New Highland Pride chair pledges greater engagement with all corners of the region as plans begin to take shape for 2025
The new chair of Highland Pride says his priority for 2025 is to create more engagement with the community across the north of Scotland.
Simon Allison has taken over the top seat of the LGBTQ+ charity, which organises the annual parade through Inverness city centre and looks to support and advocate for LGBTQ+ people in general throughout the year.
Former chair Sand Owsnett, who led Highland Pride through their calendar of events in 2023 and 2024, stepped back from the role leading to Mr Allison taking over.
He says his focus is making the charity as healthy as possible, and building a stronger relationship with both members of the LGBTQ+ community across all corners of the Highlands and other groups.
With LGBT+ History Month coming up imminently in February, and planning already well under way for Highland Pride’s events for 2025, any support will prove invaluable to the charity’s goals.
“We are sincere in our desire to be a part of a better network to have a bigger impact, and to find a way to reach people wherever they are so that we know how to serve them,” Mr Allison explained.
“As Highland Pride SCIO, we want to serve as much of the Highlands as we can. To do this, we need to know where people are and what they need, and we need people to be willing to join us – either on a part-time, single project basis or as a full-time trustee.
“What we can offer is that the meetings are actually usually pretty fun as we tend to talk about bigger, more interesting things – for example, we had a big discussion about Facebook in the last committee meeting, and before that we made a decision about Twitter.
“As we get closer to it, we’ll be talking more about Pride and more about Trans Day of Remembrance and how to honour those people properly.
“It can be a lot of fun, and if you’re a relatively young person it’s a chance to get management experience, understand how a charity works and what the responsibilities of a trustee are, so it can be CV building.
“If you have a bit more time to volunteer, it’s a great way of feeling like it has been time well spent. You will always be able to see what you’ve achieved because there will be a huge parade walking down Inverness High Street. It’s an inspiring thing.”
For more information on how to get involved with Highland Pride, email info@highlandpride.org