Lady Phyll: ‘Pride can’t just be a party when we’re still fighting to survive’

For Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, better known as Lady Phyll, advocacy feels less like a choice and more like something woven into who she is: “Activism really found me growing up as a Black queer woman when I didn’t have the language for it.”

He traces the connection back to when he was 12, when he recalls that a British National Party march was taking place nearby and an old woman urged him to go to a shop before they arrived because “they don’t like people like you”. The comment was directed solely at Lady Phyll, not at the blonde-haired, blue-eyed friend she was standing next to.

“It made me think there was a very different side of me that people didn’t like,” he recalled. That moment stayed with him and helped ignite what would become a lifelong commitment to the campaign.

“At my core, activism has always been about dignity and people wanting to feel safe, visible, and worthy of joy.” Joy is a word that Lady Phyll uses constantly throughout the speech. For him, having joyful moments is very important and an important part of his job.

This attitude towards activism eventually led to the formation of UK Black Pride in 2005, which celebrated its landmark 20th anniversary last August. Lady Phyll is now celebrating her third year as CEO, having previously served as executive director. Independentwas named to the 2026 Pride Hall for the fourth consecutive year for her decades-long work on race, gender, and LGBTQ+ rights.

“UK Black Pride was born out of a need, frustration and desire to see ourselves in spaces where we could be fully ourselves,” he said. “Without having to dismantle our identity of being black and being gay.”

He said at the time, many Black LGBTQ+ people felt pressured to choose between their Blackness and their homosexuality. Lady Phyll was running Black Lesbians UK (BLUK) at the time and organized a bus trip to Southend-on-Sea which turned into something much bigger. “It was a joyful and liberating feeling. We realized the common ground we shared with each other,” he explained.

As they walked towards the car, Lady Phyll came up with the idea of ​​creating a UK Black Pride Parade similar to events in Chicago and Washington DC. A few people laughed at this, thinking it was just a “crazy idea.” This idea, of course, turned out to be nothing but madness.

But building UK Black Pride has not been easy. Lady Phyll said that in the early days of the organisation, she struggled to find support and advice, encountered resistance and even received death threats. Twenty years later, he is still often asked why Black Pride is needed. “This is not something I feel the need to justify,” he said.

Part of the problem, he explained, is that Black queer communities often feel invisible in larger Pride spaces or are “tokenized with one Black speaker who has to speak for everyone.” “We are not a monolithic structure,” he said.

For Lady Phyll, intersectionality is central to the organization’s mission, encouraging people to look beyond the need for “diversity,” which she says is important but doesn’t capture the full picture. “We shouldn’t have to separate our identities,” she added, explaining that experiences of race, gender, class, disability, age and more are important.

Attended anniversary event after twenty years 25,000 people at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford. Beyond London, events have also been held elsewhere in the UK, including Cymru Glitter in Wales, given that not everyone can travel to the capital. Queer Britain (the UK’s first LGBTQ+ dedicated museum) also hosted an exhibition showcasing items from the UK Black Pride archive. “When I walked in I almost broke down and cried,” said Lady Phyll.

The anniversary wasn’t just about celebrating the past; This major milestone has meant the team have started to look at how to continue this event in the future, with the result that UK Black Pride will take a break this year and return in 2027. “This is not because of a lack of sponsors or funding,” he explained. “This is very much about how we sustain UK Black Pride in an increasingly hostile environment and make sure we can continue it as a free event in the future.”

For over two decades, UK Black Pride has become the world’s largest celebration of LGBTQ+ people from African, Asian, Caribbean, Latin American, Middle Eastern and Indigenous backgrounds. Although he knew that the event would be large, he did not foresee that it would reach this size since there was already “attention and need” for it. “What it has become today, I just think ‘wow’,” he said, emphasizing the importance of the work, efforts and dedication of the team behind the event. “I may be the face behind it, but it’s the people who make it happen.”

What impresses him most about the success of UK Black Pride is not the scale of the event, but what it represents. “When parents come with their gay children or see people who have been in the global majority for generations [Black, Asian, brown, dual-heritage or indigenous people] dance together and when trances feel safe enough to exhale.”

Lady Phyll also believes Pride should remain political at heart, especially at a time when some feel things are becoming overly institutionalized or sanitized. “Pride cannot just be a party as we fight to survive…it is born out of disruption from criminalized and marginalized people,” he said. “You can’t take politics out of Pride.”

Despite increasing hostility towards LGBTQ+ communities around the world, Lady Phyll, who seems endlessly full of positivity and joy, is hopeful for the future. “I come from communities that have always found ways to survive,” he said, adding that he “finds hope in young people and in our trans activists who absolutely refuse to disappear.”