May 18 – Hamilton Ohio Pride will mix things up a bit at its annual Pride event next month.
This year’s event will be the organization’s fourth since 2019, skipping 2020 due to COVID. It celebrates love and companionship, promoting unity, inclusion and awareness of sexual and gender diversity, said Hamilton Ohio Pride founder Taylor Stone-Welch, the 2023 Hamilton Citizen of the Year.
“What’s cool is that the community is growing with us as an organization, as an event, realizing that we’re trying to be the kind of Pride event that is appropriate for Hamilton, that is accepted in our city and in our county,” he said.
A Pride event in a big city, like Cincinnati, can be intimidating for some. “We want to make sure our event has a different vibe since we are a smaller, more conservative city,” he said.
One change is that the concert at the end of the festival will not take place. Stone-Welch said it wasn’t as well attended as the festival itself, which is also why it will be an hour longer in 2024. Hamilton Ohio Pride is scheduled for noon to 7 p.m. at Marcum Park in German Village. But Hamilton Ohio Pride 2024 will begin at 11 a.m. with the annual rally and march at Rotary Park in downtown Hamilton. There will be a few speakers, and the few hundred expected to be at Rotary Park will march down the sidewalks to Marcum Park.
By not ending with a show, they will be able to expand the range of bands and drag performances, in addition to using the RiversEdge stage all day. There will be a parallel stage in the park and several performances on the RiversEdge stage.
“There will be more drag bands and artists than ever before,” Stone-Welch said.
Since there will be no concert, Hamilton Ohio Pride worked with supporting businesses in the city’s DORA district for something similar to a pub crawl, with different post-festival events at downtown establishments. The band Third Times A Charm, which will perform during the festival, will transfer to Municipal Brew Works for a post-festival performance.
“I’m a huge supporter of Hamilton Pride, not just from an LGBTQ standpoint, but I feel like it’s a symbol of inclusion in general for all marginalized groups,” said Ann Marie Cilley, owner of The Casual Pint at Riverfront Plaza. “They do something almost every year to keep the event fresh.”
But she also supports Hamilton Ohio Pride because they try to involve local businesses.
“The fact that they are having something to do after they wrap up the event to encourage attendees to get out in the community is tremendous,” Cilley said. “I love that they consider the business, work with the business, recognize who their sponsors are; It’s an incredible collaboration and led by a fantastic group of people.”
The Hamilton Ohio Pride event will have some new free events that incorporate all ages, including an arts and crafts station that The Studio will help manage and operate. Additionally, Lane Libraries will have a reading station with age-appropriate books for children, teens and adults.
The Lane Libraries system has participated in the Hamilton Ohio Pride event since its inception, and spokeswoman Carrie Mancuso said that like other public events, “it provides a great opportunity for us to connect with our customers in the community.”
“At Pride, we provide book lists specific to LGBTQIA+ topics for readers of all ages and have staff on hand to answer questions about library services and collections, she said. “Inclusion is an important element of our mission to serve all customers, and community events like Pride are a great place to fulfill that mission.”
There will be three small mobile libraries to include more age-appropriate books, Stone-Welch said.
“Our idea is that a lot of books with queer characters or anything remotely related to queer identity have been targeted for book bans,” he said. “We want to showcase these books that are perfectly acceptable for the right age groups.”
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HAMILTON PRIDE
For the full lineup of bands and drag performances for the annual Hamilton Ohio Pride festival in Marcum Park, visit the Hamilton Ohio Pride Facebook page.
