“I came out to my mother with the words: ‘Mum, I think I’m becoming homosexual.’” Ted Brown grew up in London at a time when homosexuality was illegal. When he was 14, he felt very alone and isolated, and decided to come out to his mother “out of depression about the situation”. He recalls his mother, who had been involved in the civil rights movement in the US, saying to him: “There’s nothing wrong with your being homosexual and you deserve equal rights in the same way as black people have been fighting for our rights.” Brown joined the Gay Liberation Front when he was 20 and, in 1972, helped organise the first Pride event in the UK. He tells Hannah Moore about their kiss-in at Hyde Park and how the protesters were received by the public. Hannah also visits Stef Dickers, the archives manager at the Bishopsgate Institute, to discuss a new collection called the Peoples’ Pride Archive. He’s documenting how the Pride movement has evolved over the last five decades, and collects artefacts from different events. Dickers explains how it’s clear throughout its history that Pride has been both a protest and a celebration. “One thing we know, through a lot of the collections we have here, sometimes moments you think are just moments of joy, queer joy, they are actually intensely political,” he says. Sarah Savage, the chief executive of Trans Pride Brighton, tells Hannah why she decided to set up a separate event for trans people. “Over the last five years or so, the conversation for trans rights has really been dragged down to the gutter,” says Savage. “This makes a lot of people feel angry, makes a lot of people feel scared and alone. And Trans Pride exists to prevent that.”