Scunthorpe Pride celebrates after receiving a share of National Lottery funding

Scunthorpe Pride celebrates after receiving a share of National Lottery funding to help deliver their diverse, community, family focused pride event on Sunday 25^th August 2024 at Church Square for a second year running.

Local community group, Scunthorpe LGBTQ+ Society (Scunthorpe Pride) is celebrating after being awarded National Lottery funding to support their work in promoting a safe, inclusive and diverse free community festival for all. The group of volunteers based in Scunthorpe, will use the money to bring live music, family activities, arts and entertainment to the town centre at no cost to the public, making the event accessible to all.

Scunthorpe Pride launched it’s first event in August 2023 and the community group behind it, Scunthorpe LGBTQ+ Society re-launched in 2022 after a break. It is staffed by 4 main volunteer board members as well as other volunteers helping behind the scenes.

The group runs social events every Thursday and fortnightly on a Sunday for the LGBTQ+ Community and anyone friendly, aiming to tackle loneliness and provide a sense of community, encourage friendships and face to face communication. Due to the huge success of the 2023 Pride event held in Church Square, the team are bringing it back for a 2^nd year and have some exciting changes and additions.

The new funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, which distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and is the largest community funder in the UK, will help towards delivering the Scunthorpe Pride 2024 event, whilst there is still some way to go in fully funding the event as it is free to the public, the event relies on donations, fundraisers and grants at the moment but are looking to become more self sustainable in future.

At the same time, the group will be able to continue to support their wider and local community and provide inclusive events, socials and support. Whilst giving the community opportunities to volunteer and get involved.

“We’re delighted that The National Lottery Community Fund has recognised our work in this way. Now, thanks to National Lottery players we will be able to proceed with our plans on bringing an even bigger and better Pride event to Scunthorpe. The main misconception is that this event is only for LGBTQ+ but, it is for everyone to celebrate together, show solidarity, support and acceptance. Building a stronger community and making people feel safer within the community they live. The event attracted people of all ages and backgrounds from in and out of town, it brought tourism to our town centre with visitors staying over in hotels and visiting local venues for the after parties. We accept pride isn’t everyone’s thing and that’s fine, some don’t understand the need for it but we clearly see there is. We had amazing feedback from our first event, better than we could have imagined and we can’t wait to see everyone again.”

The National Lottery Community Fund recently launched its new strategy, ‘It starts with community’, which will underpin its efforts to distribute at least £4 billion of National Lottery funding by 2030.

As part of this, the funder has four key missions, which are to support communities to come together, be environmentally sustainable, help children and young people thrive and enable people to live healthier lives.

National Lottery players raise over £30 million a week for good causes across the UK. Thanks to them, last year The National Lottery Community Fund was able to distribute over half a billion pounds (£615.4 million) of life-changing funding to communities.

To find out more visit www.TNLCommunityFund.org.uk

Twitter: @TNLComFund

Facebook: @TNLCommunityFund

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LinkedIn: The National Lottery Community Fund