together and provide a fun-filled day for everyone, with a plethora of acts and live music, alongside plenty of stalls, food and drink and a fun fair with an afterparty to follow! The three-day event will be held at Selwyn Samuels Garden. On the Friday, you can expect an evening of entertainment hosted by the Llanelli Pride Proms team; the parade and other acts and entertainment will follow up over the weekend.
How much: £5 for Llanelli Pride Proms night Info:
llanellipride.co.uk
POWYS PRIDE Llandrindod Wells, Sat 16 July Powys Pride is the first annual celebration of and by the LGBTQIA+ community across all of Powys. There will be daytime events across the green (Temple Gardens) that are free for everyone to enjoy, including a parade; various stalls and performances and a kids area; a ticketed evening show in
the Mid Wales Pavilion featuring a performance from drag queens Polly Amorous and Pixie Perez; and an ‘Absolute Britney’ show starring Lucy Rose (aka the “most authentic Britney Spears tribute act”), complete with some of the industry’s finest backup dancers, captivating costumes and special effects. To finish the night off, there’ll be a house and disco DJ set from Madame Twisted.
How much: £13.75 Info:
powyspride.org
PRIDE & JOY ORCHESTRAL
Wales’ first Queer Fringe Festival takes over Cardiff
Frustrated with the lack of events happening during Pride month in Cardiff, the team behind St Mary Street’s
decided to change this.
originally was going to be five nights of comedy at the Emporium (programmed by Leila Navabi) on Thursdays across June, the team decided to extend this out into the city for a colourful month of inclusive art, music and performances.
The Queer Emporium What
PERFORMANCE Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Sun 17 July, 4pm
Pride & Joy is curated by violinist, singer and songwriter Joy Becker. She is joined by a five-piece ensemble of strings and percussion for this performance of ‘healing and celebration’, focussing on wellbeing and nurture in different guises. The playlist features an entirely LGBTQIA+ composer lineup in celebration of the queer community in music. Expect a wide range of musical styles, from classical to David Bowie and original contemporary folk music by Joy herself. Leave life’s pressures at the door and go along for some musical soul food.
How much: £14/£12 over 60/£8 under 30/£3 under-18s Info:
sinfonia.cymru
PRIDE CYMRU’S BIG
WEEKEND Cardiff,
Sat 27 + Sun 28 Aug Since 1999, Pride Cymru’s Big Weekend has been the biggest annual event for Wales’ LGBTQ+ community. They produce work with organisations such as Glitter Cymru, Bi Cymru, Victim Support and the Deaf Hub Wales in a way that can benefit all parts of the community. Every year – with the exception of the last (damn you, COVID) – you can expect a colourful parade, a music festival, comedy shows, a queer picnic and drag stars painting the nation’s capital city in rainbow colours.
QUEER SQUARE MILE
A collection of 40 short stories about the experiences of queer Welsh people; a window to their, historically, often secretive lives; and a record of how, in time, the community empowered themselves, claiming back their sexuality and therefore their very being. Queer Square Mile’s first 38 pages serve as introduction before the rich, illustrious narratives, which span the mid-19th century to the present day and include some first-time translations from Welsh by esteemed writers such as Kate Roberts. Incorporating academic readings and historical studies of how coded language functions in a bilingual society, the stories that follow each have extraordinary merit. Themes raised include the decriminalisation of
homosexuality and the stigma around openly expressing sex- uality; more broadly, identity, conflict, control, gender, Other- ness-as-strangeness,
and exploration. In a wider con- text of religious influence, it’s underlined how the law became a means of making language fit for a particular area of society, and ap- preciate the book’s running com- mentary, which more profound- ly explains how Queer Square Mile’s themes are intertwined in a multifaceted and complex way.
belonging
Queer Square Mile, Kirsti Bohata, Mihangel Morgan & Huw Osborne [eds.] (Parthian, £20)
BILLIE INGRAM SOFOKLEOUS 23
“I thought, why do everything at The Queer Emporium?” festival director Yan White explains. “There are a lot of people who want to do events so I thought, let’s do the whole of Pride month. This is The Queer Emporium’s first birthday and we’ve already got all of these comedians coming so let’s just make it into a huge festival around the city!”
Check the Pride Cymru website for updates about what’s on leading up to the weekend.
How much: TBC Info:
pridecymru.com
TRAWSNEWID
EXHIBITION National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, until Sun 31 July In this exhibition, Welsh LGBTQ+ history, culture and artwork are celebrated through select archival objects and new artworks from Amgueddfa Cymru. Trawsnewid aims to elevate the rich culture that the historically forgotten LGBTQ+ communities of Wales have to offer. The contents all come from workshops run by Museum Wales to
and collaborate with archival and heritage efforts at the museum. Go and check it out before it’s gone at the end of July.
inspire new voices to work
How much: FREE Info:
museum.wales/swansea
New LGBTQ+ artists as well as household names are to be featured in various events: 40 venues are signed up with over 60 projects happening, including theatre, comedy, live music, film, drag, visual art exhibitions, dance and digital arts. Crucially, the festival is about platforming as many of these grassroot queer artists as possible, getting them paid and moving their careers in the right direction. “One of the things we try and champion are new artists who maybe don’t have an opportunity to get on stage or don’t know how to access those spaces. Now, we’ve got this really amazing, eclectic programme that’s just an extension of our own ethos,” Yan continues.
The first of its kind in Wales, you can expect to see events from the Welsh ballroom community, the Queer Skate community and a queer nature walk. “Essentially, people should expect to see things that they don’t normally see [at Pride]; there’ll be all sorts going on. Not everything is going to be in a venue – it’s broader than the idea of just the arts, it goes way beyond that.”
JOHN EVANS
The Queer Emporium and venues across Cardiff, Thurs 2 June-Sun 3 July Info:
instagram.com/ queerfringefest /
twitter.com/queerfringefest
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