Manchester Pride: Pick of the best from the Fringe and beyond the Village

That’s right, there’s enough good stuff going on over this year’s Pride that it warrants a guide to the ‘best of’, and here it is. Between Pride’s Official Fringe, the Queer Alt Manchester collective and the Queer We Are takeover of Bangkok on Princess Street, here's everything amazing you want from this year’s Pride happening outside the Village enclave. This is how Pride should always be, and here’s where you need to be…

Hercules and Geryon by Maurice Vellekoop.

14 August–13 September...

Cockadoodle: The Erogenous Art of Maurice Vellekoop … 2022NQ hosts a delightfully titled exhibition of this eclectic Canadian illustrator of fantasy, humour and (homo)eroticism.; a coup for Manchester; it’s his first solo European show …

15 August–22 August...

Love: Music Exhibition … Men capture men as four Manchester photographers display images of musicians and dancers …

15 August...

Naked Boys Reading: does what it says on the tin, an array of body-positive not-at-all-shy gentlemen read from selected texts before an assembled audience willing to have their self-consciousness challenged …

16 August...
Got Lead: Drawing Sex, Arousal and Desire with Maurice Vellekoop ... get up close with the visiting artist as he shares his tips, methods and inspirations ...

19 August...

Coming Out: From Script to Screen … Legendary Corrie creator Tony Warren is joined by Jonathan Harvey and writers and actors from the soap to discuss the portrayal of gay characters on primetime telly …

22 August...

LGBT History Tour … A queer perspective on the People’s History Museum …

Pride, the Film: Cast Q&A … Meet the cast of a new movie chronicling the relationship between gay activists and striking miners in Thatcher’s crumbling Britain …

Mother’s Ruin: Roadhouse Rehab … Mother never brings a less than stellar line-up, and this Roadhouse bonanza follows suit with David Hoyle, Grace ‘The Face’ Oni Smith, Sheela Blige, The Niallist and more, all under JonJo’s watchful eye …

Bollox Is The New Black: Just guess the theme of this years’ Bollox Pride party at the Star & Garter …?

Grace Oni Smith by Lee Baxter.

23 August … 

Drunk At Vogue: The Boat Party / The Love Party … Two parties, one love, as Drunk At Vogue sail the Princess Katherine boat in the afternoon and disco hard at Kraak in the evening …

Rapture vs Black Angel:  Manchester’s premier women’s clubnight meets the original gay girls RnB party at an epic session for Queer We Are …

24 August … 

BANG! Yard Party Social: All-day full-on backstreet Northern Quarter party with local DJs and party people, all for FREE, outside Kraak …

Madonna Aid: 1984 Loft Party … Wall-to-wall Queen of Pop on the speakers and in the dress up box, all night long at Kraak …

HomoElectric owns (Paradise) Factory once again for three floors of intense partying, with special guests Little Boots and the Crazy P Soundsystem …

25 August … 

Queerchester Film Screenings showcases a diverse selection of DIY films from Manchester’s alt queer scene plus a slection of queer shorts …

The Queer Forum: Like the TED talks but for LGBTQI people, seven fascinating talks from all walks of queer life, plus music, short films and a chance to mingle…

Candlelit Vigil … Sackville Park is the setting for candlelit reflection for those lost to HIV/AIDS and those living with the diseases worldwide …

Related: Gay Icons

Pride: afterthoughts

I thought this year I’d wait until the dust settled. It seems it’s very important in Manchester to have an opinion about the annual Gay Pride festival, or at least to tell everyone about it on Facebook. If you run a gay night or two, like I do, some people want to perceive you as some kind of spokesperson. I’m not, but I was needled several times to say something scandalous in the direction of Manchester Pride. I don’t have it in me. I think it boils down to this: Pride as a party, or Pride as a protest/political consciousness raiser? Doing both isn’t really working. At least not for me.

Don’t get me wrong, we need big gay cultural happenings, and we have them: Homotopia, Queer Up North, Duckie at Southbank, Queer Contact... These sorts of events are by and for LGBT people and have been brilliant over the years. Go and find out. Buy tickets. Support them. But spending bundles of pink pounds to hire The Feeling and a reformed Sugababes under a banner of ‘Gay Pride’? How exactly does it ‘celebrate LGBT life’?  I’m not sure I get it. Or want it. If you must attend a Kate Nash concert, just go to one, like everyone else does. I go to gigs all year round, I don’t need Pride for that. I need Pride for something else.

We might be about to get marriage equality in the UK, but worldwide the net is closing in on gay people. It’s real and I am frightened by it. If you don’t have a global perspective about yourself as a gay person, the concept of perceiving yourself as a group at all – which is, after all, the essence of Pride –falters. Except that Pride itself isn’t the place to talk about this, and I wonder if it should be. I am pleased that Manchester Pride expanded its Fringe program to include smaller arts and cultural events, including, crucially, some that take place outside the ghetto. I am glad the Pride Board has a trans* individual on it. I am glad they erected a ‘To Russia With Love’ wall in the Village to show Mancunian’s support towards persecuted people in our twinned city of St Petersburg. I hope they leave it up beyond Pride, I’d like to see it myself. But why Russia now, and not Uganda any other year, or any one of the dozens of ex British colonies where we exported homophobia to in the first place, at any other Pride? It’s complicated, and I’m trying to dance here.

During Manchester Pride, only a paid wristband gets you access onto Canal Street, unless you live there, and even bar staff who work in the Village can’t see the big bands without paying. I put parties on for gay (and non-gay) people outside the Gay Village. I do it all year round and I do it over Pride too. You might think this is somehow divisive, luring punters away from the gay enclave. But sexuality has no postcode, and the Village itself has barely any club space anyway, while the bars during Pride weekend – it has to be said – are overcrowded, overpriced, riddled with bad beer and bad music. I moved away from Blackpool a long time ago to get away from that. It’s not for me.

This year, I’m part of a newly-formed and loose collective of promoters under the name Queer Alt. Manchester who hosted a roster of alternative and non-Village gay and queer events during Pride. If you think we’re cashing in; yes, we absolutely are. Every last one of us donated cash to charities, and paid our performers. As for Pride itself, I’m not sitting in judgement, it would be the height of hypocrisy. It was only a few years ago I went out on the Thursday of Pride, and with very few breaks, kept going one way or another until the Monday. Trust me, I wasn’t thinking about St Petersburg then.

Besides, I’m not sure what form a more politicised Pride would take anyway. For the most part I’m an armchair activist. The odd demonstration aside, I’m all about petitions, letters, angry Tweets, political discussions, charity donations, that kind of thing. Are you much different? But I would like another way to get to meet the community sometimes, one that didn’t involve booze. Especially now, when I feel so powerless to contribute to any kind of positive change in the world. I feel hopeless when I think about Uganda or Moscow, never mind Damascus or Cairo or Palestine. But this has happened to me before, and the way I got out of it? Reading Angela Davis and listening to Larry Kramer. Watching REDS. Reading about mass resistance and small victories. Watching TED lectures about community action and feminism. Watching ACT-UP videos on YouTube. Watching We Were Here. This is where something like Gay Pride should come in, to bolster that feeling of insurmountable human aggression and oppression, to tackle the apathy that inevitably follows. Watching Barclays Bank drive a truck down Deansgate decked out in this year’s designated Pride theme (‘The 1980s’) was never going to do that for me. And I really need it.

Pride Alternatives and Alternative Pride

Last year, for the first time in ages, I bought a wristband for the Gay Village over Pride weekend. I wanted to go to Pumping Iron (which was brilliant) and I wanted to see Kelis (but we couldn’t get into the enclosure). This year I don’t have many reasons to brave the fences that shoot up in my neighbourhood overnight. I had to Google ‘Pixie Lott’ (nope, not ringing any bells) and ‘Alexandra Burke’ too (shocking isn’t it? … I run an RnB night too …) My favourite thing about Pride weekend is the feeling that for one long weekend we own the city. I need to be able to see the city to get that feeling so no fences for me this year.

Besides, this year’s official Pride Fringe events, which either take place on dates before The Big Weekend or in venues outside the Village, or both, are varied and impressive and can be found listed in a handy PDF guide HERE.

Aside from all of that you could do a lot worse than camp out at Kraak for three days. Recently name-checked in the Guardian as one of the best crossover venues in the country, Kraak, off Stevenson Square in the Northern Quarter, boats a devoted studio/gallery space and, just across the tiny alleyway, a club/gig venue to boot.

Art-wise, Kraak Gallery will be home to the ‘Queer Kraak Art Show’ kicking off the long weekend on Thursday 25^th with a morphing roster of visual art, performance, music and discussion. Think of it as ground-zero for meeting the most creative queers in the city for the whole weekend. Eyes peeled too for rumoured renegade guerrilla art happenings on late Thursday afternoon down Canal Street itself before the gates are erected … Queer Kraak Art Show runs until September 1st and whatever your taste in art (or sex for that matter) remember that venues like this one are an asset to the city, go and find out why.

Friday 26^th is my very own party, Off The Hook, taking all the butch/femme/queer dancefloor appeal of RnB culture and dishing it up to our friendly and frankly gorgeous punters. Our last party at Kraak was our best yet, it’s a venue that makes everyone feel at home and we did. We play RnB, hip-hop, Motown, reggae, soul, disco and straight up shameless pop, 10 pm till 4 am. Don’t ask me for funky house you’ll only make me cry, Canal Street is thatta way … ‘She-rapper she-rapper wicked ‘n’ mean ….’

Saturday 27th is the inspirationally-named ‘Tranarchy’, presenting their special ‘Showgirls’ Party. The remit: ‘celebrating the best and most outrageous in Manchester's drag and alt queer cultures!’ These kids pulled off the legendary Vogue Brawl so this will be epic. Early doors at 8 pm if you want to get inspired by the appallingly good movie itself. The Blige Sisters and Pumping Iron DJs are amongst the array of post-movie entertainment.

Sunday 28th and no Pride Weekend would be complete without Club Brenda and Manchester’s Queer Patron Saint David Hoyle providing a moral corrective to your lavish mainstream leanings. Brandish your wristbands in glorious shame! (if you’ve got ‘em ...) David will be joined by Twat Boutique DJs and Organ Freeman, both of which are a pleasure simply to TYPE. Party starts 9 pm.

Whatever you’re doing for Pride, whatever your gender and your affiliation, whatever your taste in music, have a lovely time.