The campaign to stage Perth’s first ever Pride celebration has received cash backing from councillors.
The inaugural festival, which salutes the area’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, will be held next month.
Perthshire Pride will feature a family-friendly day of entertainment and music, followed by night time events in city centre pubs and clubs.
Organisers say the event will cost about £9,600. They applied for £8,000 from Perth and Kinross Council’s Common Good Fund and received £3,840.
Perthshire Pride has officially become a charity and has issued a call for volunteers to help out at the August 11 event. Anyone wanting to help is urged to attend a get-together at the Fair Maid Stonehouse Pizza and Carvery on Wednesday, July 4 from 7pm.
Lib Dem councillor Peter Barrett applauded the campaign.
“I am very supportive of this,” he said. “It will be the first event of its kind in Perth and an historic occasion.
“This will be an all-inclusive event and not just for the LGBT community. Everyone will be welcome.”
He added: “This might not be on the same scale as other parade events across Scotland, but from small acorns do large oaks grow. I’m glad that all councillors are getting behind this.”
The council was praised by charity Pink Saltire, after it topped a list of the 32 local authorities in Scotland for promoting LGBT history month throughout February.
Each council was marked on whether they flew the Pride flag, whether they ran activities in schools or youth clubs, the heritage or cultural events on offer, council staff awareness training, and the number of social media posts by the local authority.
Perth and Kinross Council was the only one to tick all five points.
The Perthshire Pride event will follow this weekend’s hugely successful Diverse CiTay carnival in the city centre.
The event, part of the Scottish Government’s Year of Young People, drew thousands of people into the city.
Diverse CiTay Working Group co-chairs Robert McCall MSYP and Siusaidh Johnston were delighted with the response to the festival.
Mr McCall said: “Perth is well-known as an excellent venue for events of many different types, and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to work with our peers to organise a major celebration here for Scotland’s Year of Young People 2018.”
Siusaidh added: “Everyone involved in creating Diverse CiTay has been using and developing a wide range of skills, experience and knowledge, going from event planning and production to performing, creating the fabulous parade floats, selling and market trading and more.
“The partnership between local young people and key organisations like the council, Perth College UHI and Horsecross has made for a fantastic Festival, and we hope it was a great day on Saturday for all who helped make it a success, including all the festivalgoers.”
