Speaker
Lady Phyll Opoku-Gyimah
Lady Phyll Opoku-Gyimah is an award-winning community organiser and activist. She is the co-founder and executive director of UK Black Pride, the world's largest free Black Pride celebration; the executive director of international LGBTQ human rights charity Kaleidoscope Trust; and a public speaker and writer focusing on race, gender, class, sexuality and their intersections.
About Lady Phyll
Lady Phyll Opoku-Gyimah is the nucleus of the award-winning celebration and protest that is UK Black Pride. Widely known as Lady Phyll – partly due to her decision to reject an MBE in the New Year’s Honours’ list to protest Britain’s role in formulating anti-LGBTQI+ penal codes across its empire – she is also the executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust, an organisation working to uphold the human rights of LGBTQI+ people around the world
Lady Phyll Opoku-Gyimah is a community builder and organiser; a Micro Rainbow patron, and a public speaker focusing on race, gender, sexuality and
class. She’s regularly called upon to advise nascent LGBTQI+ organisations around the world to help leaders create cogent organising strategies, establish robust partnership networks and work effectively in service of diverse LGBTQI+ communities.
Founded by Lady Phyll in 2005, UK Black Pride is Europe’s largest celebration for LGBTQ people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern and Latin American descent, and is a safe space to celebrate diverse sexualities, gender identities, gender expressions and cultures. UK Black Pride organises an annual celebration during pride month, as well as a variety of activities throughout the year, which promote and advocate for the spiritual, emotional and intellectual health, and wellbeing of the communities we represent.
As well as this, Lady Phyll is the executive director of Kaleidoscope trust. Established in 2011, this is a UK-based charity focused on fighting for the human
rights of LGBT+ people across the Commonwealth. It funds, fights for and empowers those upholding the human rights of LGBT+ people by working with governments, change-makers and civil society organisations to ensure a free, safe and equal world for LGBT+ people everywhere.
- Building and maintaining intersectional movements for change
- Queer Black history is a history of queer Black joy
- The necessity and enduring power of UK Black Pride
- Defending and empowering LGBTQ communities across the Commonwealth
- Learning from my grandmother: making change against the odds
- Intersectionality, accountability and action: three essential building blocks for change
