Gay May Day retrospective
May. 15th, 2005 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
memevectorDerby Gay May Day was rather enjoyable. Weather was stupendously gorgeous, sunny but breezy. Atmosphere was friendly. The event was in a square next to the Assembly Rooms in the city centre, so there were shoppers walking past as well as the queer contingent.
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wandra hung out on the stall with us and brought yummy picnic food. 36 and illusiveash came by, as well as some non-LJ friends and briefly later on lipfringe.
I now have a new Assume Nothing sign for stall decoration purposes. I decided that the banner, though beautiful, was a bit too fragile in storage/transport and a bit time-consumingly tricky to put up and take down, and by a lucky chance I have the loan of a laminator at the moment. The new thing is based on the same lettering templates as I drew for the banner, cut out in pink paper and stuck on black background, trimmed according to letter width, laminated one sheet per letter, and linked together. In one way it's better than the banner visually (as well as logistically), because there's more of a contrast with the background.wandra gets a credit for letter-cutting-out skills as deployed last Thursday night. 318808 gets a credit for doing a similar laminated-letters sign before me and giving me the idea.
[Laminating things, oh yes indeedy! It's the new black! (Though not very "green".) All my other stall signs have been getting laminated too :-) ]
The Gay May Day event was a collaboration among several different organisations, and it was billed as an awareness-raising day rather than a Pride festival. A lot of the other stalls weren't specifically LGBT, but mainstream organisations wanting to connect with the LGBTQ communities. The key linchpin organiser person was Adrian from Derby Friend, to whom i.m.o. much respect is due.
The Mayor gave a speech saying something like: the "problem with sexuality" was that lack of understanding led to fear. And that today was a good step in the right direction because it would lead to more understanding and that would be good for the vibes of the city. ... Well, along those lines anyway, albeit without using the word "vibes" :-)
Sold a fair number of badges (including a few more "straight but not narrow" than I'd expect at the average Pride day). I was pleased to observe various people picking up BiCon flyers. Yay!
All in all it felt like a well worthwhile thing and I was pleased we'd gone.
wandra hung out on the stall with us and brought yummy picnic food. 36 and illusiveash came by, as well as some non-LJ friends and briefly later on lipfringe. I now have a new Assume Nothing sign for stall decoration purposes. I decided that the banner, though beautiful, was a bit too fragile in storage/transport and a bit time-consumingly tricky to put up and take down, and by a lucky chance I have the loan of a laminator at the moment. The new thing is based on the same lettering templates as I drew for the banner, cut out in pink paper and stuck on black background, trimmed according to letter width, laminated one sheet per letter, and linked together. In one way it's better than the banner visually (as well as logistically), because there's more of a contrast with the background.
wandra gets a credit for letter-cutting-out skills as deployed last Thursday night. 318808 gets a credit for doing a similar laminated-letters sign before me and giving me the idea.[Laminating things, oh yes indeedy! It's the new black! (Though not very "green".) All my other stall signs have been getting laminated too :-) ]
The Gay May Day event was a collaboration among several different organisations, and it was billed as an awareness-raising day rather than a Pride festival. A lot of the other stalls weren't specifically LGBT, but mainstream organisations wanting to connect with the LGBTQ communities. The key linchpin organiser person was Adrian from Derby Friend, to whom i.m.o. much respect is due.
The Mayor gave a speech saying something like: the "problem with sexuality" was that lack of understanding led to fear. And that today was a good step in the right direction because it would lead to more understanding and that would be good for the vibes of the city. ... Well, along those lines anyway, albeit without using the word "vibes" :-)
Sold a fair number of badges (including a few more "straight but not narrow" than I'd expect at the average Pride day). I was pleased to observe various people picking up BiCon flyers. Yay!
All in all it felt like a well worthwhile thing and I was pleased we'd gone.
