Image Credit: Matthew King

Cancelled events have been at the forefront of our news since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, recently many are being opened up again, such as Reading Festival. Despite the optimism for a "normal" summer, the York Pride Committee have released the unfortunate news that Pride 2021 will be cancelled, for now the second year in a row.

The Committee stated that they have "worked tirelessly behind the scenes to investigate every possible option available to enable us to bring back North Yorkshire's biggest LGBT+ celebration" following the news of the roadmap to ease lockdown. Despite these efforts, the committee has now "unanimously agreed that there are still too many uncertainties and risks around COVID-19 and holding large public events for us to confidently proceed and host a safe and successful event of which ourselves and our community could be proud."

The intended date for Pride, Saturday 5 June, would not be allowed to go ahead under the roadmap's estimations, and the committee state that "with the government's dates for future stages of relaxation all being based on the best case scenario, and still subject to change, we are unable to accurately reschedule a date for later in the summer."

The Committee also mentioned that they cannot afford to run the event on limited numbers which would be necessary so to maintain social distancing. They say that "as a small charitable organisation, we have neither the funds or the volunteer numbers to be able to put these impractical and expensive measures into place."

Despite this, there will still be an online event open to all to replace the cancelled physical event, which will take place on Saturday 5 June. The organisers concluded their statement by explaining:

"We hope you can understand why we have had to make this tough decision once again and we'd like to thank all our supporters, sponsors and stallholders for their support through these difficult times for all of us. We look forward to welcoming you all back to a truly fabulous York Pride in 2022, which marks the 50th anniversary of the very first Pride in the UK!"

For more information, go to https://yorkpride.org.uk.