2015 Prague Pride hoping for increased participation of broader community

The fifth Prague Pride festival of LGBT culture gets underway on Monday and will culminate in a colourful parade through the city on Saturday August 15. Organisers are promising some 120 events, including discussions, film screenings and a pop concert featuring Eurovision winner Conchita Wurst. To find out more – including what this year’s theme is – I spoke to Prague Pride spokesperson Bohdana Rambousková.

Prague Pride 2014|Photo: Filip Jandourek, Czech Radio

“The theme of this year’s Prague Pride is ‘We all have a rainbow inside’. It’s a theme that wants to welcome not only the LGBT community but also the wide heterosexual public, let’s say, to the festival.

“Last year we were focused on Eastern Countries, in the former Soviet Bloc, and this year we decided to focus on the situation in the Czech Republic.

“What we want to say is, It doesn’t make sense to make any differences, to distinguish between people – we are all the same and we should all cooperate together.”

In previous years did you have much participation on the part of heterosexuals?

“Well, we always have a heterosexual majority at the festival, but we just wanted to have more and more of them.

“Prague Pride shouldn’t just be an event focused on the LGBT community but on the whole community, the whole society, to become a platform for discussion, for getting to know each other and to break down any barriers we have.”

This is the fifth year of the festival. Have you noticed any change in how Prague Pride has been perceived by the broader public since it first began?

Bohdana Rambousková, photo: Kristýna Maková

“The first year it was welcomed by a lot of fear, and fear of the unknown. People didn’t have much information about what to expect.

“Now during the five years we’ve grown up into a massive event. Last year we had more than 60,000 people coming during the whole week to our events and over 15,000 people joining the parade on Saturday.

“This shows that people understand what Prague Pride is. People understand it’s not a closed event only for the LGBT community. And this is a tendency we want to keep.”

I was reading that you will have around 120 events this year. What for you will be some of the most interesting ones?

“There is a wide range of events – parties, public debates and discussions… We will have for example Pride Voices, which is a special evening when we bring interesting international personalities to the Czech Republic and they will share their stories.”

Apart from these speakers, who will be your special guests this year?

“We have guests from business, from sport, from politics.

“We are bringing Lord Browne, who was a long-term CEO of British Petroleum and is the author of a popular book about diversity in the workplace.

“He is, I would say, a business tycoon, coming for one day only to the Czech Republic. So he’s one of the top guests we are bringing.

Conchita Wurst, photo: Albin Olsson, CC BY-SA 3.0

“Also we have the former Icelandic prime minister, the first openly gay prime minister in the world. She’s coming with her wife.”

And you also have the bearded singer Conchita Wurst?

“Yes. We also have several concerts, with music stars not only from the Czech Republic but abroad.

“And the main star of our opening concert is the Austrian star Conchita Wurst. She’s the winner of last year’s Eurovision Song Contest and she’s also known as a bearded lady.”