Engaging with PRIDE

Each June, Pride is recognized and celebrated as a time to honour the contributions, experiences, and achievements of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. For us, it is also a time to reflect on our responsibility to create spaces and opportunities for inclusive engagement, spaces that respect and prioritize the role of Pride in shaping our engagement practices.

In 2024, the City’s Engagement team launched Engaging with PRIDE, an initiative to better understand and strengthen how Pride informs the Hamilton’s engagement efforts. Built on the belief that projects, policies, and initiatives are stronger when diverse voices and lived experiences are intentionally included, this initiative marks an important step towards more equitable and inclusive engagement practices.

Through conversations with residents and community partners during Pride Season (June to September) in 2024 and 2025, we’ve connected with over 150 community members and partners to identify six emerging themes that are key to planning for engagement:

1. Belonging and Community
   Belonging is felt when people feel seen and represented. Trust and participation increase when engagement spaces are community-led and when facilitators reflect the communities they serve.
2. Authenticity and Self-Expression
   Pride must go beyond symbols. The community values authentic, ongoing commitments that create visibility, build trust, and move beyond tokenism.
3. Diversity is Plural
   Meaningful engagement recognizes intersectionality. 2SLGBTQIA+ identities overlap with race, culture, faith, and other lived experiences; these must be acknowledged and respected in engagement practices.
4. Safe Spaces
   Engagement considers the dimensions of safety and how they are connected and can create significant barriers when not planned for, including emotional, cultural, and physical safety.
5. Visibility and Representation Clear follow-up from engagement ensures that respect, accountability, trust, and participation are visible throughout the process. Representation of diverse participation and trusted community facilitators builds trust.
6. Pride as Action
   Pride is both personal and political. The community acknowledges the need for intentional, ongoing engagement that advances equity beyond Pride Month and into everyday engagement processes.

These insights will continue to guide learning, reflection, and action within the City’s Public Engagement Community of Practice, a network of over 300 cross-departmental staff leading engagement across City projects. Updates to our work on this project will continue to be shared on this page.

Let’s Keep the Conversation Going

We welcome your questions, ideas, and comments. Contact us directly at engage.hamilton@hamilton.ca.

Thank you!

We extend our gratitude to everyone who participated, whether through outreach, sharing ideas, or joining conversations. We appreciate all who participated in this conversation. Your ideas and comments will help shape our engagement practices and embed the principles of IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility) from the start.

What we heard: (graph depicting most voted for to least): 1. Belonging & Community, 2. Authenticity & Self-Expression, 3. Diversity is Plural, 4. Safe Spaces to Engage, 5. Visibility and Representation, 6. Pride as Action

We're collecting information as part of this project

The City of Hamilton collects information under authority of Section 227 of the Municipal Act, 2001. Any personal information collected for the Engaging with Pride Campaign will be used to inform inclusive City-led public engagement activities. More details and contact information can be found in the right column of this page under "Notice of Collection".