After 9 years of putting on an amazing inclusive pride for southern Alberta’s LGBTQ+ community, Derrick Antson of Lethbridge Pride talks to GayCalgary Magazine about the upcoming 2018 year for their 10^th Anniversary.

"This year we are expanding our reach out to Taber, Cardston and Stand Off, which will all be having pride celebrations this year with Cardston and Stand Off having their first ever. This year, we are going to have Lethbridge’s first premier lesbian party, so we are having a plaid party. And we are also having folks coming all the way from Halifax to give us a Princess Rules show, which is this fun mix of anime meets drag queens meets theatre and it is going to be an amazing performance."

Every year the Lethbridge Pride Street Festival is held in Galt Gardens. They have expanded the festival to include a larger beer garden, added food trucks and also a kid zone off to the side making the event inclusive to people throughout the community. Last year, Lethbridge Pride had a very strong attendance for the festival where several of the food vendors were sold out of food within a couple hours of the festival starting. This year, they are adding something new to be part of the festival.

"So, one of the things we did this year just to help commemorate 10 years is we commissioned a local art project. So, picture the Hollywood sign but the word "PRIDE", so six letters the heart being the sixth, which is our logo. Each one is coloured themed to be part of the rainbow with six independent local artists putting queer art on them. That will be showing up for a nice photo background for a selfie wall. If all goes to plan, every year we will get another new six queer artists to repaint it so every year you will have newer queer art showing up at our festival."

The Lethbridge Pride Dance happens in the evening of the street festival. For the past several years, the dance has been completely sold out prior to the doors opening. This year, Lethbridge Pride is going with some major headliners.

"We always bring in someone for the dance, so this year since it is our 10th Anniversary, we knew we needed to go bigger which normally bigger means twice as big. This year we decided to go three times as big. We are bringing in Stacy Layne Matthews to headline our dance. We are also bringing in DJ Dopamine, Canadian lesbian DJ and we are also bringing in Jaxx Garcia which is a premier drag king in the US, and I am super excited for him."

Watch the complete interview for all the other events Lethbridge Pride is doing for their 10th Anniversary.

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Contributor Steve Polyak |

Locale Lethbridge |

Topic Gay Pride | Lethbridge Pride | Travel |