQ+ advocate, because telling queer stories has never felt optional to me.
Pride in Liverpool, though, felt like something I had stepped back from (and was more than happy to keep it that way). But then in 2025, when, through my role at Sahir, Liverpool’s oldest LGBTQ+ and HIV charity, I found myself part of the early conversations and planning around what became Liverpool’s Pride, following the cancellation of LCR Pride Foundation’s Pride in Liverpool event. It was a surreal experience to find myself part of again.
And now this. I’ve been brought in to work alongside Liverpool Experience Campus to support the delivery of their Liverpool’s Pride Opening Party, a paid ticketed event on the night before the main Saturday celebration, helping to sustain and grow what Pride weekend in this city can be.
Community outreach, PR and marketing: the kind of work I’ve been doing in various forms for the better part of a decade. And crucially, involvement on my own terms, without the weight of organising the whole thing.
That arena dream we had back in 2019 is happening, and it’s incredible to see that it emerged organically, through partner organisations working together, which is, honestly, so much better. That’s what a healthy community ecosystem looks like.
I said it on LinkedIn, and I’ll say it again here: true full circle moment.
Standing outside LEX, Proudly Said notebook in hand, I felt something I don’t always let myself feel…
That everything has come together, wrapped up in a neat bow. That the journey, the volunteering, the trustee role, the co-chair years, the co-founding, the time away, the return, the podcast, all of it has been part of something coherent. Something worth being proud of.
Last year, the arena happened. A conversation, a tight timeline, and a community that truly showed up.
It was reactive, brilliant, and proof that the instinct we had back in 2019 was right.
This year, it’s growth, making the Pride weekend in Liverpool the destination it always had the potential to be. And, somehow, I get to be part of shaping that.
That’s not a small thing. Not to me.