the7stars celebrated Pride 2022 this year in style, with events over the month of June designed to educate, communicate and celebrate with the whole agency. We wanted to shout it loud and proud for our LGBTQ+ members of staff and the allies among us, both within our own agency walls and in the wider media community.
What was our inspiration?
With it being the 50th anniversary of Pride in London and the first coming out properly after lockdown, we knew the city would be buzzing and we were determined to bring some of that energy home. Our Equality Leadership Team decided that our theme for this year should be Intersectionality, embracing the multifaceted nature of our own individuality. We were eager to celebrate our uniqueness, whilst also educating ourselves in order to become better allies to every corner of the Queer community.
What did we do?
This saw us running multiple events throughout the month and decorating our reception area with a beautiful mural, commissioned by an independent artist that brought Pride 2022 to centre stage.
We also wanted to facilitate people educating themselves, so we shared information on Pronouns and why sharing your own will help empower others, as well as updated our Untold Library (which hosts borrowable books written by authors from marginalised communities) with new books from new perspectives. Adding to this, we showed Ted Talks in our communal areas continuously so that people could scoop up some new understanding of human nature in all its colourful variance over their morning coffee and cereal.
Going even further, we hosted internal seminars with Pink News’ CEO coming to speak on planning for inclusion and with WE CREATE SPACE, we ran a talk about Intersectionality in partnership with the land of independents. We had Pride Payday drinks, with Jungle Creations serving delicious rainbow cocktails and a parade party feel, as well as online Drag Aerobics from Home to get ourselves moving and feeling fabulous.
On top of this, we encouraged our colleagues to get out and about and experience Pride by doing a twist on our Discovery Dosh scheme, where people could be in with a chance of winning their ticket money back if they attended a Pride event. Normally Discovery Dosh has an educational or skill-learning focus but, for Pride, we decided anything goes! We asked only that people embraced the Queer community so, from a Pride bike ride to a Drag Disco, people could win their ticket value back.
Why is this important to us?
Respect Each Other and Have Fun (REOAHF) is one of our core values at the7stars, and we wanted to celebrate our diversity this Pride. Choosing Intersectionality as our theme for this year felt right as there are so many wider identity issues in the mainstream news at the moment and viewing people as individuals instead of labels or statistics has become more important than ever. With the7stars’ mission statement of Freedom running through everything we do, we wanted to celebrate the freedom to choose who we love and the freedom to be ourselves at work.
What have we learned?
Whilst celebrating Pride was always going to be an opportunity for a big old party in June, it is important to remember that celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community is for life and not just for Pride. With that being said, we are not planning on stopping now that it’s July! Our Equality team is continuing to passionately drive forwards our internal initiatives to ensure that everyone at the7stars feels at home and, if you visit our office in person, you may just see something colourful on our reception walls, that lives on past 1st July.
Take a look at our Pride Payday Drinks video below, courtesy of Jungle Creations and Four Nine.
A Strawberry Dai-kiki? A Bimini Bon-Bramble? Yes, please!
Four Nine teamed up with our friends at @the7stars to host a Pride celebration, featuring a whole load of colourful cocktails and mocktails and DJ Vivian Bam Bam playing all of the biggest #Pride anthems ?#Event #LGBTQ pic.twitter.com/luYVocnstJ
— Jungle Creations (@JungleCreations) July 7, 2022
