The streets and park in central Swindon were filled with eventgoers attending this year's Pride event.

The Swindon and Wiltshire Pride 2024 took place on Saturday, August 10 and many there agreed that the colourful and noisy procession and event in GWR Park was not only fun, but important.

“I live for Pride every year”, said Shane, 29.

“It means a lot to me. I love the environment, I love all the families coming together - all races, genders, sexualities. I love it.

(Image: Dave Cox)

“It is just nice to see a gay couple holding hands. You don’t see that, really, on the outside.”

Shane’s partners, Andrew, 32 and Ann, 31, were also at the event and their day was going “amazingly”. It was Ann’s first ever Pride.

Ann said: “I think it is fantastic, I love it. Everybody can be themselves and that is the most important thing.

(Image: Dave Cox)

They said that they would like to see more events like Pride and enjoyed the live music which included the Cheeky Girls and Ru Paul’s Drag Race stars.

(Image: Dave Cox)

The 16th edition was the first ever in GWR Park, which Lee Haire, sponsor and merchandise manager, said was an improvement on Queens Park.

Lee said the more open-plan space improved accessibility and visibility of all that was going on.

This year tripled the number of stalls present while maintaining a maximum capacity of 10,000 people.(Image: Dave Cox)

Lee added: "Pride is massively important - there's a lot of hate around at the moment and it gives people a day for love. It doesn't matter what background you are from, everybody comes together at Pride.”

Swindon’s very own Ministry of Samba provided music to the march, which led from Regent’s Circus to GWR Park.

(Image: Dave Cox)

One flag bearer, Ryan, 19, said: “The march was great. It was just good fun.

“When you face a lot of people just beating you down because of this thing that you can't control, it is important to cancel that out with something.

“You never realise how important it feels to know for certain that nobody's about to say anything bad about you because of this one specific thing, until that is the case. You never realise how important that is.”