The UK has helped to spread Pride across the world by taking part in a series of parades and events to mark Pride Month during June.

The UK’s appearance at the events was led by the GREAT Campaign, which works to drive economic growth across the UK by encouraging international  audiences to visit, study and do business with the UK.

Back in 2013, the UK became the first country in the world to take part in a foreign Pride Parade when a UK float entered the New York Pride parade.

Since then, the Great Love campaign, which launched the following year, has featured in more than 50 global Pride and LGBT+ events every year, all with the aim of highlighting what an open and welcoming country Britain is and driving investment and tourism into the UK.

Cabinet Office Minister, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, said:

It’s wonderful to see Britain featuring so prominently at Pride events across the world. It is really important that we show people from the LGBT+ community that the UK is a terrific place both to visit and to invest in.

GREAT’s global promotion of the UK over the past 11 years has been highly effective in delivering consistently on government investment. Over the last year alone, returns have ranged from between £10 and £30 for every pound spent.

Highlights of the Great Love campaign this year have included the Great Love London Taxi taking part in the Sydney Mardi Gras and the UK taking pride of place at New York Pride last weekend to celebrate 10 years since its first presence. In Sydney, the UK was the only foreign government to have a float in the event and the Great Love London Taxi was seen on Australian television by hundreds of thousands of viewers.

A special afternoon tea was also held onboard the Queen Victoria in Sydney Harbour with hundreds of Australian business leaders, politicians and prominent figures from the LGBT+ community. The event was designed to showcase the potential for trade links between the UK and Australia and led to a number of new links being developed between the Government and Australian business leaders.

The Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on LGBT+ Rights, Lord Herbert of South Downs, said:

As the UK’s Envoy I’m proud to be championing the human rights of LGBT+ people around the world.  The Great Love campaign is a fantastic example of the UK promoting the values of freedom, tolerance and equality for all which are the hallmark of our country.

Great Love is supported by the likes of former Olympic boxer, Nicola Adams, who was also the first celebrity dancer in a same-sex couple on Strictly Come Dancing, Radio 1 DJs Adele Roberts and Riyadh Khalaf and Ru Paul’s Drag Race contestants Vanity Milan and Elektra Fence.

As well as the events in Australia this year, Great Love has also been seen across the globe from Brazil to Beijing, Miami Pride and Rome Pride while other events have also been carried out in Paris and Washington.

For more on the campaign, visit: https://greatcampaign.com/great-love. Photo by UK Government, Wikimedia commons.