Pride Month: 5 highlights from Pride Fest’s return to Fayetteville
After a two-year hiatus, Pride Fest returned to Fayetteville Saturday in an array of colors, flags and entertainment.
Fayetteville Pride, an LGBTQ organization that aims to provide a support network and educational advocacy for the LGBTQ community, announced the event’s return at the end of March.
The organization’s president Katrinna Marsden previously projected 5,000 to 8,000 attendees before the 2020 event was canceled and hoped for numbers to increase for this year’s Pride Fest.
One thing the organization wanted for the event was to make it family-friendly.
This year’s celebrations included not only drag performers, music and local vendors but also an area for kids including a canopy for drag story time and puppet shows, bubbles, games and a water sprinkler to combat the heat.
More: ‘We're so excited': Fayetteville Pride Festival will return this summer
An afternoon of lively characters, community joy and fun-filled activities -- here are five highlights from Pride Fest that stood out most:
Someone dressed as a unicorn
Although the LGBTQ community is associated with rainbow colors because of the community’s flag, not many would think of a colorful unicorn.
Although wearing an inflatable costume isn’t that different, it was commendable to see a festival reveler put on the colorful uniform -- and keep it on -- in the 90-degree North Carolina heat.
An abundance of Pride flags
If you haven’t brushed up on the meaning of the LGBTQ flags, Pride Fest was the perfect event for you.
The pink and blue of the transgender flag; the pink, purple and blue of the bisexual flag; and the blue, yellow and hot pink of the pansexual flag were some of the many flags on display at the event (pansexuality is defined as attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity).
PFLAG’s first event with its new board
At the beginning of this month the Fayetteville chapter of PFLAG voted in a new board, saving the organization from having to disband.
The national PFLAG organization was founded in 1973. The Fayetteville chapter was started in 2017 by local parents of LGBTQ children.
Some of the resources the organization offers include monthly support meetings, information about how to support LGBTQ kids, faith resources and suicide prevention.
The Pride Fest was the new board’s first event where they were able to attract more community volunteers.
Drag performers
What’s a pride celebration without a drag performance, right?
Drag performers Morgan Richards, Lola Carmichael, Tatianna Matthews and Spectra took to the Festival Park stage throughout the event providing crowd pleasing lip-syncing performances.
An LGBTQ inclusive puppet show
The youth group of Sweet Tea Shakespeare's Green Tea not only presented an LGBTQ inclusive puppet show in the kids area but they also wrote it.
The performing youths’ show told the story of parents pushing their transgender child to get married. The story concluded with the parents’ finding their child the perfect bride — a drag queen.
Staff writer Akira Kyles can be reached at akyles@gannett.com.
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This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Highlights from Pride Fest’s return to Fayetteville
