News Posts – Pride in Ely, Cambridgeshire

Ely Pride, 2025 – Aug 9th

Simon — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 16:29:44 +0000

New date, new location, bigger and better than ever!

Ely Pride 2025 has moved to the 2nd Saturday of August (the 9th this year) and a new location too! Jubilee Gardens has served us well for 4 Prides but in order to expand, we are moving to Amherst Field – just a 3 minute walk from Ely Railway Station. Ely Pride has previously clashed with Brighton Pride so we hope this new date will allow even more of you lovely people to attend this time!

King’s School have kindly donated the use of this land to support us, for which we are immensely grateful. The field is many times larger which will allow us to spread out, not only to enable us locate all of our wonderful market stalls and food vendors so that they are more included in the event, but also to allow us to bring exciting new features including a new Community Tent and funfair too. We will also be offering on-site parking at the event for £3 for the whole day.

Running from 10am to 9:30pm and featuring two stages, there will be live entertainment throughout, headlined this year by the amazing Vicki Vivacious from season 5 of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK! In addition to her hour long set on our main stage, we’ll be selling tickets for a meet & greet with Vicki too – these will go on sale shortly on our website.

We will be announcing more details soon so make sure to follow us on socials, sign up to our Newsletter, apply if you’d like to have a stall at Ely Pride or if you’d like any more information, please don’t hesitate to Contact Us!

We look forward to seeing you there!

A Pride Love Story, Made in Ely!

Simon — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 18:48:07 +0000

LoveIsLove, so the hashtag goes! At Pride in Ely we’re all about the love which is why we’re delighted to bring you a heart warming tale of love at first sight right here in Ely! Francesca shared her story with us this week…

It was August 2018, I believe it to be the first Pride event Ely held. I went with my best friend it was a beautiful day the sun was shining, the sunnies were out and music was playing. I scanned across the crowd and I saw this beautiful dark haired girl with this amazing smile, she was wearing a khaki top, black ripped jeans and wedges she took my breath away, a feeling nobody had ever given me before.

My best friend helped me build up my courage to go ask for her number. After a good 20 minutes I walked over and said “excuse me I think you’re beautiful could I have your number please” her reply “sorry I have a girlfriend” so that was that. As 2019 came and time passed I still thought about her regularly! August 2019, Ely Pride came around and there she was again, still as beautiful as before. She gave me butterflies instantly!

The next day I found her on Facebook and I’ll never forget what she first said to me: She messaged saying “alright trouble” – it was like she already knew me lol! We spoke every day and she soon became my best friend, the only person to know me in such depth and still accept me just the way I was. It turns out she hadn’t stopped thinking about me either since our first encounter. We soon fell in love I asked her to be my girlfriend on Xmas Eve 2019 and now here we are in 2020, a year that’s been horrendous for the entire world but for me it’s been one of the best years of my life because I got to spend every day with her… To end our 2020 I took her back to the very spot we met and proposed 6/12/2020 and she said yes!!!

Our heartfelt congratulations to Francesca and Chloe, from the entire team here at Pride in Ely. We’ve had many stories about helping people to come out, explore their sexuality or helping their child or community to address LGBTQ+ issues which are always heartwarming and remind us of the importance of Pride events. Your story is such a joyous one and truly the icing on the cake (pun intended!) so thank you both so much for letting us share it with everyone. We all wish you a long and happy life together and look forward to meeting you in person at our next event, online or otherwise! Now can someone pass the box of tissues please!!!

Update from Pride in Ely, August 2020

Simon — Sat, 08 Aug 2020 18:49:34 +0000

Welcome to our brand new website!!!

The third annual PRIDE in Ely event sadly cannot take place – the current COVID19 situation means we have had serious concerns about holding an event this summer since we first discussed this in early March. The nature of PRIDE is LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! It would have been extremely hard to ‘police’ or observe any social distancing at our event as be it indoor or outdoor, the ethos is closeness, family feeling and sharing the happy occasion.

Like some others, we have been a bit quiet this year as on-line events are tricky and not so easy to organise safely and securely. However, pre-lockdown we had a brilliant quiz and since, a couple of online ‘Bingo with a Bitch’ sessions hosted by the marvellous Felicity Flappes! Let’s try to do some other things – give us some ideas – be they for now or when things ease up a little…

We have come such a long way since a few of us got together in 2016 and said ‘Why can’t Ely have something LGBT+, and why can’t Ely have a PRIDE event…?’ From raising the PRIDE flag on Ely Cathedral to having people walking around with PRIDE T-shirts and wrist bands the support of our local community here and wider has been absolutely amazing – we are always – and you should be – PROUD!!!

Our plans are to offer more in terms of support, events and putting things back into the community and again your ideas are needed – to make things truly work we need your voice… the ideas of 6 people only go so far. Speak up and give us some food for thought!

At our PRIDE events everyone has either offered prizes for raffles, donations, services for very little cost or free and all of our performers gave us an outstanding show with love and for free! We cannot say how much this has meant to us all and has been the main success factor of our events – we love the community spirit and we really hope this continues forwards with other events and into next year for PRIDE in ELY 2021 – may it be bigger and better.

So a final thanks to everyone for last year – the list would be very long – you know who you special people and companies and organisations are and we couldn’t do it without you all!!

On a personal note I would like to say a massive thanks to the team – we all did an amazing job – lets continue in true PRIDE in Ely fashion!

Fritha,

PRIDE in ELY CIO Chair.

PS. don’t forget to sign up for our Newsletters here and if you would like to become a member of our safe-space private group on Facebook, please get in touch!