(File Photo/paNOW Staff)

By Rob Mahon

Safe Spaces for Pride

Prince Albert Pride to launch safe spaces campaign

Jun 7, 2022 | 4:00 PM

Pride Week has officially begun in Prince Albert as of June 4, and the week began with an announcement that Pride organizers were excitedly waiting to unveil.

Teaming up with local businesses, Prince Albert Pride has launched a Safe Spaces Campaign. The objective is to create more spaces with gender-neutral language and zero-tolerance policies against homophobia and other forms of discrimination.

“Our safe spaces campaign was something that was mentioned as an idea at the beginning of the year,” said Chelsea Bleau, secretary of Prince Albert Pride. “We were wanting to launch it for Pride Week but it became way bigger than we expected. Basically, we just want to work with businesses to create safer spaces for everyone.”

According to Bleau, many local businesses have some kind of zero-tolerance policy when it comes to derogatory language or other such behaviour. The goal here is to take that one step further.

“There is still a lot of action to take to back up those policies and back up words,” Bleau said. “We are wanting to encourage businesses to make other changes. For example, we want to encourage businesses to create gender-neutral bathrooms and use gender-neutral language and other things like that.”

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Prince Albert Pride hasn’t officially signed on with any businesses as part of the campaign, but several have reached out to express interest. For Bleau, this means more environments will reduce stress on the 2SLGBTQIA+, and that’s a promotion not just of tolerance but of health.

“Homophobia and Transphobia and other prejudice like that make all of our health worse,” Bleau said. “By promoting a safe space, it also helps health and mental health for everyone. Signifying an area as a safe space will make everyone less stressed.”

So far, Bleau said she’s been thrilled with the support from people in Prince Albert in response to their announcement on June 4. She also said that other communities have expressed support for the Safe Spaces Campaign, and they may have some announcements to make throughout the year.

“We weren’t expecting it to be so big,” said Bleau. “It really is like an act of activism to help the community. We’re just surprised that so many people are on board with that because when people think about activism, sometimes there’s a little bit of stigma with being open about your support.”

Because openly supporting or taking a stand can carry a stigma, many businesses or people tend to adopt a neutral stance. The landscape is changing, however, and there are more people willing to openly support the 2SLGBTQIA+ community than in the past.

“Maybe it could have succeeded (in the past) but it would’ve taken a lot more work and a lot more convincing,” Bleau said. “The other thing with the campaign is we are using an evidence-based approach… there’s a lot of new research regarding this kind of thing so maybe in the early 2000s or even the 90s people would’ve been really hesitant.”

Pride Week runs through to Sunday, June 12 in Prince Albert, while June is recognized as Pride Month throughout much of the world.

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rob.mahon@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @RobMahonPxP