UWE Bristol receives the Bristol Pride award

UWE Bristol's longstanding commitment to Bristol Pride has been honoured at the first ever Bristol Pride Awards.

Members of the Equality and Diversity team, LGBT staff and student networks and LGBT Allies, joined Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Helen Lloyd Wildman at the Bristol Pride Gala Ball to accept the award of Best Sponsor.

UWE Bristol has been a proud sponsor of Pride since its Bristol Re-launch in 2010. At this year's event, UWE was the Community Area Partner for Bristol Pride Day (Saturday 11 July 2015), ran a busy stall and took a very visible part in the march through the streets of Bristol City Centre.

This year over 30,000 visitors attended Bristol Pride with 5,000 people taking part in the march. It remains the largest free Pride Festival in the UK and a bold celebration of the whole LGBT community.

Tracy Willis, VCAB Diversity Champion for LGBT, at UWE Bristol, said, “UWE Bristol is committed to providing a positive experience for all and we are delighted to receive this inaugural award. We recognise that being truly inclusive benefits our students, our staff and everyone we engage with locally, nationally and internationally. We are proud of our diversity and of the accessible, inclusive and welcoming learning community we continue to create. Pride is one of the ways we demonstrate and celebrate this.”

UWE Bristol's strong commitment to LGBT equality has been acknowledged in this year's Top 100 annual Stonewall's Workplace Equality Index, named number one University for the first time in the rankings. Out of the hundreds of employers surveyed, UWE Bristol also climbed 24 places to 11^th spot from 35th position in 2014.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Helen Lloyd Wildman, said, “This award is testament to the UWE Pride organising team's hard work. Bristol Pride gives us an opportunity to publically show UWE's continued and visible support to all of our many hundreds of LGBT staff and students. However, we're not complacent and are working continually to improve provision for all staff and students so that the University is truly inclusive.”

Daryn Carter, organiser of Bristol Pride 2015, said, “Congratulations to UWE Bristol, we're really appreciative of the overwhelming support they've shown us over the past six years, both financially and also in helping raise awareness of our events and activities amongst students, staff and Bristol as a whole. We recognise, UWE's excellent achievements in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index and thank them for being a great partner to Pride.”

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