Cairngorms Pride - Our Story

Illustration: Pine Marten holding Progress Pride Flag

This wide-ranging project completed in March 2024, after eleven events in eight locations around the park, alongside two online surveys.

400 people took part of which 25% were young people.

A resounding majority responded positively (81%) to the idea of a Pride for the Cairngorms National Park.

There were over 300 suggested ideas for activities and events, many of which were nature-related.

With continued support from the Cairngorms Trust, a Pride Steering Group was created and a new social enterprise was formed.

We are the result of this community-led and place-led work. A year-round Pride organisation, we will work on a local level with groups and spaces in and around the Park boundary.

Our first year will see the launch of our three flagship projects: Diversity in Nature, our Social Spaces Network and Pollination Street.

These have been designed with creativity and positivity in mind, to encourage participation, explore new partnerships and increase visibility of queer lives in the Park.

We may have a Pride March and festival in 2026, but that's further down the line. Now it's time for us to get started!

A wide-ranging Pride Consultation project was completed in March 2024. There were eleven events in eight locations around the park alongside two online surveys. 400 people took part of which 25% were young people. A resounding majority responded positively (81%) to the idea of a new kind of Pride for the Cairngorms National Park.

Vision and Mission

Here for the planet. Queer for the planet.

From our unique and beautiful location, Cairngorms Pride's vision is to help create a world where LGBTQ+ diversity in nature and humanity is celebrated and championed.

Our values are: Kindness, empathy, care, respect, resilience, strength, understanding and love. These underpin our philosophy, our projects, our partnerships and our outlook.

Research shows that global LGBTQ+ communities are disproportionately affected by climate-related disasters*.

Our call to action is to help shape Scotland's queer climate movement and bring queer thinking to positive ecological, environmental and wellbeing conversations.

_{*Sources: IIED, IPCC, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Greenpeace}
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LGBTQ+ Wellbeing and Pride Community

Queerness is less visible in rural communities which can impact negatively on a sense of belonging. We want to change that by connecting queer and ally people as a community in the Park and together do some cool stuff for the planet as a Pride Community. This is also our way of giving back to nature, a source of joy and wellbeing for so many of us.

Nature Restoration

LGBTQ+ people understand marginalisation and oppression, and increasing numbers of species in the natural world live with growing threats from a changing climate. Having Nature Restoration as one of our elements gives us a powerful mission to contribute to ecological and environmental recovery.

Climate Action

It is easy to imagine that our part of the world is not affected by competing crises and systemic failures, including over-consumerism, continued fossil fuel use, systemic pollution and waste. Quite the contrary is true, and it is vital we change our thinking and behaviour, so positive climate action is built into all our projects from design to delivery.

Environmental Education

Our choices and behaviours can have negative impacts and consequences on the environment. Through incorporating environmental education and awareness across our work, we empower our queer and ally communities to understand and relate to the natural world, and to make informed planet-positive decisions.

Research and Learning

At Cairngorms Pride, we want to do the deep-think, and help shape a new queer climate movement. Through research and learning we will embrace queer ecological perspectives and use queer thinking to explore how we can better understand the parallel experiences of LGBTQ+ people and the natural world.