UK Black Pride 2021: Love and Rage

UK Black Pride is proud to announce that our 2021 event will take place over three days: Friday, 2 July – Sunday, 4 July.

Building on the success of our 15th birthday digital celebration in August 2020, which attracted 30,000 viewers, UK Black Pride’s 2021 event will extend to three days, recorded live at an as-yet-unannounced venue in east London.

We are acutely aware that our communities will be looking forward to an in-person event this year, but we can’t yet say with confidence that we could put on a physical celebration and keep our communities safe. The safety of our communities is our responsibility – and one we take very seriously – and so we have taken the decision to err on the side of utmost caution.

To honour what has been a tremendously difficult year for so many in our communities, UK Black Pride’s 2021 theme is “Love and Rage”.

We’ve seen firsthand over the past year our communities’ persistent commitment to each other; the ways we show up, in big and small ways, is nothing short of inspiring. We continue to show what it means to love, to love hard and to love against the odds.

We are also raging, disappointed and tired. Our communities continue to be overlooked and undervalued, tokenised and discarded. From constant gaslighting to this country’s steadfast refusal to address and redress structural and institutional racism, we have a lot to be mad about.

Our anger is righteous. Our love is righteous.

Our 2021 theme claps back against the many ways we are told who we are allowed to be, and how to grieve, love and rage. We will not be quiet, we will not be meek. We will be heard, and we will be loud.

UK Black Pride is the space where each of you can show up as all of who you are, with your rage and disappointment, with your unyielding love and capacity for joy. We can’t wait to celebrate and rage with you. Let us show what is possible when we show up in our fury, committed to loving each other and changing the world.

Lady Phyll and the UK Black Pride team