In case you missed it Stepping Out hosted Caithness Pride on 21st June 2025.  This was the mainland UKs most Northernly Pride event and Caithness' First ever Pride parade! we expected maybe 200 people arrive, but people travelled far and wide to join us on this monumental.  Police Scotland estimated 1000 people attended, excluding stewards and organisers! It exceeded all our dreams and expectations.  the rain held off, the wind finally died down and Thurso was filled with love, laughter and Rainbows, and had a buzz about it which I personally have never experienced before.  I could go on for ever talking about it but here are some photos!

Today we featured in the Press and Journal.  We are so proud of our story, of how we came about and how Love was the driving force for our group.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/6777716/lgbt-gay-pride-caithness-thurso-wick-charlotte-cole-garscadden/

With less than a week to go until Pride, we managed to get some of the team together to go over the last few bits and enjoy a little down time, before getting straight back to it.  

Last Thursday we were joined by Discovery College for an amazing evening of mask making. This colourful fun evening produced some amazing work which can be seen at Pride at the Stepping Out stall.

Waving the flag for Caithness' LGBT community in Inverness today.  Highland Pride did an amazing job putting everything together for what proved to be an amazing event.  Now we are back home and finalising everything we have planned for Caithness Pride in 2 week....TWO WEEKS!!!! Arrrgggghhhhh 

On 5th June we started off our Pride calendar with Banner and Placard making.  We had such a laugh and it was great ro see so many new faces! Looking forward to seeing all if these designs at the parade in 21st June.

Wow what a weekend we at Stepping Out have had, and what a start to Pride Month!  We started off at the Proud Scotland awards as finalists.  We sadly didn't get to bring the award home to Caithness, but were privileged to be nominated along with some amazing organisations.  We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate our friends at LGBT Youth Scotland for their win, along side all those that won or were finalists.  Everyone in that room were all worthy winners in our eyes as we all stand in solidarity to support and provide safe spaces for the LGBT community.

After the awards we headed to Fort William to support Lochabers first ever Pride! They did absolutely amazing in bringing the community together and what a turn out they had...even with the rain! 

This week has been a great week! The  local council have granted permission for us to have our parade, so now not only are we the UKs most Northernly Pride we are now officially hosting Caithness' forst every Pride Parade! what an amazing feeling to be part of such a monumental piece of history!

 

We couldn't have achieved this amazing programme of events without the local community pulling together.  Craft North are providing us with some amazing craft stalls, Caithness Fm are providing an awesome soundtrack for the day, Mr C's will be there with non alcoholic rainbow cocktails, and having Karaoke in the evening, we have Mina Mackay school of dance, Leap, Communities Past and Future Society, Thurso Development Trust, Thurso Youth group and much much more!

We have decided to put back the start time to 11am.

 

This will give people time to participate in the Park Run, as well as give people time to get all glammed up!

We can't wait to see you there! 

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09.05.2025 

Yesterday we held a meeting to discuss our plans for Pride.  Everything is starting to come together now as we put the final touches in place.  We have a parade now planned, subject to council permits...we have everything crossed that this will be approved, but even without it, it will be an amazing day.  We are still looking for volunteers for the day, so if anyone is in a position to help us with setting up, packing away and stewarding please do get in touch via our form or email us at steppingoutcaithness@hotmail.com.

 

We are also excited to announce that we have received a donation from communities past and futures society to help us with running costs throughout the year.  They will also be joining us at Pride so pop in and see their amazing work which we collaborated on back in September 2024.

These last few weeks we have been overwhelmed by the support we have received, both financially and in kind by our local community.  To top this all off, we discovered we have not only been nominated, but are also finalists in the Proud Scotland Awards, which are being held in Glasgow on the 31st May.

The team have got their gladrags ready and are very excited to go to not only represent Stepping Out but to represent Caithness' LGBTQIA community.  Watch this space for more information.....