SALT LAKE CITY — After receiving a huge amount of feedback last year on the Utah Pride Festival centering around big corporations and making a profit, the Utah Pride Center is making big changes this year, said Ryan Newcomb, Executive Director.
“Pride is about empowering,” he said. “It's about elevating. It's about celebrating people who have been ostracized, marginalized and not supported, sometimes even in their own home.”
This year, tickets will be less expensive to get into the festival, and there are also more scholarships available for small, minority business owners, said Newcomb.
“We're tremendously excited about bringing diversity, equity and inclusion more to the forefront of all that we do as an organization,” he said. “We want the community to know that the promises that we made in the fall to deliver more trust and transparency, to deliver greater empowerment and elevation of de I and diversity within our community that we are working hard behind the scenes to execute on those promises.”
The Utah Pride Festival has traditionally been held in Washington Square Park the first weekend of June. Just a mile away, and a few weeks after, anew pride festival will take place: SLC Pride.
“SLC Pride is a new, independent pride festival focused on marginalized community, full accessibility physically and financially,” said Bonnie O’Brien, Festival Director. “Our goal is not to make money. Our goal is to allow full access.”
The festival, held at The Gateway during the last weekend of June, will be free to kids under the age of 18 and only $5 for adults so they can hopefully break even. The focus is on local vendors, artists and volunteers, said O’Brien.
“People that don't have a name really outside of Salt Lake City or Salt Lake County, but are doing the work to help our community grow and be stronger,” she said.
Newcomb doesn’t see SLC Pride as competition to the Utah Pride Festival, he said.
“The more the merrier to elevate the Queer space, the QTBIPOC individuals in our community,” said Newcomb. “That's really important to us.”
O’Brien feels that the city needs a festival that feels unique to this community, free from big corporations.
“Our goal is really to sort of counter that and give people their pride back in a very local way.”
