What Pride means to me: Reflections from WAY volunteers

June 2026

To mark this Pride month, we asked some of the fabulous volunteers who are members of our LGBTQIA+ Working Group to explain to us what Pride means to them, starting with our Chair Joanna Sedley-Burke…

WAY Chair Joanna Sedley-Burke

---

“Since the 1980s, I’ve watched Pride evolve from those campaigning marches into the park celebrations we know today. I've attended Pride events as many different versions of myself – before I met my wife, alongside her, and now in the years since her death. Pride has held all of those chapters. 

It has always been about celebrating our community, our visibility, and the continued journey towards equality and acceptance. But it is also a reminder of the bravery of those who stood up, fought back and created space for us to live openly and authentically. In the last couple of years, my worlds collided in the most wonderful way – as well as being your Chair here at WAY, I also Chair Thurrock LGBTQ Network, a local charity where I work alongside another brilliant team of volunteers to run our annual community Pride. 

---

For those of us in WAY who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, Pride carries something extra – it is a reminder that we belong to a community that has always known how to hold grief and joy together, how to show up for one another, and how to keep going. And this year that feeling is especially close to my heart, because WAY will have a stall in the Thurrock Pride marketplace, and to my delight a fellow member will be joining me in the panel discussions to read from and talk about her new book – a moment that perfectly captures everything both communities are about: showing up, sharing our stories and finding strength in one another.

In that way, WAY and Pride feel not so different – communities that found each other through hardship, and chose to walk forward together anyway. 

This month, however you mark it, I wish you a Pride that is both fun-filled and reflective, and I hope you feel that same sense of belonging that first stopped me in my tracks on a London street when I attended my first Pride event all those years ago.”

WAY Volunteer Suzanne, member of the Cultural Diversity Working Group  

“For a long time I wanted to go to Pride – any Pride – but just wasn’t brave enough or out enough. And as a bisexual woman married to a man, I was also worried that I wasn’t queer enough.

A few years ago, just after I started going out with Dee, who is now my wife, I went to the small but perfectly formed Buxton Pride. It was a lovely gathering of people around a few stalls and some picnic blankets, with kids and dogs in tutus and bandanas (mostly the dogs but a few of the kids!) I ate cake and chatted and felt so very welcome. 

I am now on the North Yorkshire coast and part of Scarborough’s Big Queer Fringe, and I hope to be going to the growing Scarborough Pride Festival in September. But when I think of Pride, I think of sunshine and rainbow layer cake and laughter and making new friends.”

WAY Volunteer Maria, member of the Cultural Diversity Working Group

“When I was my other self - before I transitioned to become Maria - I never saw a need to be involved in Pride. It was something other people were doing. I was happy for them, that they celebrated who they were, but it wasn’t for me. 

But then I went to Pride in Birmingham 2019 as Maria. I saw all the different people coming together as one, not just in celebration but also to show that we all feel the same issues and problems, that any and every job had LGBTQ+ people in and the world had not stood still. That it wasn’t just about the flamboyance, it was about community and people wanting to express themselves, be themselves.

I had spent years worrying about who I was and how I was supposed to look and feel, and these people were showing me that I could be who I wanted to be. In 2020 I decided to be Maria full time, to start on a very long and arduous journey, one I had no idea whether I could achieve. 

Pride is a chance to go and say, ‘We are here and we are Queer’. We are just people trying to live our lives, as best as we can. I’m hoping to be in the procession, at Birmingham Pride, as a civil servant. I’ll be shouting and dancing and wearing a Pride T-shirt, waving the WAY flag and loving every minute.”