FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: PrideFest 2024 Announcement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THURSDAY, JUNE 6, 2024


PrideFest, the 501(c)3 organization behind Seattle’s Pride festivals, is proud to announce PrideFest Capitol Hill, on Saturday, June 29, and PrideFest Seattle Center, on Sunday, June 30. This is our 18th Annual PrideFest celebration, and this year aligns with the fiftieth anniversary of Pride in Seattle.

PrideFest Capitol Hill on Saturday, June 29 will feature three stages across six blocks of Broadway, as well as a Makers’ Village and other activations within Cal Anderson Park. Headlining the main stage are local favorites like Bacon Strip, House of Moschino, EmpeROAR Fabulous!!!, AZN Glo, Lashes, BeautyBoiz, Miss Texas 1988, LCN!, and Champagne Honeybee. Like every year, the Rainbow Stage features local organizations and community groups, including Entre Hermanos, Kings: A Drag Show, a Latine Showcase, Rain Country Dance Asssociation, #BlackHotSunday, POCAAN, and Pride Asia. On the Family and Youth Stage, PrideFest is thrilled to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the world’s first Drag Queen Storytime with the queen who hosted in 2014, Aleksa Manila. Seattle’s LGBTQ+ Center will also be holding a Queer Youth Pride celebration at this stage, followed by a dance party with C89.5 DJs.

PrideFest Seattle Center on Sunday, June 30 will take place following the downtown Pride Parade and feature three stages with over one hundred artists. Headlining the main stage is Trinity the Tuck, the winner of RuPauls’ Drag Race All Stars Season 4, as well as Bright Light Bright Light, Purple Lemonade, BeautyBoiz, and Damag3, among many others, all peppered with a walk through the decades to highlight all the progress the LGBTQIA+ community has made in the last fifty years of Pride in Seattle. The popular Fountain Stage will feature Travvy Trav, Papi Sii, DJ Dana Dub, Chelsea Starr (PDX), and Sailor Hank. The Mural Stage, the band stage, will now integrate drag acts between bands to keep the stage going all day long, and will feature acts like Roulette Delgato aka Big Burr, LüChi, Amelia Day, Dark Chisme, Bruno Baewatch, and much more.

PrideFest’s organizational mission statement, as well as the tagline for this year’s PrideFest “Pride50” theme, is “Honor the Past, Celebrate the Present, and Fight for the Future,” which in translation for the organization means an emphasis on the community’s shared history, a celebration of LGBTQIA+ arts, and advocacy to fight for all of our communities. According to PrideFest Executive Director Egan Orion: “This year more than ever, PrideFest provides a chance to bring our communities together for a positive, uplifting series of events that help bring us closer together. Fifty years of Pride in Seattle is an incredible milestone, but it doesn’t happen in a silo. The political climate of the country, especially as it relates to the queer and trans communities, makes it more necessary than ever for us to gather, to be together, to affirm each other, and work together to fight for a better future for all. For us, Pride50 is as much about the future as it is about the past.”

PrideFest doesn’t require a ticket or fee to enter either of its festivals. They are both free events.

PrideFest has no association with Capitol Hill Pride, run by Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson, or the ticketed events at The Cuff and Queer/Bar advertised as “PrideFest”.

For complete information about PrideFest events in June, please visit www.seattleprideguide.com and www.seattlepridefest.org

 

About PrideFest

PrideFest is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, founded in 2015 to serve the Puget Sound region’s LGBTQIA+ community through arts and advocacy. They produce PrideFest Capitol Hill and PrideFest Seattle Center the last weekend of every June.


For more information:

Egan Orion
Executive Director, PrideFest
Tel: 206.701.0272
E‐mail: info@pridefest.org

PrideFest Headliners Announced!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 26, 2022

PrideFest will be back with its signature Pride weekend events, PrideFest Capitol Hill and PrideFest Seattle Center, taking place on June 25 and June 26, respectively. This year’s theme is “We’re Still Here,” celebrates the resiliency of the LGBTQIA+ community and reaffirms our communities’ fight for a more equitable and inclusive world. PrideFest is a 501(c)3 non-profit at the intersection of art and advocacy. Central to this mission is to support artists of all stripes, both locally and from around the United States, particularly crucial because of how difficult the pandemic was for artists.

Today, PrideFest is proud to announce its first set of headliners for PrideFest at Seattle Center on Sunday, June 26.

Jake Wesley Rogers
The 25-year-old phenom Jake Wesley Rogers will be gracing the PrideFest stage this June. With talents like Elton John and the looks of David Bowie, Rogers is an expressive, emotive, unique, GenZ, Tik-Tok artist who is taking the music world by storm. As he told Vogue last winter: “As a creator aligning with the art I’m supposed to make, and step into, and be, I think it’s going to be my most favorite year so far. We’re going to build this rocket ship while we’re flying!” To get a sense of Rogers’ talent, listen to his very personal EP Pluto, with its soaring arrangements and intimate, heartbreaking lyrics. Prior to his performance at PrideFest, Rogers will be featured on a May edition of the organization’s PrideCast.

Legendary Ball Showcase (from HBO Max’s Legendary)
With the success of shows like Legendary and Pose, Ball Culture is having its day in the public eye, but the history of Ball goes back many decades. The Music Supervisors and cast from Legendary, Purple Crush (including Isla Ebony), will join up with “King of the West Coast” Enyce as well as many special guests for a Ball showcase that you won’t want to miss!

Monét X Change
Monét X Change, is a drag queen, singer, podcaster, and reality TV personality. She is known for having competed on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10, and as the winner of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 4 along with Trinity the Tuck. She will return with an all-winners cast for All Stars 7. She’s a singer and a podcaster. You can listen to her on the Sibling Rivalry podcast with Bob The Drag Queen, and the Ebony and Irony podcast with Lady Bunny.

DJ Brynn Taylor
Since her arrival to Los Angeles in 2005, Brynn Taylor has earned her place as one of the most versatile and skilled female DJs in Los Angeles, but she is known throughout the United States. She has maintained several DJ residencies at high-profile venues on both coasts, including The Abbey in West Hollywood and has been a guest DJ at ultra-hip Hollywood joints such as LAX, Kress, Boulevard 3 and Falcon, where she has played for the likes of both Paris and Perez Hilton.

Aja
Aja is a Brooklyn-based rapper and drag queen. She competed on the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race and on the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. Her debut EP, In My Feelings, was released in 2018, followed by her debut studio album, BOX Office, in February 2019, and her second EP, ALL CAPS, in June 2019.

10 Festival Co-Directors Curating This Year's Festival

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Here at PrideFest, we’ve been thinking how we can do things differently going forward. Since we are principally an arts organization, one of the more important aspects of the festival is who gets to decide who performs. For this year’s PRIDE 2.0 (September 4-5 on Capitol Hill), we’ve hired 10 different festival co-directors to spread out the job and responsibility of booking talent for PrideFest. The result is one of our most diverse lineups ever (see our SCHEDULE). We’re so grateful to all our festival co-directors and can’t wait to see the shows they’ve created for our 2021 show!

PrideFest Returns September 4-5, 2021 Exclusively on Capitol Hill

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 2021


PrideFest, the 501(c)3 behind Seattle’s Pride festivals, is proud to announce PrideFest Capitol Hill, happening this Labor Day Weekend, September 4-5, 2021. PrideFest has no plans to hold any events in Downtown Seattle in 2021. PrideFest organizers are working with Gender Justice League (the producers of Trans Pride Seattle), Seattle Dyke March, and other non-profits to integrate elements of their traditional yearly activations into the weekend’s festivities. PrideFest is also coordinating with LGBTQIA+-owned bars and clubs to participate, as able, in the temporary Pride weekend move to Labor Day Weekend though with the coming June 30 full re-opening, PrideFest expects that for these venues, it will be an entire summer of Pride on Capitol Hill.

PrideFest is one of the largest arts festivals in Seattle, celebrating the region’s LGBTQIA+ community. For 2021, PrideFest is starting a new program with 10-12 festival co-directors, a distributed model creating more opportunity for queer, trans, gender-expansive, and BIPOC artist curators and the communities they represent, for a more inclusive representation at all of PrideFest’s stages.

Historically, PrideFest has been responsible for producing both PrideFest Capitol Hill and PrideFest Seattle Center during the last full weekend of June. The weekend and all the activities, from the Pride Parade to all the street parties put on by bars and clubs, usually attract hundreds of thousands of people to celebrate Pride. Due to COVID restrictions and a delayed re-opening in 2021, PrideFest organizers have been working with the city since late winter to produce an inclusive, Capitol Hill-based festival in late summer. PrideFest finally received their preliminary permit from the city’s Special Events Committee today, Friday, June 25, 2021.

“We think that late summer is the sweet spot for PrideFest this year,” says festival director, Egan Orion. “The lingering COVID restrictions would have made our traditional festivals impossible, and the historic heatwave would have made any activation this weekend dangerous for many, especially the more health vulnerable members of our communities.”

For those going to this weekend’s smaller events, from The AIDS Memorial Pathway Dedication on Saturday, June 26, or to TAKING B(L)ACK PRIDE at Jimi Hendrix Park—both events that PrideFest supports—PrideFest encourages everyone to take the heat seriously and to protect fellow community members from heat exposure.

PrideFest has no association with Capitol Hill Pride, run by Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson.

 

About PrideFest

PrideFest is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, founded in 2015 to serve the Puget Sound region’s LGBTQIA+ community through arts and advocacy.


For more information:

Egan Orion
Executive Director, PrideFest
Tel: 206.701.0272
E‐mail: info@pridefest.org

Plans for PrideFest in 2021

Hello PrideFest Fans!

PrideFest is planning in-person events for 2021, a two day event on Capitol Hill to take place late summer 2021. We are working closely with the city and public health to make sure it’s both an exciting AND safe event. We will announce dates mid-June. PrideFest Capitol Hill 2021 will feature all local talent and the most diverse set of artists on any stage in Seattle! We can’t wait to see you in person again.

PrideFest Co-Presents "Disruptor Conductor"

“Disruptor Conductor”
10/25 at noon

PrideFest is proud to be a co-presenter of the documentary Disruptor Conductor with a suggested watch date/time of October 25 at 12:00pm, followed by a live Q&A with conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser and director Sharon Lewis.

Get your tickets and more information here:

https://threedollarbillcinema.org/disruptor-conductor

This is the story of the first black LGBT conductor in Canada. You'll be inspired by Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser's belief that music can help unite and uplift everyone beyond race, class, and gender.

Planning Ahead for PrideFest 2021

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We were hoping to have a late summer PrideFest event but it’s clear with the health crisis that that will not be possible, so we’re looking forward! We can’t wait until we gather again in person and are planning on:

PrideFest Capitol Hill - Saturday, June 26, 2021
PrideFest Seattle Center - Sunday, June 27, 2021

After this long lockdown, our events are sure to be one helluva party. Can’t wait to share it with you.