Celebrating Pride Month

May 30, 2024

Pride Month is a vibrant and inclusive celebration that honours the LGBTQ+ community, their history, achievements, and ongoing struggle for equality. This annual event serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of acceptance, diversity, and love. It brings together individuals, organisations, and communities to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and celebrate the progress made towards a more inclusive society. 

We at Active Cumbria firmly believe in diversity and inclusion and strive to create an environment that respects and uplifts all individuals. Our journey involves ongoing education and learning, increasing accessibility, and developing inclusive policies that ensure equal opportunities for all, as well as, challenging poor practice and behaviours when they appear.

We also believe in real, genuine, affirmative action, and throughout #PrideMonth we’ll be sharing some of the work we’ve been doing to support people from the LGBTQ+ community improve their lives through physical activity. Follow our Facebook page!

Support for embedding LGBTQ+ inclusivity at your sports club or organisation:

Learn: Being able to identify and understand the barriers faced by the LGBTQ+ community can help clubs and organisations make small, practical changes to their offer to make it as inclusive as possible.  Sport England’s Buddle offers free training opportunities which may benefit you and your club or organisation.  Several of our staff have been trained to deliver FREE workshops on behalf of Buddle such as, Creating an Inclusive Environment, Engaging Your Community, and Your Culture and Values.

podcast

Listen: LGBT+ Sports Podcast

The BBC Sounds podcast takes a look at LGBT+ issues in sport, episodes feature guest speakers from the world of sport.  Have a listen here.

Pride Sports Logo

Be Inclusive: Pride Sports are a national organisation working to challenge LGBT+phobia in sport and improve access to sport for all LGBT+ people. Currently, there aren’t any LGBT+ Sport Clubs in Cumbria. We want to support people and organisations to change this. If you are interested in finding out more contact us or follow the link here to their website.

Take Part: Pride Sports are one of the partners behind Pride Youth Games - a yearly weekend residential for 16-25 year old lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, non-binary, queer and other diversely identifying young people. The weekend includes taster sessions of activities provided by different sports organisations and groups. Pride Youth Games rotates between Scotland, Wales, and England and is held in a different place each year.  This year the Games are being held in Lancaster on 2-4 August.  Applications are now closed but you can still find out more information and how to get involved in future Games.

We’re working in communities across Cumbria to help provide more opportunities for everyone to be physically active.

Through Sport England’s Together Fund, we were able to co-create physical activity projects with organisations that specifically support people from the LGBTQ+ community. The main objective of these projects was to enable sustainable physical activity opportunities that were safe and welcoming and inclusive.

For support or more information contact Oliver Carswell Active Cumbria’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead by e-mail to oliver.carswell@cumberland.gov.uk