Pride festival in Tipperary celebrates fifth anniversary with busy line-up of events

Clonmel Pride’s annual festival will be held on the new dates of Friday June 14 to Sunday June 16.

This year the local organisers are excited to align with Global Pride Month in June to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Clonmel Community Pride Festival.

This year there is a jam-packed weekend programme of events.

Clonmel Pride Chairperson Gerard Sweetman says “As we look back over the years of Clonmel Pride, we have become stronger as the years have gone on; developing and learning each year in what we need to do to create a safe and happy pride for the LGBTQI+ community. Pride is a celebration of who we are and where we have come as a country in Ireland, but it is also very much a protest of what we have still left to do as a country to ensure full equality”.

The Grand Marshal this year is an inspirational civil rights activist, historian and journalist.

Tonie Walsh, who spent many years living in Clonmel as a child and in adult life, is the former president of Ireland’s National LGBT Federation (NXF) and was co-founder of Gay Community News (GCN) in 1988, which remains as Ireland’s most successful and longest-running queer community publication.

In 1997, he re-organised NXF’s archives and earlier collections into what would later become the Irish Queer Archive (IQA), which is now held at the National Library of Ireland.

At a World AIDS Day event in Maynooth University in 2016, Tonie launched a campaign to build an Irish AIDS Memorial.

The project was wholly embraced by former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, who unveiled the memorial, Closed Loop, at Dublin’s Phoenix Park last December. Tonie is the originator of the Dublin Pride Queer History Walking Tour and continues to curate the Irish Queer Archive.

No pre-booking is required for any of the events, which will be free with the exception of Pride at Night, the over 18s event at O’Keeffe’s on Saturday, June 15, which costs €10 cash on the door.

All festival venues with the exception of 37 Queen Street are wheelchair-accessible.

The weekend activities begin on Thursday, June 13 with Dance Into Pride, described as a dancerise class supported by Sporting Pride Ireland, which will be held between 7-8pm at Tipperary ETB, Kickham Barracks.

The documentary screening and panel discussion Through The Rainbow Lens will be held at TUS Clonmel between 7pm and 9pm.

At 9pm on Friday night there will be a Pre-Pride Social - with 50 years of LGBTQ liberation on screen, at 37 Queen Street, Clonmel.

On Saturday morning Clonmel Library is hosting a Pride Breakfast between 10.30am and 12 noon.

This will be followed by the Pride Parade, which will meet at the Gordon Place car park from 12 noon, and parade through the town between 1-1.30pm.

Pride on the Plaza will be held at the Kickham Barracks Plaza between 1.30 and 4.30pm on Saturday afternoon.

On Saturday night Pride After Dark will be held at O’Keeffe’s between 8pm and midnight, with the doors opening at 7pm.

The activities wind down on Sunday afternoon with the Picnic in the Park at the green on Kickham Street, opposite Clonmel High School, between 12 noon and 2pm.