Celebrating Pride: Behind the scenes with Amgueddfa Cymru Producers

In June 2025, as part of the Wales REACH project, Amgueddfa Cymru invited applications for two Amgueddfa Cymru Producers to design and deliver a workshop about Pride. Here’s what James, one of our ACPs, had to say about the experience:

For pride month, Amgueddfa Cymru invited myself and Kleo to organise a workshop alongside Innovate Trust: a charity dedicated to helping adults with learning disabilities. We provided the materials, inspiration, and a brief history lesson so that people could create signs to carry at the Cardiff pride parade held on the 21st of June.

Part of my role was scouring the museum’s collection for some inspiration and the catalogue did not disappoint. I was surprised by the array of material available; from protest materials of the 1980s, to works by proudly queer artists, works loved by queer people, and private family photographs. Protest materials included t-shirts, banners, and badges, many of which were aimed against Section 28 in particular. This was part of the law put in place by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government that saw any mention of homosexuality in schools as an attempt to ‘promote’ the lifestyle. This meant that for over twenty years children in schools had no way to access accurate and unbiased information regarding sexuality or safe sex. Amgueddfa Cymru has a t-shirt with the exact wording of Section 28 printed on it. For me, part of pride has to be about looking back to all of the work done in the past so that we have the strength to look to the future. For museums to include objects like these is so important to me, and a huge step forwards for our communities and cultural institutions. 

My first time at pride was moderately unsuccessful. In either 2018 or 2019 myself and a friend travelled to London hoping to find the kind of community that was out of reach for kids in a relatively small secondary school. On the journey there we overheard a group of people warning each other that pride was on. That they had to be careful because we would all be having sex in the streets. I can safely say that hearing this made me feel infinitely more uncomfortable than anything I experienced at pride. But it still felt isolating. The two of us wandered around London and largely kept to ourselves and it didn’t feel like pride was the sort of thing I’d want to go to again.

On the morning of Cardiff pride this year I was exhausted and found myself sorry to miss the parade. But by the afternoon I was alive enough to walk into the city centre and within minutes it became easy to recognise many of the people that were there for pride or the big queer picnic. The number of families with children really warmed my heart. And I didn’t hear a single bad word about queer people. No warnings that we didn’t know how to control ourselves. No fearmongering about trans people in public spaces. I sat in the sunshine with some friends. I saw dogs dressed up in colourful outfits and silly hats. And it finally felt like a pride event that had done what it set out to achieve, it gave me an overwhelming sense of joy and family. I felt relaxed.

It was an absolute pleasure to work with Amgueddfa Cymru for pride month. Someone once described queer history to me as “cruising” through archives; seeing what or who catches your eye. I would encourage everyone to do the same and to seek out queer joy, whatever the month.

Wales REACH is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. It is a partnership between thirteen organisations and is led by The Open University and Amgueddfa Cymru. It is funded with a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The current phase started in autumn 2024 and is scheduled to run until autumn 2026.