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NEXT weekend is the third Mid Ulster Pride Festival and the organisers are hoping it to will be the biggest and best one yet.
For the first time, the flamboyant event, which is taking place in Cookstown this Saturday (August 13), will be hosting performers after the main parade finishes.
Organisers say that the Mid Ulster Pride has outgrown its old venue of the Fairhill Grounds and has now moved to the larger Cookstown Community Centre.
Committee member, Josh Cuddy, said that this year represented steady and sustainable growth for the parade and event.
Mr Cuddy told the Tyrone Herald, “This year’s festival is going to be bigger and better.
“This is an event everyone is invited to but, at its heart, it is still a rural event and we want to make sure it has a rural feel.
“This is Mid Ulster Pride, not Belfast, Newry, or Derry and we want to keep it having a different vibe and feel from other Pride festivals.”
The parade will begin at 1pm and will make its way through the centre of the town on its usual route and finish back at the Cookstown Community Centre, before a packed schedule of entertainers takes the stage.
It will include community groups, charities and people from across Mid Ulster and further afield.
The theme for this year’s event is trans rights and one of the organisations that will be front and centre of the parade will be UK-wide charity, Mermaids, which has been supporting transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse children, young people and their families since 1995.
Another group that will be in attendance at the parade will be the Rainbow Project, which works to improve the physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual people and their families in Northern Ireland.
The parade will then be followed by entertainment and food at the community centre. There will be a number of musical and theatrical performances, including a family-friendly drag show.
They will be joined on stage by a popular dance troop Dee’s Barbells, who will also be performing a family-friendly burlesque-style performance.
The event in the community centre will run until 6pm, with the official Mid Ulster Pride after-party will begin at 10pm in Clubland.
There will be drag and burlesque performers until closing.
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