'We have to stand up and come together': Preston Pride more important than ever, organiser says

“About four or five years ago, a young lad came over to me, and he said, ‘I just wanted to say thank you’. I said, ‘Oh, thank you sweetheart, but what’s that about?’.

“He said, ‘I’m 13, and this is the only day I can be myself’. Then he walked away.”

The senior organiser of Preston Pride says she has enough tales to last a lifetime - but half a decade on, the story of the boy who stopped her in the street is the one she’ll still tell to everyone who will listen.

After nearly a year in the making, Deb Bradshaw says she and her team of volunteers are “really excited” to welcome Preston Pride 2026 on September 26.

Now on its 13th anniversary, the event brings more than 700 visitors to the Flag Market each year for a weekend of stalls, tribute acts, and, Deb says, “something a little bit different” to many other pride events across the country.

“There are bars nearby, but there’s no alcohol on-site.”

“It was our intention originally that it was always going to be a free community-feel event, not about ‘sex, drugs, and rock and roll’. It’s a completely different vibe than what you’d get at your traditional pride.

“I went to Manchester Pride this year, and there was a lot of stuff going on in the parade and the protests were a lot more prominent this year, but what stuck out to me was, ‘Why is the bar bigger than the stage?’.

“Because there’s no alcohol, we do get a lot of young people who attend with their mates.

“It’s very open, very accessible, and very family-friendly.”

Since the very beginning, Preston Pride has worked as an independent, volunteer-run event.

While it does accept additional donations from Preston City Council, Deb and the other organisers are “proud” to say they bring in enough each year to stand on their own feet.

After more than a decade of events, the team are now looking into becoming a registered community charity, so they can provide even stronger support to Preston’s LGBTQ+ community.

“We begged, stole, and borrowed,” Deb says, “but over the last five or six years, the council have really embraced pride. Our day now feels like a real part of the cultural calendar, which is brilliant.”

Over the past 13 years, Deb says she has seen a “huge rise” in the number of people taking part in the event each year - but that she has also seen a similar change in the number of ‘trolls’ she has encountered online.

“As soon as you advertise anything about pride, you get all these trolls who’ll come on: ‘Why do we need pride? What happened to straight pride?’.

“Something I have noticed is the amount of people who will just come out with something homophobic or racist, and go, ‘Well, actually, I’ve got freedom of speech’. That’s not freedom of speech: that’s a hate crime.

“It’s easy for people to say, ‘Yeah, you’ve got gay marriage, you’ve got this, that, and the other’, but as quickly as you can get that, it can all get taken away.”

Last year, the government recorded 22,511 LGBTQ+ hate crime incidents across England and Wales.

18,702 were related to sexual orientation (or perceived sexual orientation), with a further 3,809 targeted at transgender people (or people thought to be transgender).

Deb says that in her role campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights, she had been especially struck by the difficulties facing Preston’s transgender community, particularly following last year’s Supreme Court ruling which defined legal gender as sex assigned at birth.

While not legally binding, EHRC guidance issued earlier this year states that transgender women should use male facilities, and that transgender men could face being excluded from gendered facilities altogether.

“We had a deluge of people asking, ‘Where can we go? What can we do? Where can we be safe? Are we going to get pulled out of toilets?’. You can get support and equality, but as quick as it gets there, it can get taken away.

“Even Russell T. Davies himself has gone on the record to say he wished he hadn’t pushed so much for visibility, because has it done us any favours?

“Not everybody comes to pride. For older people who have fought through the seventies, who have been there since the beginning of pride protests, turning up to an event where it’s all whistle blowing, flag waving, singing, and dancing, when they’ve been arrested and beaten up by the police and dragged out of pubs for being gay, there can be an element of an age thing.

“For quite a lot of gay people I know, they also wouldn’t think about going to pride and outing themselves. That’s something I’ve again seen grow.”

However, as tensions remain high both in and out of the LGBTQ+ community, Deb says now is a better time than ever to support local pride events like that in Preston.

“We are all going backwards, so we have to stand up and come together,” she says.

“The big thing I want to see more of in Preston is actually more acceptance of communities and acceptance of difference: Preston is very diverse, and over the years, we’ve had many people from ethnically diverse communities coming to attend.

“I want to see even more diversity, and I want people to not be too frightened or scared to come.

”I’ve never forgotten that teenage boy,” she continues. “There are so many young people who are being impacted by the right wing politics that are slowly creeping in, but that for that one day, they can just go and be themselves. That’s why we do what we do.”

Preston Pride 2026 will take place on Saturday September 26. Further information about events, sponsors, and stalls is available on their website.

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