Last Saturday, July 14th, The Hove Lawns in Brighton welcomed a huge number of people celebrating the town’s second annual Disability Pride event. The event attracted all kinds of people with both visible and invisible disabilities along with their families, friends, carers, and passers-by. Disability Pride events give disabled people the opportunity to celebrate who they are.
Last year’s event in Brighton was organised by Jenny Skelton who wanted to raise disability discrimination awareness. She is mum to three adopted disabled children and decided to organise the event after one of her children was asked to leave a local pub due to her impairment.
The aim of this year’s event was not only to raise disability awareness by engaging and informing the non-disabled community but also to reduce the isolation that many disabled people feel by including them in a fun-filled day. Jenny states, “I think it is essential that disabled people can have pride in who they are.”
Brighton’s Promenade hosted the carnival parade led by the band Unified Rhythm, made up of mostly disabled musicians, and there were talks and speeches by disabled people as well as exhibitions by disabled artists. A great time was had by all.
Jenny was really pleased with the enormous support and positive response to this year’s event. Last year it had been hard to get people involved, but this year it was a different story, and Jenny says she would like to see Disability Pride events taking place in all cities across the UK, and around the world.
The next event will be taking place in a couple of months in Norwich on September 16th. It starts at 10 am at the Forum on Bethel Street. This is the first event to be held in East Anglia, and there will be talks, activities and a marketplace going on all day. Find out more about it here.
