Pride 2021 was our first to take place in February. After Albany Pride Festival 2019, the Pride Planning Committee looked at moving the Pride Festival to a new time period. Previously, Albany Pride Festival typically took place during or at the end of November, which meant it usually took place at the same time as the Perth Pride Festival, or at the end of it.

Whilst this was great for our local LGBTQIA+ community that couldn’t or wouldn’t travel up to Perth to get their taste of Pride, it also meant that some of our local Queer community were going from one Pride to another straight after, or that visitors from Perth were reluctant to come down to Albany for our Pride Festival having just finished the one there.

We came to the conclusion that February might be ideal. Any earlier in the year than November, and you’d risk rain, wind and cold weather. Any later in the year than February, you’d risk rain, wind and cold weather. Weather-wise, February falls into the Noongar season of Bunuru – the hottest time of the year (whilst still providing ‘a break from the heat’ for our visitors from Perth and beyond!).

Given that would mean only three months between Pride Festivals, we decided to skip Pride Festival 2020 and wait for 2021.

The end of February also meant it was at the tail-end of the Perth Fringe Festival, which fell in line with our ambitions to incorporate more Arts events into our Pride lineup. We did so with two shows that featured in Fringe, ’30 Days Free Trial’ and ‘Caged’ by Kinetica. This was our first collaboration with the Albany Entertainment Centre to bring Queer-themed (or appealing) shows to Albany from the Fringe Festival.

We also teamed up with parkrun and the Perth Frontrunners to have a Saturday morning jog/walk/stroll event at Middleton Beach, and welcomed LGBTQIA+ Perth-based sports team Perth Spectres for a basketball game.

We once again welcomed Drag Royalty Barbie Q & Co. back to Albany for a number of events, including Drag Bingo and a Drag Show at the Albany Entertainment Centre.

Of course, this was also during shaky territory during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a result, our annual Fair Day had to be postponed until September – but luckily, the rest of our events managed to go ahead as planned.

Despite the challenges the pandemic presented, the Festival was an enormous success.