Small town Prides are just as important as big city Prides.

A year ago, we celebrated our first-ever Pride in Thame, Oxfordshire.

Where’s Thame, I hear you ask?

It’s a small town on the edge of the Cotswolds in the UK.  Population 14,000. The place where they film the hit cosy-mystery show Midsummer Murders.

Thame is old. Our market charter dates back to 1215. Tudor-age buildings mix with contemporary architecture. It’s what you’d call sedate and conservative. One of our previous MPs was the former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

So when I announced I was going to launch Thame’s first-ever Pride, I was told it couldn’t be done. “Thame isn’t ready for something like that,” they said (note the emphasis on the word that).

I like a challenge.

In the end, we didn’t just create Thame Pride. We created Thame Pride Festival. Three days celebrating all things queer. We had a drag cabaret on Friday night. On Saturday, we closed the town centre and built a Pride village with three stages hosting over seventy queer performers. And on the Sunday, we had two queer film screenings with Q&As.

Over four thousand people turned up.

Four thousand. In our little town.

The feedback we got was emotional.

“When I grew up in Thame, I knew I could never be myself. Now I can.”

“I’ve never seen so much concentrated love in one weekend!”

“I worried that gay stuff would be flung in my face. Now I’m an ally!”

Building on this success, a team will host Thame Pride 2026 on the weekend of June 20. And they promise it will be bigger and better than last year.

I think EVERY small town should have a Pride festival. Queer people are everywhere. Not just in the big cities where Prides traditionally happen. When you’re queer and you live in a small town, too often it’s easier to stay under the radar. But it’s unfair if you love where you live but can’t be your authentic self.

So I’m imploring you: if your hometown doesn’t have a Pride then start one. It takes a lot of sweat, a lot of tears, and a whole lot of love. And I’ve got a few tips to help you avoid the mistakes that I made along the way.

Believe in what you’re doing and be it.

The biggest block to starting the first-ever Thame Pride was inside my head. I believed it when they said Thame wasn’t ready. But then I took a long walk with my boyfriend, and we discussed what we truly wanted. We wanted to be able to walk down Thame High Street hand in hand. Just like the heteros do. So we started doing that. My boyfriend was a bit of a dandy. So he dressed as he wanted to dress. And I loved being with him in the High Street when he did. If people stared, we stared back. And we SMILED. A smile is very disarming.

Start earlier than you think.

There is soooo much work involved in a Pride event. There’s security to book, permissions to be sought. Trash clearers to book. Toilets to book. That’s even before you start booking the performers, the stages, the technicians, the GLITTER. I started 18 months before the date, and I was still running out of time. Remember you’re working with volunteers. You can’t expect them to meet deadlines. They’ve got other stuff in their lives. Be kind to them. And they’ll reward you in buckets full of love and hard work.

Get the officials onside.

When I started on Thame Pride, I was deputy mayor of the town. In reality, it means f**k all, but I exploited the title MERCILESSLY. Some people think it’s a big deal, and I discovered it could open all sorts of doors – with media organisations, with other bureaucracies, with sponsors. So if you can get a big bureaucratic name onside early, it really helps. One of our core team members was very senior at the local school (and queer). Having him on board really helped with giving us legitimacy. The local library staff was brilliantly supportive in giving us promotion, meeting and exhibition spaces etc. Also, our little town museum. It helped that one of the curators was queer herself. She was so excited that she organised an exhibition of famous local queer characters from history. A lot of locals left the exhibition saying: “Well, I never knew…”

Surround yourself with a great team of queers and allies.

A small town is loaded with talent. And queer people work in entertainment, marketing, glitter. Get them onto your core team, and you’ll have a really professional Pride.

Grab onto those early wins.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I discovered that one of the local pubs had recently been taken over by a gay couple and that one of them was a drag queen. Fabio booked us eight drag acts for the day and corralled them like a rhinestone cowboy in heels. There is sooo much talent in a small town, but you’ve really got to hit the streets and go door to door to find it. Sticking up a poster and inviting people to a meeting only has a limited impact.

It’s a party! And good parties need great planning.

Get an event manager. Someone who really knows live events. There’s so much I didn’t know until a person called CJ came on board. They’d recently produced Wagner’s entire Ring Cycle in a former swimming pool in East London. So I knew CJ would be good. But they were AMAZING. And I learned so much, from safeguarding to the safe wind speed for a bouncy castle.

Tell everyone. Be bold not apologetic.

I became such a media tart. I sent out news releases left right and centre. Some of them fell on stony ground. But a few gave us amazing exposure that we’d never dreamed of. Exploit the chain reaction. Journalists pick up stories from each other. When they call: BE AVAILABLE.

And good luck. We need Prides everywhere. This is a crucial time worldwide. Be the catalyst to make Pride local.