Aviva Pride

Amber Barrett: What does pride mean? To me? I think the answer is probably in the word itself. I suppose being in that environment with people that you're proud to be who you are on a daily basis and proud of your friends for what they are as well. I think collectively that's what pride means to me.

Jessie Stapleton: Pride gives people the opportunity to express themselves and just be them and hopefully create a safe space and safe environment.

Amber Barrett: In 2015 we had the gay marriage referendum which was such an fantastic day for so many people involved. And for a lot of people who've been fighting their whole life just to have the social recognition that they deserve. We can all help in our own ways, normalizing the conversations… 

Jessie Stapleton: …and having the opportunity to talk and it's a normal conversation around the dinner table yesterday. So, I think that's a big thing.

Amber Barrett:            …making the environment itself comfortable enough that people are willing to come out.

Grace Moloney: I remember sitting in the carpark for my team's training session and I've got the emails from Denise our team ops lady, I start crying because I absolutely love it. It means the absolute world to me. We've got such a great group of girls such a great group of staff as soon as you come in here, you're not getting judged. You're not getting like anything, everyone's just all for everyone and that just makes us such a good team. 

Amber Barrett: It doesn't matter who you are, what background you come from, you know everybody here is going to be 100% Behind you. That's always been the case and I know you know regardless of what happens in the future, it's always going to remain intact.

My name is Lisa Connell. I use she/her pronouns.

I am a co-founder of the club night Mother. So Mother is a weekly club night for LGBTQ+ folk and their pals.

When we set ourselves up in 2010, Ireland was very challenging place and we ned to fundraise for GCN, Gay Community News, which was really born out of necessity, but also out of a desire to create something that we wanted to go to because for a country that was so conservative, the underground culture was really queer.

Kind of the best raves the best parties were often the gay nights.

So, when I was a kid coming out, I just didn't know any other gay people. 

I didn't see any other gay people. The representation in the media wasn't really there or it was very small or problematic.

When you enter into a space that is just for you, visibility and representation of like actually just seeing other queer people, there's something really affirming about that. 

Mother's timeline covers really interesting time in Irish history, you know, marriage equality, gender recognition legislation, the repeal of the 8TH Amendment. I'm really proud to say LGBT people were at the forefront of all of those campaigns. 

Obviously, there's a lot to do and when we're looking at the positive developments, there are many and the fact that the community is so visible and so proud of itself. I take great pleasure from that.

Hi I'm Claire McMorris. I work as a Senior Administrator, but I'm also a part of the Aviva pride Committee.

Lauren Pickering
My name is Lauren. My pronouns are they and them. I identify as queer, sexually and gender wise. I work in Aviva in the contact centre. I travelled to calls day to day and I'm also the chairperson of Aviva Pride committee.

Claire
I very quickly realised that Aviva is definitely a safe space to work particularly for the fact that we had the pride committee as well so it made it a lot easier for me to feel, you know, safe and supported, and particularly by senior management as well.

Lauren
My manager is constantly correcting people on my pronouns and that a massive thing for me. It's very reassuring , just even the little things like that job promoting. It's very warming and very welcoming. Corporations can be safe spaces, welcoming and not just our pride month. Aviva does harbor that sense of community in the workplace and allows us all to just be free to be who we are..

Lauren
Just because you're gay, doesn't mean on pride you have to be walking around decked out in rainbows head to toe, you can just go in a T shirt and jeans. You don't have to look a certain way to be in the LGBTQ plus community. If you're a trans man, you don't have to be extremely masculine. You don't have to throw away your pink.

It is all about how you are yourself. And you're comfortable within yourself. And that's what it is.

My name is Sara Phillips. I'm the co-chair of Transgender Europe, the International Trans Fund and a Board Member of the National Women's Council.

Acceptance is a word that I would probably feel that is going to take a long time to achieve. There's an assumption when we talk about acceptance in Ireland that everything is rosy in the garden. I think we've come a hell of a long way

50 years ago and during the late kind of mid 70s things were very difficult.

From a trans perspective people were not visible.

Trying to find people like you was really, really difficult. So my initial activism was very much in around support, connecting with people and connecting other people with each other, creating a community and creating something that we could hold on to.

I was able to find little pieces about healthcare, where do you go, who's the doctors to see, who's a psychiatrist to see; pull all that information together really helped me then to have what I felt was a reasonably stable transition was also therefore able to help others to kind of look for those pathways because not every pathway suits us all.

So what we need to be able to do is having wider visibility, wider education and wider understanding.

So pride means visibility, celebration and protest. It's important for young LGBTQI people to know that it's okay for them to be themselves and to celebrate everything that we've achieved.

More importantly, to be able to realize that there's still so much more work to be done.

My name is Oisín O’Reilly, my pronouns are he and him.

I'm the Chief Exec of Outhouse which is Dublin's LGBTQ+ Centre, I would say Outhouse is the centre of the queer community and queer life in the Greater Dublin Area.

We are the organisation for the trans; non-binary; person of colour who has a disability.

You know, really getting into the people who are most vulnerable and most marginalized and ensuring that they have the same opportunities that everyone else does, that they're not being left behind by the social progress and that's where I suppose our energy and efforts is very much focused.

We’re a space in which the community can come to find four things. First, is connection a place to come and find yourself, your people your place your passions,

A place to come if you need some community support to access information, advice and services.

It's the place to come and experience queer joy and culture and connect with heritage.

And lastly, it's a place to come and join in, in campaigning and be part of a very strong, credible and trusted voice for our community.

The beauty of what we're trying to achieve here is to create a haven free from the ills and the abuses that we find outside of this space that we can find understanding; compassion.

So, I think decisions are made by those who show up. And this is a collaborative effort. We're reaching out our hands and we're saying this is what we want to do, but I can't do it alone, because we fundamentally believe in the framing of Nothing about us without us.

Join us. We can make a space for all to be very proud of.