FAQs

Modeled after a traditional Olympic hospitality house, Pride House is a venue* welcoming LGBTIQ+ athletes, fans, and their allies during large-scale international sporting events. Typically, they are welcoming places to view the competitions, experience the event with others, learn about LGBTIQ+ sport and homophobia in sport, and build a relationship with mainstream sport.

* In some instances, due to hostile governments or other restrictions, Pride Houses have had to take different forms or shapes. During the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, for example, the request to hold a Pride House in Russia was explicitly denied. Instead, international supporters held “remote” Pride Houses in solidarity with Russian LGBTIQ+ people, and the Russian LGBT Sport Federation hosted the Open Games

Mission

Pride House International supports local communities to advance LGBTI inclusion and combat homophobia and transphobia through and throughout large-scale sporting events.

Vision

LGBTI people are equitably welcomed and engaged in every large-scale sporting event.

Values

• Local leadership – We believe that local communities are best equipped to envision and deliver programming in response to, or in connection with, large-scale sporting events in their region.

• Shared History – We believe that the expertise of past Pride House initiatives form an invaluable resource and must be documented and shared.

• Best Practices – We believe that we have a shared responsibility to ensure the continued growth and momentum of the Pride House movement through the development of best practices.

• Collaboration – We believe that our success depends on the effective engagement of allies from throughout the sport community and the diverse regions of the world.

• Inclusion – We recognize the full diversity of LGBTI communities and the intersectional nature of identity. We are committed to advancing the inclusion of all people with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, as represented by the acronym “LGBTI”.

You will see many acronyms across this site, due in part to the fact that content has been prepared at different times and in different parts of the world.

When the Pride House International team was preparing the mission, vision, and values, we settled upon “LGBTIQ+” but this is not true across all documents. Whichever acronym is used, Pride House International recognizes the intersectional nature of identity, and is committed to advancing the inclusion of all people with diverse sexual orientations and sex characteristics, and gender identities and gender expressions.

Pride Houses have been delivered in areas where there are no existing LGBTI centres, and where there is little organised LGBTI community infrastructure.

An existing centre could provide a venue (such as at Vancouver + Whistler 2010) or a structured organisation could be the delivery parent of Pride House (such as at Toronto 2015), but it could also be delivered by sports groups or organisations (such as at Glasgow 2014) or by groups of community activists (as happened in Poland + Ukraine 2012).  It is important to establish your model of leadership and delivery, but there are no fixed parameters as to what these should be.

There are many possible starting points.  Our Step-By-Step Guide  will give you an overview and take you through the main steps to consider.

In keeping with the spirit of the Pride House movement, engaging the local community is a key principle and would be a useful starting point. One thing which you could do is to contact us and one of our team can organise a teleconference or online conference to help you to do some brainstorming and get you off on the right foot.

There is no gold standard, and there is no “off the shelf” model.  One of the keys to the success of Pride Houses so far has been the way in which they’ve reflected the regional and cultural context of their locations.  We recognise that Pride Houses with small budgets have had huge impacts.  We also know that others have been large and well-resourced in a way that is not possible everywhere.  We would encourage you to learn from the many excellent models here on the website, but to make sure that your Pride House is fit for your purpose, community, culture, and region.

We recognise that Pride Houses with small budgets have had huge impacts. We also know that others have been large and well-resourced in a way that is not possible everywhere. The answer to this will be different depending on your context, location and support available.