The Pride festival launch at the Court Hotel on Thursday September 20 from 7pm will kick off this year’s Pride festival. Shortly after that, on Sunday September 30, Fairday will take over Russell Square in Northbridge. While Pride had originally planned to license the whole Fairday grounds for this year’s event, they are now reevaluating that plan and may divide the Fairday grounds into licensed and unlicensed areas in order to ensure underage members of the community can access to the event.
Pride Co-President Dean Cahill said on behalf of the Pride Committee, ‘Pride is doing everything within its power to ensure that people of all ages will be able to go to Fairday, to the extent that we will be restructuring the liquor license to permit under18s to enter the grounds. We are in negotiations with liquor licensing and the park is more than likely going to be divided up into non-licensed and licensed sections.’
‘We are getting more and more underage people coming into the event and under the law we have to restructure things. The police have stated that no underage people are permitted on the grounds unless accompanied by a legal guardian. Pride has to restructure to ensure that we accommodate all under 18s.’
As OUTinPerth went to press, nothing had been finalized and Pride was looking to submit a new map of the proposed event layout. Mr Cahill said the map would consist of two licensed areas. The first would be in the stage area and approximately 50-75% of that area would be licensed. The second area would include the bar and a portion of the grounds surrounding the bar area.
Mr Cahill said that this year, Fairday attendees should expect tighter control on the numbers in the license areas to ensure that Pride does not breach their license and exceed the limits stipulated in the license. However, Mr Cahill said he does not anticipate that to be a problem, as many people come and go over the course of the day, and Pride should be able to accommodate everyone who wishes to drink in the licensed area.
