Pride in London Serves Historical Realness with 'Pride Jubilee' Campaign

2019 marks fifty years since the Stonewall Uprising in New York: the series of events that started the modern Pride movement. Pride in London is celebrating this anniversary with a campaign created by creative agency BMB, production company Blink and creative communications agency Talker Tailor Trouble Maker.

Honouring 50 years of queer revolt, the Pride Jubilee borrows classic Jubilee iconography to mark the moments that the LGBT+ community deemed most defining to the movement. Earlier this year, Pride in London put out an open call to the community for the moments, stories and landmark events that have defined what Pride is today.

These moments have shaped a fully integrated campaign through OOH, Social Media, PR and TV. The hero piece is a film, featuring an all LGBT+ cast re-enacting the moments that have defined what Pride has become today. The film opens at the Stonewall Inn on 28th June 1969 - the night when some of the most marginalised people from the LGBT+ community stood up to continued oppression and fought back.

The film moves on to feature actual audio and news footage clips from New York to the first UK Pride Rally in 1972, before fast-forwarding to the devastating effects of the AIDS crisis and the protests against the enactment of Section 28 in the 1980s. The narrative then moves into the new millennium, honouring the passing of equal age of consent and the legalisation of same sex marriage, before reaching the present day and the ongoing fight for trans rights. The film culminates in a scene shining a light on the injustices still to fight for, both in the UK and internationally.

The out-of-home campaign will nod to classic Royal Portraiture; using the visual language of the most privileged people in history to elevate some of the most marginalised and oppressed.

Tom Stevens, director of marketing at Pride in London said: “Last year, our film developed with BMB demonstrated that Pride still matters and showed that while progress has been made for some parts of the community, there’s still a long way to go. In this landmark year, the Pride Jubilee honours 50 years of queer revolt and allows us to recognise and celebrate the moments in our shared history that have made the Pride movement what it is today.

“Even in the last month we have been reminded that the great strides in equality that some of us enjoy today are not shared by everyone in our community. While people are being attacked on public transport, trans people continue to face discrimination and abuse, and LGBT+ people face injustice globally, it is clear that the fight is not yet won. The #PrideJubilee is about recognising that we have much to learn from the queer pioneers who came before us, and that we must take collective responsibility to understand our history.”

As part of the “Pride Jubilee” campaign, Pride in London will also launch a souvenir memorabilia range in bone china. A key item is a hand-made, porcelain house brick, created to remember the bravery of those who fought back, and featuring the face of three prominent figures who played a vital role in the Stonewall Uprising. The set, which will be auctioned at the Pride in London Gala Dinner on 20th June, depicts images of Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Stormé DeLarverie, whose estates cleared the use of their likeness.

Matt Lever, chief creative officer at BMB, said: “The Pride Jubilee is about celebrating and revering the key moments of struggle and milestones of change that have made the LGBTQ+ community what it is today. Authenticity was incredibly important - from using an all LGBTQ+ cast, to finding both audio and visual archival reference to make sure our scenes were as faithful to the facts as possible - this campaign honours those heroic moments from Pride's history and the ones that are surely still to come.”

The film aired on Channel 4 on Friday 21st June between The Crystal Maze and Celebrity Gogglebox.

Fred Rowson, director at Blink, said: “It was an honour to be asked to develop the script for and direct this film. To do the subject matter justice we worked with many collaborators - both in front of and behind the camera - who had deeply personal stakes in what we were making. All of us felt the necessity to confront the reality of the events depicted in the narrative. Working on this campaign also provided an opportunity to learn much more about the past 50 years of the Pride movement - the battles that have been won as well as those we must still fight for.

“To say that it was an emotional experience would be an understatement but hopefully these emotions, deeply felt by all of us during the film’s creation, shine through in some way in the final product. We owe a huge thanks to everyone who gave themselves and their time to this project.”