After months of struggling to find a venue for their annual festival, Blount Pride organizers are pivoting their approach to summer activities, focusing on isolated events instead of one celebration. Pending events include a shindig market in mid-August and a downtown Maryville rally at the end of the month.
Shannon Bryant, a board member for Blount Pride, said during an interview Aug. 8 that the organization has been looking for ways to celebrate since attempts to locate a suitable festival venue fell through . Blount Pride initially sought to recreate its Blount Pride 2023 festival at the Clayton Center for the Arts, but last year’s flurry of legal difficulties and security concerns led the organization and host group Maryville College to part ways.
A proposal to use the amphitheater at Jack Greene Park also failed after Blount Pride organizers couldn’t reconcile security needs in discussions with the city. Documents from those conversations obtained by The Daily Times show city staff pledged 10 Maryville Police officers for issues like law enforcement and traffic control, but urged Blount Pride to consider hiring additional private security to enforce ticketed entry and event rules.
Events
Now, the group is focusing on breaking the elements of a festival into individual events.
“We decided to pivot to having a series of dispersed events so all the elements of our traditional Pride festival would be there, just on different weekends and at different locations as we were able to make them happen,” Bryant said.
Planned events include the Summer Shindig Market at local business The Bird and the Book on Aug. 17 and a “Rainbow Connections” community resource event at Skyview at Broadway Social Sept. 7.
Blount Pride’s Aug. 31 “Can’t Hide our Pride Rally” will be a larger event, with a sign-making party slated for the day before. The celebration invites people to gather at the Sam Houston Plaza by the Maryville Municipal Building for music, drag performances and speakers before lining the South sidewalk of Broadway Avenue.
The organization has obtained a permit from the city, Bryant said.
“This is not a protest against Maryville College or the Clayton Center for the Arts, or Maryville city,” she said. “It’s a rally to raise visibility and awareness of LGBTQ+ people here in Blount County, letting people know that we’re here, we’re not going to be intimidated, we exist, and we have as much right to be here as anybody else.”
Community
Organizers are encouraging drag performers to come to the rally in drag, Bryant said. Many venues, she said, have been afraid to incorporate drag elements pending the outcome of a contentious Tennessee law that bans “male and female impersonators” from the vicinity of various establishments. As courts hash out the law’s legality, Blount Pride has its own pending lawsuit and an injunction temporarily protecting drag performers from prosecution.
But community events, Bryant said, aren’t about lawyers and courtrooms. She and the rest of Blount Pride leadership didn’t want to become embroiled in legal issues.
“None of us signed up for this because we wanted to create case law for the country,” she said. “We wanted to make a nice festival where people could come and have a corn dog and get their face painted and go home.”
In order to make that happen, she said, it looks like the organization will have to divide its festival for now.
Blount Pride is looking for sponsors for its 2024 summer events.
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