Last night Dublin Pride launched their 2019 Pride Guide and revealed further details about all of the festivities taking part throughout 2019 to celebrate Pride including a number of new additions to the calendar, including a Pride Conference and Winter Pride.

An Post, who is one of this year’s Gold sponsors, were the venue hosts this year with the launch taking place in the historic surroundings of the GPO on O’Connell Street.

For the first time in history, the rainbow pride flag was raised on top of the iconic building.

The evening began with a beautiful rendition of ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ by Glória.

Chairperson of Dublin Pride, Clodagh Leonard, gave an inspiring talk about this year’s theme ‘Rainbow Revolution’ and power of community.

Speaking of Storm Delarverie and Marsha P. Johnson who played a major role in the Stonewall Riots, Clodagh said, “There is no doubt that they were brave and heroic but that’s not always what revolutions are based on, sometimes they’re based on love.

“Both women had reputations for creating safe spaces in their community and they truly built a revolution on love.”

Will St Leger who is this year’s Grand Marshall, gave an inspiring speech about the “when we look back at history, we tend to look back through our own lenses. What’s often missing from history is the other stories of those individuals.

“We all know Marsha P. Johnson as one of the prominent members of Stonewall but did we know that before she died on 26 June 1992, that Marsha P. Johnson was living with HIV and an activist with ACT UP.

“There is so little about her life after Stonewall and I think it’s time we start recognising the history of these people throughout their lives and how sometimes these other stories get written out.”

The #pride flag flying high on the GPO for #Dublinpride pic.twitter.com/ERROEYRAuo

— Dublin Lesbian Line (@DubLesbianLine) June 11, 2019

Speaking at the launch, Festival Director, Jed Dowling said:

“For the very first time, we told our story.

“Stonewall wasn’t even the first, second or third but what was different was how we told our story because pretty soon after that we told it again and again.

“Within just a short few months a whole group of people had gathered together and they said we need to keep telling our story because every time we tell our story, we get stronger, we get better, things start to improve and that was how Pride was born.

“Pride wasn’t just a revolt that happened, it wasn’t the uprising, Pride was telling a story. It turned out that telling the story was the oxygen that allowed us to breathe and so long as we kept telling it we’d stay alive.

“On the 29th of June we are going to gather together out there and we’re going to come together and take the deepest possible breath we can and as long as we keep doing that, we stay alive.”

Speaking about one of the new initiatives, Pride Conference, Festival Manager Eddie McGuinness said it will “bring together members of the community and those within corporate together in one place. We want to take people offline and in person to see where we’re going to go for us as a community.”

Dublin Pride also announced that they will be launching a new festival which will start on November 27, Winter Pride.

McGuinness said Winter Pride will be all about “health, wellbeing, recruitment and tech.” More details will be released on their website.