TheTin is proud to support London Pride, and we are proud to have members of the LGBTQ+ community at our company. We want to support striving for a better and more inclusive future.
At TheTin we greatly value diversity and inclusion, we want to ensure we always maintain a culture at TheTin where everyone is included, differences are accepted and everyone feels equally valued.
Since it is pride month in London this month, we have asked our team what Pride means to them as our focus to celebrate 50 years since Stonewall. You can find their answers here in this blog, and on our social media which we are doing to highlight the importance of Pride.
It’s been 50 years since the Stonewall Uprising in New York. In 1969, a Police Task Force raided a gay bar, which led to unrest and riots for two days within Greenwich Village.
The riots in New York were the catalyst for greater recognition of LGBTQ+ rights. As a result, the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance groups were founded, and Gay Pride marches began on the first anniversary of the riots. The marches have continued ever since, and have spread to every corner of the world.
Our team decided to show our support in the following ways:
We changed our logo to represent the Pride flag, and created two versions:
We changed our website, adding the Pride flag colours to our scrolling bar and team photographs. You can see it for yourself by clicking here.
And most importantly, we asked our team what Pride means to them, and turned some of these into animated visuals to share through our online comms.
We received many fantastic responses however, and we could only animate a few. So find below some more insight into what our team have said. The responses we received were great and thought provoking.
While Pride is a series of great events and parades it is important to keep in mind why Pride is here in the first place. As one employee commented:
it is there to allow people that have been unfairly repressed to express their ideals in order to reach the total respect and acceptance from all groups of society.
Another employee expressed:
Pride means to me having fun, dancing and feeling unashamed. To be gay and proud! Also being carefree, drinking and partying in the city streets, as opposed to the past of hiding and living in fear.
Another added that they are not too big a fan of the idea of feeling like they might need to dance and dress up due to worries of the event being stereotyped:
I appreciate the freedom people have to do this, and the freedom they have to express themselves in whatever means possible, but pride often gets stereotyped as one giant party, when in reality it goes a lot further than that. It's all about unity. People from all different backgrounds, sexualities and gender identities coming together to give their support and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. There’s still a lot more work to be done to bridge the equality gap and build awareness.
Another team member commented that they used to worry that companies who expressed their support for Pride, might just be doing this as a frontispiece and not mean or do anything more than that. But feels now it is initiated by people within organisations, to express themselves on their company’s behalf. Just like we are doing here at TheTin right now!
Fundamentally though, we know that this isn't the case, as it's often an entire community of people within these corporations that takes on the initiative. Their aim being to recruit fundamentally good talent from across the globe. It's a far cry from reading articles in Attitude only 10-15 years ago, where they interviewed people who kept their sexuality in city jobs secret, particularly in fundamentally 'laddish' cultures like trading and banking.
Another colleague added that 20 years ago things were a lot different, and all the companies and brands that are participating in Pride now, might not have wanted to support Pride and turn their logos into the rainbow flag.
They added that they feel Pride has two meanings for them, the occasion to celebrate on the streets of London with all their friends and to connect and feel proud to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community, while also remembering the fights that the community have had until now to try and be visible and for the world to see that love is love regardless of your gender or sexual preferences.
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Another great Pride is... quote we received:
Pride to me means celebrating your authenticity and your truth, showing the world who you are without fear and without a filter. Celebrating your tribe, empowering others and using the event as an opportunity to educate others, to show those who might otherwise be prejudiced that we are all humans, we all want the same things and none of us are hurting humanity or the world by being who we are. Pride means the celebration of all people, sounds cheesy, but we all matter and it all counts, Pride means standing in solidarity. Inclusion, love, respect, safety, empathy, community, completeness, understanding, family. A celebration of LGBTQ+ and also a bit of a protest to constantly reaffirm the hard won rights to counter prejudice and ignorance.
Finally, I’d like to conclude with one final quote from our team, and thank everyone who contributed to our Pride efforts this year. We did not let tight deadlines or busy schedules get in the way of coming together to create something. From BizDev, Development, Operations to Strategy and Design!
I am proud to work at a company with a diverse and inclusive community. I have been brought up to treat others with respect, and it is sad to see that others do not always hold themselves to that standard. For me, Pride is a time where everyone can celebrate people for who they are, without fear of persecution or stigmatism.