This weekend, our city will be taken over by four days of celebrations, as Manchester Pride returns for 2025. But the Manchester Proud Chorus has always known it matters all year round, as our archivist, Vivien Walsh (Soprano 1, she/her), writes:
“Pride” usually means pleasure in an achievement, or something done well. For the LGBTQ+ community, Pride is also a celebration for ourselves and a demonstration to others, of what it means to be LGBTQ+.
It started off as a positive image at a time when there were plenty of negative ideas about us – mainly around the idea that we are “unnatural”. We believe that everyone is different, and what is truly unnatural is that which is harmful to others.
Manchester Pride is an increasingly large procession through our city, and street party, with the serious message about what we think we have done well. And it is an opportunity to raise money to do more.
This includes a positive contribution to the lives of LGBTQ+ people, the citizens of Manchester, and the broader community.
For example, some of those who have escaped from persecution elsewhere – members of Manchester Proud Chorus or people helped by us – are now contributing in important ways to British society. Former asylum seekers we have supported are now doctors, nurses, pharmacists and lawyers. A certain choir member was honoured by the LGBT Foundation for her campaigning, in 2014.
Manchester Proud Chorus (MPC) – formerly Manchester Lesbian and Gay Chorus (MLGC) – is an important and ever-growing part of Manchester’s LGBTQ+ scene and community.
Over the years, we have welcomed visits both to and from other parts of the world. These have been mostly European countries, but our very first trip abroad was to Montréal, Canada, in 2006, to sing at the first World Outgames, an LGBTQ+ sports festival.
There was a choral competition as part of the event, with 15 competing choirs, including two from Australia and New Zealand! In 2008, the Montréal Gay Choir visited us in Manchester, and sang in our Town Hall (where we also rehearsed at the time), as well as at Manchester Pride.
We have since taken part in other choir festivals, and invited other LGBTQ+ choirs to Manchester. We’ve also performed at International choral festivals, including Berlin (2008), Copenhagen and London (2009), Paris (La Marche Des Fiertés 2010), Dublin (2014), Munich (2018) and Bologna (2023). Just in the UK, we have sung at Hand in Hand festivals in London (2013), Brighton (2015), Manchester (2017), Cardiff (2019) and Bristol (2024).
In 2014, two young men were attacked on a Manchester Tram, for being gay. They were singing songs from the musical “Wicked”. MLGC decided this could not be tolerated in our city, and so we organised a demonstration, with the support of Metrolink, who thought it was a good way of raising mass opposition to violence (of any sort) on the trams.
We also had the support of the police, Manchester City Council, Palace Theatre staff (where “Wicked” was on), and the prestigious Hallé choir, who offered to sing with us. We received messages of solidarity from around the world including from Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus who also sang with us, despite an 8 hour time difference.
In 2015, we celebrated pride as we celebrated a marriage! A member of MLGC married his husband, and the ceremony was led by a vicar who also happened to be gay, with the choir there too, of course!
In the same year, we marked LGBTQ+ History Month by singing with Mike Jackson of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. This followed the release of the film “Pride”, based on the true story of the group of LGBTQ+ activists who went to Dulais, South Wales, to support miners and their families during the 1984-5 strike.
MLGC was one of a number of LGBTQ+ community groups in Manchester involved in an exhibition by the People’s History Museum (PHM) in 2017. Entitled “Never Going Underground”, it marked 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales. The exhibition was named after the biggest LGBTQ+ demonstration in British history, which took place in Manchester in 1988 in response to the introduction of Section 28.
PHM and MLGC were very proud of our collaboration!
Manchester Pride is one of the largest events of its kind in the UK. In the world, however, the largest is in São Paolo, Brazil, followed by New York City, where celebrations centre round the Stonewall Inn.
In 1969, riots took place when police tried to close the bar down for “immorality”, and ever since, it has been seen as the centre of the Pride movement. I knew nothing about this the first time I went to New York on my own, just a few years later. But all was explained on posters and leaflets when I found myself walking past the Stonewall Inn by chance, knowing nothing of its history.
That day and every day, Pride is about more than this weekend’s parade through Manchester city centre and the four days of celebrating how far we’ve come. By being proud of who we are as a choir, singing together and supporting each other, we remember that, always.