The Supreme Court ruling is the most recent reminder of how at risk LGBTQ+ rights are around the world. In many countries, homosexuality is still illegal and, even in Europe, earlier this year Hungary passed a law banning Pride marches. Meanwhile, in Scotland, in response to ‘pinkwashing’ and the corporate sponsorship of Pride, we’ve seen a resurgence of community-organised Prides all the way from Dumfries to Orkney, and anti-capitalist Prides – including the Fossil Free Pride movement, and No Pride in Genocide – which seek to put the politics back into Pride.

This panel discussion will look back at the history of Pride and forward to its future, asking: 

• What are the origins of Pride as a protest movement, what has it become, and what do we need to protect?

• What does Pride mean, and who does it belong to? In a movement built on visibility, how do we avoid Pride being co-opted by other agendas and those wishing to profit from it?

• What potential does Pride have as a liberatory movement?

• When we organise politically around sexuality and gender identities, how do we build other forms of solidarity across class, borders, and with other minoritised groups? 

A panel discussion facilitated by Ellie Muniandy, anti-oppression facilitator and therapist.

Panellists include:

• Nat Raha - poet, activist, scholar and co-author of Trans Femme Futures; Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds

• Kit Colliver - activist and organiser at Resisting Transphobia in Edinburgh

• Caroline Gillwood - Porty Pride organiser

• Dom Miller-Graham is co-chair of Our Story Scotland, an LGBT archive project 

• Ania Urbanowska is a queer filmmaker, editor and facilitator 

• Lucinda Wilson - activist and organiser at No Pride in Genocide.

This is a FREE event so please join us!

This is an indoor event.

Portobello Library has: Accessible Toilets, Step Free Access, Wheelchair Accessible

Featured Line-up

Ellie Muniandy (she/they)

Ellie Muniandy is an anti-oppression queer POC therapist, trainer and facilitator who has supported many organisations with their anti-racism journeys. They have worked in the third sector for many years in disability, mental health and violence against women and obtained experience in strategic and operational development and governance for charities. They have a keen interest in organisational culture change, and currently work as the EDI Officer for a public sector organisation.

Nat Raha (she/her)

Dr Nat Raha is a poet and activist-scholar, and Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies at the Glasgow School of Art. Her books of poetry include apparitions (nines) (Nightboat Books, 2024), of sirens, body & faultlines (Boiler House Press, 2018), and countersonnets (Contraband Books, 2013). Nat’s work is anthologised in 100 Queer Poems and We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics. Performance work includes epistolary (on carceral islands), co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival, Scotland and TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, Ireland, 2023. 

Recent critical writing appears in Queer Print in Europe, Transgender Marxism (Pluto Press, 2021), New Feminist Literary Studies and Third Text (‘Imagining Queer Europe then and now’, 2021). With Mijke van der Drift, Nat is co-author of Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (Pluto Press, 2024), co-editor of Radical Transfeminism zine, and co-author of the article ‘“They would plant the rose garden themselves”: Femmeness, Complicity, Solidarity’, published in Social Text.

Caroline Gillwood (she/her) 

Caroline Gillwood is a Porty Pride organiser whose roots in activism run deep. Starting her career in HIV/AIDS work, she’s spent many years championing health equity, human rights, and social justice. Caroline advocates for Pride to not just be seen as a celebration, but also a space for resistance, visibility, and solidarity. She’s not only passionate about keeping Pride grounded in its radical roots —fighting co-optation, building cross-movement alliances, but also holding space for those who came before us and making sure no one gets left behind.

Kit Colliver (they/them)

Kit Colliver is an activist and organiser at Resisting Transphobia in Edinburgh, a non-hierarchical group which pushes back against transphobia. As well as zines on fighting transphobia, their projects include participation in Pride events, and ongoing outreach efforts. Resisting Transphobia in Edinburgh aims to raise awareness and foster unity within the trans community and beyond, and they emphasise intersectionality and intergenerational collaboration to create a better, safer, and brighter world for everyone, regardless of gender identity.

Dom Miller-Graham (he/him)

Dom Miller-Graham is co-chair of Our Story Scotland, an LGBT archive project which seeks to collect, archive and present the life stories and experiences of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender) community in Scotland. This involves oral history work with all ages, including the older generation, whose stories reveal the tremendous changes that have occurred in the situation of LGBT people during their lifetime. In addition to collecting stories, images, artefacts and research materials from LGBT lives, Our Story Scotland presents our heritage through the arts, in exhibitions, storytelling and drama.

Ania Urbanowska (they/them)

Ania Urbanowska is a queer filmmaker, editor and facilitator based in Edinburgh, currently working on a documentary with Porty Pride organiser, Kate Gillwood about local community prides in Scotland.

Lucinda Wilson (she/they)

Luci Wilson is attending on behalf of No Pride in Genocide Glasgow, which is a collective currently advocating for Glasgow’s Pride PLC to divest from corporate sponsors complicit in Genocide, and deliver a pride that meets the needs of our community. Last year NPIG organised a counter-demonstration block which vastly outnumbered the main Pride parade.

Luci has been organising with Small Trans Library Glasgow for two years. STLG hosts various events for queer and trans people in Glasgow, as well as lending its collection of queer books. Luci is primarily concerned with community building and third spaces, and works to create gateways between these spaces and the work of activism. Working with NPIG has been a necessary step because, as a long time believer in Pride, she feels that Glasgow needs a Pride that is accountable to its community, and which can be counted on to stand up for the most marginalised.