All are winners at Cambridge Pride 2025’s sunny delights

Cambridge Pride 2025 offered an inclusive festival of entertainment and activities on Jesus Green on Saturday afternoon, organised by Arbury-based LGBTQ+ non-profit The Pink Festival Group.

This was the fifth ‘Pride’ festival though the precursor event, The Pink Festival, started in 2003.

Though the day started with rain, it cleared up, allowing thousands of festival-goers to enjoy a sun-drenched free, family-friendly, outdoor event, which started at midday with a parade around town and continued with various stages offering diverse entertainment, including music, dance and comedy tents.

Dozens of stalls bore gifts and offerings including crafts, beauty treatments, clothes, jewellery, drinks and food. The traders market included local, LGBTQ+ owned businesses. A viewing platform was big enough for a couple of dozen visitors to take in the panoramic - and very colourful - views of the whole site.

There was a huge fairground area and lots of merchandise promoting the rainbow themes the organisers have embedded at the heart of the event: family, community, and pride.

The main stage opened at 1pm with poetry and queer anthem readings by Bam and Alexa Vox followed by a speech by main sponsor ARU’s pro-vice chancellor Prof Catherine Lee, and a set by The Duke, a bi, trans non-binary drag king who said the occasion is “a chance to perform is a chance to inspire someone to be themselves, to show there is a future for trans people where they can be happy and appreciated”.

Sets from artists during the afternoon included the very funky Colonel Spanky’s Love Ensemble, dancing diva of Norwich Kylie M’Hoe, sassy singer Misha Dawn, and all-female student band Wisdom Tooth Removal - who aren’t as painful as the name suggests - bringing a sometimes overlooked punk/emo/Alt theme to proceedings.

The main stage continued through the evening with Chappell Erin, Poppadom Shake, Jevon and Homoparody.

Four Maypole Dancing sessions took place at Cambridge Pride this year, with the first outside the Community Hive tent, an integral part of the festival with events from panel discussions to workshops.

Sessions at Community Hive this year included a danceathon with children, led by the hugely personable Olly Pike. The youngsters quickly picked up on Olly’s enthusiasm and his dance moves during his mid-afternoon set. Olly’s singalongs have an educational component. He references his educational work, giving LGBT+ talks and advice to children “to combat LGBT+ prejudice before it happens”. He teaches his enthusiastic young audience chants including lines such as “You say be a man, But I’m quite happy as I am” and “You think you know it all, But from way up here you look so small”.

“It’s amazing there’s education out there for children,” says Community Hive host Queenie B after Olly’s set concludes, continuing: “They say don’t work with children and animals, well we’ve had the children part and now we’ve got the animals, so welcome to our second annual dog show.”

From such unlikely beginnings Queenie B plucked a gem of a dog show, thanks to their (Queenie B, not the dogs) witty, acerbic, startling and outrageous banter/commentary. Around a dozen dogs took part in the dog-off, and the audience roared with laughter at owner-casnine interactions (and failed interactions) and gasped at some of the more tender antics the super-cute canines got up to.

The dogs and their owners formed a queue at the side of the stage. First up was a massively overdressed creature in a tutu and rainbow wings called Brachen.

“We have a winner!” laughs Queenie B, before asking what special talents the 8-month old had.

“She can sit,” says her owner modestly.

“But can she?” asks Queenie B to laughter after rather a long wait.

“Is that a dog or it is a rat?” Queenie B asks one astonished owner. It’s an Italian greyhound called Olive Oyl whose special talent is doing a spin. And Olive has a lovely -albeit massively overlarge - rainbow coat on. But will she spin? No, she won’t - not after that introduction!

The next dog is called Marbles.

“Marbles?” jests Queenie B. “I lost mine years ago.”

The dog is so cute that the audience claps and cheers and Queenie says: “I wish I got a cheer every time I did that - and no, I don’t want a treat, not unless you’ve got a beer.”

The compere accuses the next dog, Chester, of looking up their skirt. Lennie the labrador has had a face paint. After their introduction all the dogs parade on the runway, with ‘Who Let The Dogs Out?’ by Baha Men playing on the sound system.

One owner drops the treats for the trick on the dog’s head.

“That’s how I get fed at home,” quips our host. Next up is Toby, a dog who “doesn’t obey instructions and loves kisses”.

“Sounds like me,” remarks Queenie B.

The next pooch is described as “definitely a rat - or a mouse” - more gasps - then Queenie B notes that the canines are “better behaved than my kids”. The last two entrants in the dog show are almost certainly people dressed as dogs, and they get huge a huge round of applause, especially Carter who does begging tricks.

“OMG you’re a bruiser,” gasps Queenie B for the two-legged contestant after Carter.

“That’s it for the Ru Paul Wag Race,” they say before announcing the winners, which include Olive Oyl in second place.

“All are winners at Pride today!”

You can support and donate to Cambridge Pride here.

- Full attendance details and a post-event update will be in the upcoming edition of the Cambridge Independent.