Brighton Pride trustees are keen to act ethically and need to raise money, but the way these issues have been handled recently is a PR disaster.

Most people affected by the Pride proposals seem to feel they're losing something they regard as valuable, such as a sense of identity or diversity, a familiar place to go and meet others, or a chance to make money.

From the facebook responses, nobody feels as if they are winning or that they stand to gain anything.

The various communities and interested parties feel alienated and confused; the trustees are defensive and seem to feel misunderstood. People don't want to go round in circles and many clearly resent the Pride questionnaire design for the survey.

To win, Pride will need to listen to the communities’ and stakeholders’ views.

Requiring a minimum donation at a fenced park with entry gates makes sense, as long as that expectation doesn’t mean high admission prices, as has happened elsewhere.

It would have been useful to have this mooted as a possible way forward without proposing such a watered-down version of Pride that so few people identify with and prompts a major outcry.

Badly handled, and I don't know how Pride trustees will dig themselves out of it.

I think you need to stop being defensive, listen carefully and pay attention to sensible ways of raising money, acting in a way that communicates that you take the communities' and businesses' views seriously.

Pride does need paid staff, and needs money for that as well as the event itself. And most of all, Pride needs people to want its events and to participate in organising those, including volunteers.

I've just about had enough of having to convince Pride about the value and benefits of a women's performance tent on the park.

If Pride trustees don't get it now, after seeing how successful diverse tents can be, I wonder if you ever will.

Amalgamating the tent into some kind of diluted performance space without the sense of identity for women that the present tent offers is missing the point.

Maybe it is time for a change, but the popularity of the women's performance tent speaks for itself: for the past nine years, and especially over the past two years, with the clear support of Pride, it has become a successful, established and well-publicised event on the park.

When Pride trustees suggest that you are now giving women performers a bigger tent, I wonder if you understand anything at all about the fundamental difference between a women's performance tent and a mixed tent.

You are not giving the women's performance tent a bigger space. You are giving live performance a bigger space. And whether people think that's a step in the right direction will be an individual matter. I think it's a massive step backwards after many years of establishing the women's performance tent successfully. So I won't support the Pride proposal to do this and ask you to reconsider.
 
Sheila McWattie
Brighton Pride women’s performance tent co-ordinator