Albany Pride Festival hailed a success after biggest year yet

The 2022 Albany Pride Festival has been one for the books, wrapping up on Sunday after hosting 27 events across 10 days in celebration of the local LGBTQIA+ community.

About 2000 people from Perth and across the region attended a huge line-up of events from February 18-27 as part the biggest regional Pride Festival in WA.

Albany Pride — a volunteer-led organisation supporting the local LGBTQIA+ community since 2011 — worked for a year to pull off the festival, which was able to narrowly escape looming COVID-19 event restrictions.

Albany Pride executive committee member Lupo Prenzato said the group had worked hard to bring a variety of quality acts to the region including drag, comedy, burlesque and cabaret, as well as a range of inclusive sporting events.

He said the response to this year’s festival had been overwhelmingly positive.

“Across all events we had about 2000 attendances and it could have been more had capacity not been restricted by COVID regulations or the size of the venues,” he said.

“A pride festival is a very powerful way to bring the community and its allies together, raise awareness of the issues that still afflict the LGBTQIA+ community, educate and increase visibility,” he said.

“All this goes towards shaping a more tolerant environment for queer people in Albany, but also creates desirable opportunities for entertainment open to everyone that would otherwise lack in a regional town.”

Mr Prenzato said the funds raised from the festival would go towards causes important to the local LGBTQIA+ community.

“We raised just shy of $2000 which will be donated to activities supporting survivors of sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts or so-called conversion therapy,” he said.

“This is in response to some events held in Albany in 2021. . . which were purely aimed at attacking the queer community from an ideological perspective.

“We also raised $5000 which will go towards a LGBTQIA-inspired permanent public art project in Albany.”