We’d like to share with you everything that the Alliance Network and our members have been up to over the long, hot summer of 2026. We’ve had a busy Pride season and have managed to attend four local Pride events.
We also have an update from our members and a roundup of the local community events we attended.
We are delighted that our Pride breakfast events at Birmingham and Nottingham had our biggest turnouts yet, with attendees from a wide range of sectors and professions coming together to support the LGBTQ+ community.
Below are some roundups from our members who attended this year’s events:
Birmingham Pride 2026
What an incredible Birmingham Pride 2026!
This year’s celebration was especially significant for the Alliance Network, with our largest Pride event in the network’s 10-year history. It was fantastic to see so many members, allies, clients, and partner organisations come together to celebrate inclusion, visibility, and community.
A huge thank you to DLA Piper for generously hosting our pre-Pride brunch, giving members the perfect opportunity to connect and build excitement ahead of the parade. We are also incredibly grateful to Mitchells & Butlers for hosting our post-Pride celebration at All Bar One, giving everyone the chance to reflect on a fantastic day and continue the networking and conversations into the evening. The Alliance Network’s Pride Brunch was a key part of this year’s Pride activities.
Most importantly, thank you to every Alliance Network member who attended. Your energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to creating more inclusive workplaces and communities made this our most successful Pride event to date. Seeing so many people come together under the Alliance banner demonstrates the strength of our network and the impact we can have when we work collectively.
As we celebrate this milestone year, we remain committed to fostering connections, sharing best practice, and championing LGBTQ+ inclusion across the Midlands and beyond.
Thank you for making Birmingham Pride 2026 one to remember. We can’t wait to see what we achieve together next year! 🌈
Notts Pride 2026
This year’s Notts Pride was the biggest yet for the Alliance Network!
With over 100 attendees joining us for our annual pre-march breakfast event, in partnership with Nottinghamshire Law Society, it was a real show of how much our Network has grown in the East Midlands since our steering group was established in 2020.
We couldn’t have done any of it without our incredibly welcoming hosts, Browne Jacobson LLP, and our sponsors, Attribute Marketing, Freeths, St Mary’s Chambers, Ropewalk Chambers, Eversheds Sutherland, Rothera Bray and Gateley Legal.
Thank you to our volunteers who worked so hard to bring this event together. And finally, to everyone who showed up and made the day amazing!
“This year’s Notts Pride meet-up was our biggest yet! This was our seventh annual event, and each year it showcases the amazing local professional community we’ve built in Nottingham. It’s always great to catch up with familiar faces and meet new people.”
Lee Collishaw, Co-chair of East Midlands Steering Group
Solihull Pride 2026
A day of community, visibility and inclusion!
Members of the Alliance Network attended Solihull Pride 2026: Mike Morgan, Dee Wallis, Andy Aldcroft, Charly Pitts-Humphries, and Tom Harwood, representing the network at the event. The day brought people together to celebrate LGBTQ+ identity, promote equality and show support for a welcoming and inclusive community.
From the Alliance Network’s perspective, attending Solihull Pride was an opportunity to stand alongside local residents, community organisations and supporters. The event highlighted the importance of visibility, solidarity and continued efforts to ensure that everyone can participate in community life with dignity and respect.
Our members took part in the parade through the centre of Solihull, helping to demonstrate the organisation’s support for inclusion and its commitment to engaging with the wider community.
Trans Pride Birmingham 2026
Supporting the Trans Community in Birmingham!
A day of protest, celebration, and joy for the Trans community commenced with a gathering at the HIV memorial in Hippodrome Square in support of Trans rights. One of our Alliance Network committee members, Dee Wallis, who is also a Director of Trans Pride Birmingham, opened the event and compered the speeches, performance poetry, and chanting, with Mike Morgan and Tom Harwood also in attendance. A noisy walk with flags and banners followed to Eden Bar for a marketplace and an afternoon of stage performances and workshops.
The Trans community has been under attack recently with attempts to limit provision of essential healthcare and access to appropriately gendered spaces. Events such as Trans Pride are essential in helping a widely dispersed community come together in solidarity, gaining confidence from the encouragement and comradeship of others.
We hope to support this growing event in 2027!
Community Events Attended
As well as attending Pride events, our members have been busy hosting and attending local LGBTQ+ and Pride-focused events across the region.
In July, a few days before Notts Pride, we were kindly invited to attend Boots’ annual Pride event at their headquarters in Nottingham. Their internal Pride network arranged the event.
We met loads of amazing employees and caught up with some of the amazing LGBTQ+ organisations from across the region who work so hard to support our community through charity, community action, sport, and events. We also managed to pick up a few freebies, including a few packets of electrolytes, very much needed in Pride season!
Thank you to our steering group member, Kieran Halpin-Danby, for the invite, and to everyone at Boots who made the event such a success.
Birmingham Pride Breakfast Event with Colmore BID
In May, we teamed up with Birmingham Colmore BID for our Pride Breakfast, where we discussed LGBTQ+ leadership, inclusion, and allyship in the corporate world.
The event sparked incredible discussions about what it means to be LGBTQ+ in today’s corporate environment and created space for honest dialogue about lived experience, career progression, inclusive leadership, visibility, and the evolving role of allyship in driving meaningful organisational change.
Thank you to our host Phil Oldershaw, founder of Pose Events, our panel members – Andy Aldcroft (KPMG), Dee Wallis (Trans in the City of Birmingham), Dee Roberts-Molly (Birmingham City Council) and Fahad Naqvi (Goldman Sachs).
In June Clays in Birmingham hosted a Pride Event.
The event focused on LGBTQ+ inclusion in the hospitality industry. We had a lively debate about a range of personal experiences from our panel chaired by Paul Eaves-Seeley from Mitchells and Butlers: JJ Hogg – Event Manager Clays Birmingham, Keke Smith – Student Birmingham University & former Duty Manager Arcade Bars, Harriott Tatem – Bar Manager and Phil Oldershaw – Broadcaster, co-founder of Birmingham Pride and Pose Events. Clays Birmingham hosted the event, which has a fantastic event space.
An Update from Our Members: Kieran Halpin-Danby
I’m Kieran. I’m part of the Alliance Network East Midlands steering group, but also a massive football fan. As part of this, I am the Co-Chair of Proud Stags, the official LGBTQ+ and allies supporters’ group for Mansfield Town Football Club.
We are part of a Regional Alliance of LGBTQ+ supporters’ groups alongside:
- Rainbow Blades (Sheffield United FC)
- Rainbow Owls (Sheffield Wednesday FC)
- Proud Forest (Nottingham Forest FC)
- Rainbow Rams (Derby County FC)
- Marching Out Together (Leeds United FC)
- Rainbow Rovers (Doncaster Rovers FC)
- Rainbow Reds (Barnsley FC)
- Rainbow Spireites (Chesterfield FC)
This alliance is now entering its third year, which has been three years of support, collaboration and guidance. We have clubs of all different sizes, with groups of all different sizes, and we share experiences and ways of working in a sport that is typically male-dominated.
In June, all of these groups attended Leeds Pride which was also labelled as Football Pride this year. On the Saturday, we joined the “Football v Homophobia” showing of the film “The Last Guest of the Holloway Motel”, a documentary film following the life of a retired gay footballer, who moved to the US to live the rest of his life, leaving his family, wife and children behind to start this new life. It’s well worth a watch, and there was not a dry eye in the house at the end!
Following this, we had the chance to go for a social, where we met up with various football supporters’ groups, including an LGBTQ+ football club (Yorkshire Terriers) who were also in attendance. They play against the Nottingham Lions, another local LGBTQ+ football club. It was great to be amongst fellow LGBTQ+ people, but also with the shared interest of being football fans; this is a sport that is very “straight male” dominated, so being around a like-minded community despite supporting different clubs was truly valuable, and this community that the Regional Alliance have made is brilliant.
On the Sunday, the day of Leeds Pride parade, it was incredible to see that Marching Out Together, Leeds United FC’s supporters’ group, were selected to lead the parade. The first group of people you saw on the Leeds pride parade was their group. The Regional Alliance members were invited along by Marching Out Together, to jointly lead the parade with them, which was a brilliant experience to march with them, in a significant UK City.
Football Pride presented an opportunity to gather all of these people together, as one big community, to watch an LGBTQ+ football related film and then socialise together, putting our allegiances aside (football wise) and being part of one big community. It was truly a rewarding experience.