09/07/2019
Saturday saw the St Paul's Carnival in Bristol, one of the largest annual celebrations of African-Caribbean culture and community outside of London. The event draws around eighty thousand people from a wide variety of backgrounds and from a large swathe of the UK. This year, there was also a strong LGBT visibility at the event, with our reporters spotting a number of samesex couples enjoying the festivities. The Police were present, with a local LGBT liaison officer sporting a rainbow augmented uniform, and the Bristol united Sexual Health services were present, including staff from our good friends at the Brigstowe Project, which continues a tradition of providing HIV support services in the city dating back to the nineteen eighties. The festival parade was as vibrant as ever, with flamboyant costumes and popular street music. We spotted at least several young people wearing cut up rainbow flags reappropriated as butterfly wings on their costumes. The event was covered by local community and BBC radio services and was hailed as a great success by organisers after several years in which the event struggled to take place.
