Chichester Pride offers Summer Late at Pallant House Gallery

Chichester Pride stages its third Summer Late at Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery – a summer take-over packed with fun.

Transcript

00:00Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers and also

00:06Chairman of the Festival of Chichester. Now within the Festival in the last couple of

00:10years we have an event of growing importance and great fun. We have Chichester Pride taking

00:16over Pallant House Gallery on Thursday, June 27th at 7pm. Now really lovely to speak to

00:23Stuart Burrows from Chichester Pride and to Simon Martin, Director of Pallant House Gallery.

00:29Now Simon, why does this happen in the Gallery? How did it come about?

00:34So we have now been a partner with Chichester Pride, running the Chichester Pride late at

00:40Pallant House Gallery for the last three years. We did the first one in 2022 when it coincided

00:47with our Glyn Philpott exhibition, who was an important gay artist in Britain. And actually

00:52one of the things that we're really keen to do is to demonstrate to the local community

00:57and others beyond that the Gallery is an open and welcoming place and actually celebrating

01:03the queer history of British art. So many British artists in our collection and indeed

01:09our exhibitions have been gay, queer artists and that's not always been necessarily something

01:15that's been written about and it's important I think for people to see themselves in the

01:20art that we show. And so creating this safe space within the city that isn't just on the

01:27day of the Chichester Pride celebration but a month later during Pride month, it seems

01:32very important for us and it's been fantastic for us to work with the Chichester Pride Committee.

01:36For example, they've produced a number of short films about artworks in our collection,

01:42their favourite works, talking about those. We're doing, within the evening, we've got

01:47a number of events, starting with a talk by the art historian Gemma Rolls-Bentley who's

01:52written a new book featuring 200 queer artists. We go on to a whole evening's entertainment

01:58in the Courtyard Garden. There's also workshops and tours taking place in the Galleries as well.

02:04It sounds fantastic. And to bring in Stuart, is there a serious underlying message here

02:09or is it simply an evening of fun, do you think?

02:13I think primarily it's an evening of fun. I would stress it's free.

02:19Free? Do people need tickets or just turn up?

02:22People do need to book tickets, absolutely, just to manage numbers because we have sold out in the last two years.

02:27This is our third year. So there's tours, the temporary and permanent exhibitions are open,

02:35there are art activities and we provide, as Chichester Pride, we curate an evening of

02:41entertainment and musical performance in the gorgeous Courtyard and hopefully it'll be a

02:46beautiful evening. It has been the last two years, so fingers crossed. This year we have Chaos

02:52Musical Productions, our co-chair Dawn Gracie and the drag performer Snow White Trash who's coming

02:58over from Brighton. It is a fun evening but, as Simon has said before, it is important that

03:07Pride isn't just for one day. It's an opportunity for us to mark Pride Month and to demonstrate

03:14that, again, that Chichester and its cultural organisations are welcoming safe spaces for the

03:20local LGBTQ plus community. I should have said immediately, it's fantastic that this is actually

03:26part of the Festival of Chichester, as it should be. Brilliant. Well, have a fantastic evening,

03:33really lovely to speak to both of you and good luck with the event. Thank you so much.