Our Story
we are a grassroots charity created by our community for our community.
The catalyst for starting Happy Valley Pride was a piece of homophobic graffiti seen in the town of Hebden Bridge in the summer of 2015. This was a reminder that we are still fighting for equality, even in one of the most LGBTQIA+ welcoming towns in the UK. We agreed on a mission:
“To celebrate LGBTQ+ life in Hebden Bridge and surrounding areas. Promoting equality and diversity to eradicate discrimination, based on sexual orientation and gender identity, through arts, education and engagement.”
With the help of local artists, LGBTQIA+ & Aliies, we turned the offensive graffiti statement into one of celebration and acceptance.
2015 - 2017
Back in 2015, as word started to spread about a Pride organisation that was starting in the town, we couldn’t believe how many people wanted to get involved.
Sally Wainwright launched Happy Valley Pride early in 2016 and Peter Tatchell joined soon after as our Patron, later to be joined by Kate O’Donnell. Soon we were running monthly socials, building our volunteer team, and planning our first Pride Arts Festival.
We were quickly cementing ourselves as an alternative Pride, with a grassroots commitment to eradicating discrimination based on gender identity and sexuality through art and education, and our first full outing that summer set the tone for what was to come with our first festival taking place in Hebden Bridge Town Hall, our first school assemblies sowed the seeds of our Youth Engagement Programme and a strong team of dedicated volunteers became a force to be reckoned with.
The volunteer energy that was coming into Happy Valley Pride was enormous, and continues. Oh, and our four legged friends were not about to let us do it without them! The Pink Pooch Parade became a community favourite, and still is.
When an international queer artist manager and Soho Theatre associate producer joined our team after our first festival, we were able to start bringing the crème de la crème of cutting-edge LGBTQIA+ talent to our town, acts who would normally only ever be seen in the big cities. By 2017, we were rolling out the 7 day Queer Arts Festival & Pride that has now gained the attention of LGBTQIA+ people across the country, and our team of volunteers was growing bigger and bigger.
2017 - 2019
From 2017 to 2019, Olivier Award winning Duckie made their first trip up North to put on a show of diverse art & activism at the Trades Club, London legend Jonny Woo took on the huge Todmorden Hipperdrome, comedians Zoe Lyons and Suzi Ruffle graced our stages, Ursula Martinez stripped naked and ran down Holme Street in patriarchal defiance, Camille O’Sullivan lit up Hope Baptist Church and stole the town’s heart, and satirical superstars Bourgeois & Maurice became part of our family. But to do all this, we needed money, so we started running around the North of England with buckets, holding local fundraisers, and applying to funders.
We were making events for and by the community – Lesbian Writers Reads, Tea Dances for our elders, school art projects, a whole day dedicated to the talent of local musicians, art exhibitions celebrating a different local artist each year, human rights talks and discussions, our youth work continued, and we started holding our annual Trans Day of Remembrance vigil with local artist Kim Lana. It was during our second year we adopted the tagline ‘Be Here, Be You, Be Proud’ - which we felt was the perfect expression of our Pride, and we moved into our first office in a local mill!
During this time, we won funding from Arts Council England, National Lottery Awards for All, Hebden Royd Town Council, Community Foundation for Calderdale and Hebden Bridge Rotary Club.
In 2018 we started a new format: alongside 7 days of queer arts, with events throughout the week, we had a stage in the centre of Hebden Bridge and an information fair running throughout the town on the Saturday, followed by the Pink Picnic on the Sunday in calder holmes park.
7 days of workshops & queer arts with a big weekend to bring us all together was a winning formula
We started running several successful campaigns highlighting issues faced by our LGBTQIA+ community, including raising awareness of Hate Crimes and how to report them to the police, encouraging HIV and Hepatitis testing, and promoting solidarity with our trans community via our adopted Stand By Your Trans campaign, founded by Kate O'Donnell and Trans Creative, which you will see proudly displayed in homes and shop windows across our valley today.
By the end of 2019, we had over 50 volunteers, 8 trustees and 3,000 people were attending our events per year - and we had a bit of makeover with a brand new logo!
2020 - 2022
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 we moved our events online and hosted virtual shows from big names like Jinkx Monsoon, Horse McDonald and Justin Vivian Bond to feel-good singalongs, a literature event from local historian Jill Liddington about Anne Lister (the first modern lesbian) and an LGBTQIA+ mental health panel, which was the catyalyst for a whole new arm of our charity focussed on LGBTQIA mental health in our valley, called Mind your Head. Our online events Calder Calling and Fluid showcased our amazing local LGBTQIA+ talent.
These events proved incredibly popular as a respite from the pandemic for the community, over 5000 people engaged with our digital mini-festival in July 2020.
In 2020, we launched our new mental health initiative, Mind Your Head, a partnership with The Brunswick Centre. We created a resource on our website where people can gain access to self-help guides, watched videos of people with lived experience giving advice about how to cope with mental health issues, and find links to dozens of organisations that can provide specific help. We also did online talks, keep fit classes and later, in-person therapy sessions, including specific sessions around gender identity.
Also in 2020 we were thrilled to be asked to become one of eleven partners forming Queer Arts North, a network of leading, northern LGBTQ+ organisations including Homotopia Festival in Liverpool, Curious Festival in , Northern Stage in Newcastle, Contact Theatre in Manchester and more.
In January 2021 we became a registered charity, which added a recognition of trust in the work we do to provide a service for the public benefit. In the same year, we managed to create a small but mighty part-time freelance operational team, with an Artistic Director, General Manager and Youth Engagement Officer running the charity (albeit still on mainly volunteer hours).
As we emerged out of the pandemic, we started planning a live return. Following a long period in isolation, we asked our community to take part in an art exhibition that celebrated them in places that were special to them over lockdown. Places where they felt safe, and places where the felt free. "Our Pride" featured a specially commissioned collection of 20 portraits by local photographer Bruce Cutts, as part of the After Alice Project.
Our Youth Engagement Project really took off, and we cemented partnerships with 10 local schools.
And we produced the Happy Valley Pride Weekender in September - our first live event since the pandemic!
2022
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By 2022 we had solid, long standing relationships with six incredible funders who believed in us and wanted to support us.
2023
2023 was quite a step change for us, which started following a successful application to Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council for three year's funding as part of their Culture Fund. This meant we could really start becoming sustainable, and we moved into the heart of Hebden Bridge - the Town Hall.
That year, we delivered an inclusive & world class queer arts festival for all, increasing our audiences by 50% reaching 7,000+ people and 2,000+ children via our Youth Engagement Project and community workshops, delivered 12 live arts events including David Hoyle’s 10 Commandments, Fluid - Lesbian supporting trans event feat. Jackie Kay, Cocoa Butterclub & Duckie joint commission, and moved our family multi-art Big Day Out and Youth Pride Stage to the largest section of Calder Holmes Park for the first time.
Alongside this, we delivered art workshops, Tea-Time DISCOs, 24 LGBTQIA+ artists-led workshops for young people, further developed our art-based inter-generational mental health initiative Mind Your Head, which included a youth radio drama project, and provided 57 volunteering opportunities and 87 freelance arts roles.
The year ended with a bang when we won the Arts and Culture Award at the Calderdale Community Spirit Awards 2023, as well as being nominated for Charity of the Year.
By 2024, our festival has developed into a standout LGBTQIA+ event in the Calderdale region, and we were chosen as one of the Key Commissions for Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council's Year of Culture.
Our youth engagement officer Terry Logan, HVP photogrpaher Jordan Roberts and HVP regular artist DJ Kim Lana spoke to Gay Times,who said we "have a particular focus on arts, education and engagement, and have become a fundamental part of queer life in the area. They also host highly popular Pride events in the area during Pride Month."
We are grateful for all the support of our sponsors, volunteers and the kind donations of the public and local businesses. We wouldn’t be able to continue without them.
We believe education through art can help an equal society for all. Transphobia, Biphobia, Homophobia is all learnt behaviour, so we want to make sure everybody learns that this is never acceptable, and difference should be celebrated. The graffiti that started it all has become symbolic of the power of the people in overcoming intolerance and anti-social behaviour for Happy Valley Pride. You should be able to be yourself here, no matter how you identify and the sense of community shines through.
Let us all show our pride together. Be here, be you, be proud.
