The new Pride Committee is breaking with the past looking to the future in 2008. The current committee of six men and four women possess an impressive resume of skills, covering everything from finance and IT to marketing and event planning. OUTinPerth caught up with the talented crew at one of their weekly meetings to find out who’s who and what’s what with Pride 2008.
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Kieran Bycroft – Media Liaison Officer
Because of the problems they had last year, I wanted to join to do what I could to be a part of bringing them back out of that. I’ve had a long history of working with Pride and doing shows and that sort of thing in the past. I have been attending Pride events for years and years, so I wanted to make sure that continues to happen for the younger generations who come through.
Apart from having been at most of the events over the years and seeing what worked and what didn’t work, I bring media experience to my role as media liaison officer. I have also worked in various administrative roles over the years and I consider myself a very good organiser. I see it as a learning experience for me in many other areas, but I know that I can help out in that particular way for this year in organising and in assisting in organising. I don’t plan on taking any leadership role in any way, just want to be part of the team and like Charles said he’s ‘better off in the engine room.’ I think at this stage, so am I.
Our goal is to make Pride a sustainable organisation for a start, build it a future and our most immediate goal is to build a festival that we can take to next year’s 20th anniversary celebrations and build it back up to something that the Perth community can be proud of.
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Andrew Baietta – Male Co-President
I have been watching Pride for the last ten years or so and I feel very connected with the gay and lesbian community in Perth. With the recent troubles I saw the opportunity to come on and help to improve that situation. I am very confident that I’ll be able to do that in my own way – I believe I have the skills to help.
I work in marketing and have done for the last four years, which means I’ve basically developed and created a product and now I’m responsible for its growth and performance. So, I have that skill. I have run a business in the past. I was also Young Achievement Australia Business Person of the Year in 1997, so I’m very familiar with the operations of an organisation and having a broad view.
My personal goals are to ensure that what we do this year allows Pride to continue in the future. Obviously, we’ve come back from a very negative situation last year financially. What we need to do this year is not try to do anything too outrageous, but we need to do things that secure the future of Pride. So, focus on sustainability, on how we can make this operation financially viable going into the future and depending on how well we can do that this year, we might be able to make some exciting improvements to how we do things next year.
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Sharlene Dixon – Female Co-President
I came in last year in July, and this is my first year starting from scratch. This was the year I wanted to start being on the Pride committee because I wanted to see 2008 become a success.
My goals for this year are to actually get the women of the community back into Pride and back into the fold and to see Pride start celebrating Pride for who they are, what they became, how they began, getting back into the community groups and so on.
At the moment, we have myself and three other women on the committee.
It’s [also] getting Pride back into the community, bringing the banner for the Pride community, the face of the community, and getting into the new millennium with updating the website, the systems, and so on.
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Teresa Teal – Volunteer Coordinator
I believe so much in what Pride does with events and fundraising and I just love it. I have volunteered with Pride pretty much every year since I started going to Pride. So, I know a lot of the people that have been involved as volunteers. I am a good people person, and I’ll do my best to get volunteer numbers up.
We definitely need to try and get something going in terms of continuity on the committee where we are not reinventing the wheel each year, which is what we do. Unfortunately, there is not ever a big handover at the end, and so people are sort of floundering for a while then they get the processes going, then it all just starts again. It’s bit hard, when that keeps happening. It’s being worked on. I know it’s been worked on in the past, but hopefully it will work this time.
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Bevan Marwick – Sponsorship Officer
I’d been reading that the Pride committee and organisation as a whole were sort of going down the gurgler. Colin, the Treasurer, decided with myself that we were going to step in and see what we could do to help.
I think it is very difficult for young people to come out. As a young person, it was very hard for me to accept who I was. This sort of reaches out to the younger generation as well and somehow I want to try to make it easier for them to believe in themselves.
As sponsorship officer, I’m bringing it down to one package. In previous years it was a gold, platinum, bronze system. I’m bringing it down to one business partnership, so we can help the community as a whole and can reach out to more businesses to get more money, quicker. There is more that they can actually afford to give. We will also be giving them advertising within the community to help those businesses grow.
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Iosefo Tapusoa – Membership Officer
I was one of three people who saw Pride through one of its worst times in history. I’m proud that I was one of those people who stood by it irrespective of what was going on and making sure that Pride was still running. Last year we went through a tough time. This year, getting the amount of experience and skill that’s on the committee now, it’s nice to hear people say ‘I can do that, let me do that’, rather than taking it all on.
I’d like to see at least 1000 members, registered, paid financial members during my term as membership officer. One of the huge things is communication, within the committee itself as well as between the committee and the members as well as the wider community. We have our vision for where we want Pride to head and it’s our job to make sure that the members we are accountable to are on board.
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Charles Denham – Secretary
I bring a passion for Pride. I have been involved in various parts of it for a long time. I’m by far the oldest member of the committee and bring a knowledge of what’s gone before. One of the things I’ll bring to the committee is a stabilising influence. I get on well with pretty much anybody. I think that I can probably diffuse a lot of situations and make sure we all get through to the end of the year in one piece.
Pride needs to update and become relevant to today and get itself really going and happening again. We have a great deal of work to do this year and we are starting on it, but you can’t do everything at once. We are also thinking of next year, which is our 20th anniversary. It’s not just this year. Next year, hopefully, it will be in full swing.
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Leigh Jacobs – Youth Officer
The reason I wanted to get involved with Pride this year was to see that the LGBT community can further progress. As the youngest member I feel that a youth’s perspective will be valuable to the committee.
One of my goals for Pride in 2008 is to fully integrate Pride’s name into households around Perth. One of my main focuses is to identify what improvements youth need from Pride and represent them accurately.
I think that after last year it is important for us as a new committee to acknowledge the hard work the past committees have done, but improve in certain areas. I think that the key is to manage everything we do and stay committed.
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Kylie Dalton – Marketing
I was born in Perth, but grew up in Melbourne. When I came back to Perth years ago, I said that Perth suffers a little bit with the community. I always said I’m going to do something about it, so this year when I had the chance I thought it’s time to get in there, roll up my sleeves and see what I can do.
I have a lot of years of experience in event coordination and marketing and sales. At the moment, the charity that I work for, I’m developing a set of plans so that they can become sustainable. I think Pride has the same issues with fundraising and its marketing– to giving the people in the community what it is they want, not just what you think they want.
For me it is about developing long-term relationships with partners in the marketplace and businesses that we have. So, I’m working on developing a project that will be sustainable with The Court and Connections. Instead of working against them, work with them and really develop some good after parties after the parade, so we can keep people enthusiastic.
I don’t see it ending at the end of the month’s festival. I’ve already spoken to a couple of committee members and I think Pride should be doing events all the way through the year. I used to do five events in Melbourne and it started with New Year’s. I think we should be doing something similar. I think the plan that we are starting to develop makes sure that people can continually put in and bringing the right people to the table. It’s not just the people in that room, it’s to do with all the people out in the community.
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Colin Beeck – Treasurer
I had been watching the ups and downs of Pride, especially last year when they went into the deficit. Bevan and I thought we could probably help them do something, so we nominated and were duly elected.
I set up Fruits and Suits in 2000 and we were one of the largest benefactors of the GLBT community. I’ve already been working with those sorts of people and money and the problems that we are going through and funding and all those sorts of things. Everyone tried to do their best last year, but probably a little bit more financial management and control would help, so that’s what I bring.
[My goal for 2008] …to bring Pride back to a sound financial position. That would then give them the ability to become more relevant or be more relevant to the 21st century, rather than just be seen as a group that organises dance parties or something like that. We actually care for the community and the people within the community.
We just need to be careful because if we blow it this year I think Pride will be forever gone. I don’t think there will be another benefactor like Charles ready to put his hand in his pocket and bail them out. That makes me very conscious that what we are doing is relevant and people want to attend.
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To find out more about Pride and their upcoming events, visit Pride WA’s all new website – www.pridewa.asn.au
