Pride 2020: How to celebrate at home as the event goes virtual

Official celebrations may be cancelled, but you can still mark the weekend by joining online workshops or donating to charities

Lockdown means the usual parades and parties are cancelled, but you can still do your own (iStock)

This year’s Pride celebrations for the LGBTQ+ community will look very different. The ongoing pandemic has put a stop to the usual parades and parties, but just because they've been cancelled due to the lockdown, that doesn’t mean you can’t still celebrate at home.

For those in the community and its allies, you don’t need to miss out on coming together to raise awareness of LGBTQ+ issues.

It’s also a chance to celebrate the community in its entirety, and feel empowered by it too. But of course not forgetting there's still a long way to go to end discrimination.

Rather than just waiting for next year’s events, there're plenty of ways you can mark the occasion both virtually and in-person with friends and family, and we’ve pulled them together here for you to enjoy.

From digital festivals to literature to read up on the origins of Pride, here are our top picks.

You can trust our independent round-ups. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections. This revenue helps us to fund journalism across The Independent.

Educate yourself

Books remain an essential way to connect us with our communities, learn and grow and its important allies of the LGBTQ+ community continue to read up on the history and struggles its members have faced along with showing support.

In our guide to the best LGBTQ+ books, the Non-Binary Lives: An anthology of intersecting identities edited by Jos Twist, Ben Vincent, Meg-John Barker and Kat Gupta (Blackwell’s, £12.99) took the top spot.

Take time to be better ally by educating yourself on the LGBTQ+ community (The Independent)

With a focus on intersections, this anthology specifically aims to examine the ways in which a person’s other identities – such as being a parent, having a faith, being black or having a disability – intersect with their non-binary identity.

Our reviewers said: “This diverse group of individuals have done the work in picking apart the norms that prevail in many societies and discovered how prescriptive and stifling these can be.”

The overriding message is that non-binary people exist in multiple forms – that there is no “right way” to be non-binary – but there is plenty more to learn besides.

It’s essential reading for anyone wishing to learn more about the wonderful diversity of humans. The profits from the sale of this book will go to organisations supporting marginalised trans and non-binary folks.

I'm Afraid Of Men by Vivek Shraya (Amazon, £12.99) was another book that was highly rated by us. As a trans woman of colour, Shraya writes with painful authority about the avalanche of violence she is subjected to.

Vivek Shraya is a trans woman of colour, presents the transmisogyny she has experienced and the boundaries and queer spaces that are needed in her book (Amazon)

From her clothing, to her usage of exclamation marks in communication to “soften” her message and avoid “agitating or offending” men, Shraya’s experiences lead her to conclude that “the only time I can make choices about how I want to look, act [and] communicate is when I’m inside my apartment”.

In addition to the transmisogyny she faces, Shraya writes with clarity about boundaries and queer spaces, the epidemic of male violence, and how we need to discard the archetype of the “good man” for a more nuanced conversation around masculinity. Accessible, essential and all too relatable, this is a thought-provoking discussion of vital issues that affect us all.

Join a digital Pride festival

While you may not be able to attend Pride in person, you can easily bring the party to you thanks to The London Dance Academy's "Gloria! A Digital Pride Festival" which isan online festival weekender from 27 to 28 June.

From dance classes and workshops hosted by RuPaul’s Drag Race stars Cheryl Hole and Divina De Campo along with a drag brunch and drag performers such as Sadie Sinner the Songbird, Vanity Milan, Honey The Foxx, Sminty Drop and Brandy X.

There will also be DJ sets from Paul Heron, Alexis Knox, Tete Bang, Sam Londt and Lee Harris with a total of 25 artists over the three days to enjoy.

Tickets start from £9.75 and a donation from every ticket will be made to charities including; Show Racism The Red Card and anti-racism educational charity, Gires, an organisation working to improve the lives of trans and gender non-conforming people of all ages and Voyage Youth which provides leadership programmes for your people from BAME communities.

Donate to a charity

One way of showing support is through donations to charities, non-profit organisations and funds aimed at improving the lives and bettering the education of the LGBTQ+ community to wider society.

UK Black Pride is a grassroots movement dedicated to LGBTQ people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American and Middle Eastern descent. Donating to them goes towards its community outreach and its annual Pride celebrations. It’s aim is to foster, represent and celebrate Black LGBTQ and QTIPOC people through education, the arts, cultural events.

Exist Loudly is a Go Fund Me campaign, set up by award-winning youth worker and community organiser Tanya Compas. Donations go towards Compas’s goal of creating an organisation to support young queer Black people outside of London and provide a space for young black queer people to explore their identity as being both queer and Black.

Host a virtual party

Thanks to apps like Zoom and House Party, socialising with your nearest and dearest without meeting in person is easily possible. And while people may have become tired of quizzes, a Pride party is much more exciting.

You can make officially mark your party by sending invites thanks to Paperless Post, which allows you to create a virtual invitation.

This roygbiv design is the perfect match for the occasion, featuring the Pride rainbow that reflects the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community. Then just email them out to your guests, so you can save yourself a trip to the post office, or scrabbling around for stamps.

Create virtual invitations for your own happy hour across zoom (Paperless Post)

Create your own happy hour

While you can’t meet up at your favourite bar to celebrate, you can create your own happy hour and cheers virtually.

If being a mixologist isn't listed on CV, you can buy pre-mixed cocktails that come drink in cans or bottles (which are also perfect for picnics if you're celebrating that way). In our guide to the best canned cocktails, we loved the Thomas Tipple sparkling cocktails (The Food Market, £2.99) which was launched last year in a bid to replicate bar trends.

Bring the bar to you with these pre-mixed cocktails you can enjoy at home, or in the park (The Food Market)

Sparkling wine combines with fruit juice and natural flavourings for the brand’s inaugural offerings inspired by classic champagne cocktails; a raspberry Bellini and our favourite, the passion fruit mimosa, which is nicely balanced with that mouth-puckering passion fruit hit. Both varieties are light and refreshing and come in at 5 per cent​ ABV.

Make a Pride playlist

As celebrations are in your own hands this year, that means you're also responsible for the tunes too. But of course creating that is easy and you can even share a playlist with your pals that you're not able to celebrate with in person.

Whether you're streaming from a phone, laptop or turntable, you'll want it to sounds a good as possible, which is easy thanks to our guide to the best multi-room speakers.

The best one we found was the Sonos Play:5 multi-room speaker (John Lewis and Partners, £499) which connects via bluetooth, wifi and Airplay and has excellent sound, painless set-up and intuitive use.

Ensure your Pride playlist can be heard loud and clear on this multi-room speaker (The Independent)

The “play:5” is the largest speaker in the range, and is a powerful, effective stereo unit that can fill a room easily with a rich and precise sound.

Once set up, which is quick and easy, you can put the speaker wherever you like. Even if it’s surrounded by walls or sonically unhelpful surroundings, it sounds spectacular thanks to a feature called “trueplay”. It does require an iPhone or iPad to set-up, but you only have to do it once, so borrowing one from a friend is all you need.

There’s no shortage of streaming services to use either and you find them all compared in our guide here.

Unsurprisingly, Spotify is one of the best, signing up gives you free access to its library of 35 million songs and has 286 million users worldwide. However if you pay for the premium service, a £9.99 monthly fee, you can listen ad-free, with unlimited skips, shuffle play and the ability to download songs so you can listen to them anytime and without an internet connection.

There is also Spotify Family, for £14.99, which allows five premium members to be linked to one account. There's also a discounted student membership for £4.99 which gives unlimited music with no adds.