History Curator, Philip Newton tells how the Castle Museum will be celebrating York Pride 2015.

The 20^th of June 2015 will be York’s Pride festival which has been held annually since 2006.

Pride festival is to celebrate the diversity of the LGBT community through entertainment, inclusivity and understanding. The event makes the LGBT community of York more visible to us. This year the organisers of York Pride would like people to help celebrate our family, friends and residents of York by flying the rainbow flag and wearing rainbow colours.

York Pride has become popular event in York’s festival calendar which sees a parade from the Minster to the Knavesmire with a procession of people, community groups and businesses with banners and flags. Pride is ultimately a celebration but it is still a political one that promotes understanding and civil rights not only in York and the United Kingdom but abroad. Our visibility here can show parts of the world freedoms that some countries deny their citizens.

Pride organisers have asked the people of York to ‘raise their rainbow’ to celebrate and make visable the LGBT community and York Museums Trust said absolutely! The rainbow flag, also known as the gay pride flag, is a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other identities (LGBT) community. It has been in used since the 1970s to promote human and civil rights and is now a symbol of celebration, diversity and solidarity. The colours represent the diversity of the LGBT community and their unity.

This is the first year York Museums Trust is celebrating Pride but we have been working with the communities this year with events for LGBT history month 2015 and are now preparing for 2016. We will keep you posted for next year’s events! We are committed to helping the LGBT community with celebrating and encouraging visibility. The flag will be flying over the Castle Museum from Friday 12^th until Monday 22^nd of June and will be at Pride to celebrate and show everyone what we are doing at York Museums Trust.