With Dublin Pride on its way, some of the amazing team behind this year’s Festival look back on their own first Pride memories and explain why the event is just as important today as it ever was.

Clodagh Leonard

Chairperson of the Dublin LGBT+ Pride board.

My first Pride was such a treat. I remember coming up from Mayo and being so overwhelmed to see so many LGBT+ people expressing themselves exactly as they were. My teens were so shaped by shame that I believed if I told people who I was they would leave. [The thoughts] that there was something wrong with being queer and here I was, surrounded by people celebrating the thing I thought made me different/alone. I was me and that was fine. It was genuinely transformative. I felt like I had arrived.

Pride is a celebration of being yourself. It is a radical action to show up unapologetically. To find a community of people who understand your experiences. To raise awareness of the issues that the LGBT+ community experience and to fight against a world that tries to make us fit in.

The team has done massive work in the last year to make this Pride the most accessible ever. We have been listening to the community over the last few years and two themes that came up were a city centre route and accessibility. We took both pieces of feedback on board.