August is pride month in Antwerp, with Antwerp Queer Arts Festival (AQAF) and Antwerp Pride, which will be held from Wednesday 7 to Sunday 11 August 2024. While a notch more festive and a notch less political than Brussels Pride – The Belgian & European Pride, and 2024 is a major election year, Antwerp Pride loves to rally around a theme.
At the new year’s reception at fashion museum MoMu, Antwerp Pride chairperson Geert Van Praet did not divulged the theme for Antwerp Pride 2024. Neither did spokesperson Wilfried Eetezonne.
That is unusual. And honestly also anticlimatic. Everyone expected a theme reveal. But not now. “We are consulting LGBTQIA+ organisations to gauge what they and their members want. This takes time.”
Antwerp Pride wants a strong theme, a strong tagline, a strong title.
No theme, but a direction
There might not be a theme, tagline or title, there ís a direction. “These are worrying times”, Eetezonne says.
“Discussing gender topics is being threatened, there is a growing censorship on information, queer families are losing their recognition, teachers fear discussing LGBTQIA+ topics, there’s an overrepresentation of queer youth amongst the homeless, … It is time to draw a line. 55 years after the 1969 Stonewall Inn Riots in New York, we are not returning to the closet. We opened that closet, we got out, we shit that closet door and we lost the key to reopen it.”
But how to translate all that, is still being finetuned.
Growing
Before Eetezonne spoke, chairperson Geert Van Praet spoke. “Antwerp Pride grows every year, which is a challenge for safety. Together with city officials, we continue to discuss how to safely managing the crowds.”
Another challenge is the diversity within the LGBTQIA+ realm. “The community is diverse, every group [within the rainbow], but also every partner or sponsor has own ideas how to organise a pride. By the way, bachelors’ wives and maidens’ children are well taught.”
“So we try to connect and to integrate all those ideas.”
Volunteers
Antwerp Pride is growing and it shows in the number of shifts needing to be staffed. Besides a contracted coordinator of the event, Antwerp Pride is being run and executed by volunteers.
“In 2022, we had some 300 shifts to staff. Last year some 750. This year, it will be even more.”
Van Praet also said Antwerp Pride is looking for more ‘core volunteers’. Now the organisation counts on some 150 regular (as in: recurring) volunteers.
So, watch this space.
Antwerp Pride 2024 & Antwerp Queer Arts Festival 2024
- FLANDERS | LGBTQIA+ people more often unhappy, bullied and misjudged.
- Antwerp Pride 2024 from Wednesday 7 to Sunday 11 August.
- Antwerp Pride, a fight by celebration.
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