By Madeline Baker, Times-Chronicle
South Okanagan-Similkameen (SOS) Pride have successfully secured funding for a one-day celebration of arts, diversity, and inclusion to brighten the back-to-school season.
The Pride Arts Festival, which has a tentative Osoyoos date of Saturday, Sept, 24, plans to feature live entertainment by a wide variety of local performers, visual art displays, and promotional and educational booths run by local non-profit organizations.
Providing the day’s refreshments will be local food trucks, as well as designated tasting areas for wineries, cideries, and breweries from across the Okanagan. There will also be a walk through the Gyro Beach area to bring visibility to the event.
The goal of the Pride Arts Festival, as stated in SOS Pride’s re-application to Osoyoos town council on March 22, is to support and celebrate “the local 2SLGBTQIA+ community and the local artist community, most notably artists who identify within marginalized identities of 2SLGBTQIA+, Indigenous, Black and/or People of Colour.”
SOS Pride initially came to the Committee of the Whole in November of 2021 to propose a full-fledged Pride Parade, like the ones that Interior communities such as Kamloops, Salmon Arm, and Vernon have gotten off the ground in recent years.
They applied for the Visitor Activity Enhancement grant, which was offered by the town of Osoyoos to clubs and societies with events in the works that would benefit the local economy through community and visitor participation.
Council members were concerned about the scope and logistical challenges of the event as it was initially presented but awarded SOS Pride $5,000, half the amount requested in their original application, on the condition that they rework their plans to better fit the parameters of the grant.
Now that they have changed their focus from a parade to an all-day event in conjunction with local arts societies, the new application has been accepted without condition.The intended date for the pride celebration has also been changed from June, which coincides with Pride month and other similar events throughout the summer months, to its current September date.
Penticton-based SOS Pride first began lending their support to members of the local 2SLGBTQIA+ community five years ago, providing advocacy, inclusive events, and safe spaces for vulnerable members of the population as well as education for the wider community.
In 2021, they successfully petitioned Oliver, Osoyoos, Penticton, the Lower Similkameen Indian Band and the Upper Similkameen Indian Band to acknowledge June as Pride month.
At the time, president Melisa Edgerly spoke to the Times-Chronicle about the importance of “putting ourselves in the community and showing that we belong, and allowing our allies to celebrate us” in events like the parades held annually in most major Canadian cities.
SOS Pride hopes that their festival will help to “put Osoyoos on the map as a progressive and inclusive destination for national and international tourism and showcase it as a place to live year-round.”
