Wynwood Pride marks its fifth anniversary with a jam-packed month of events
The Wynwood Pride festival was established around five years ago and is held entirely independently of Miami Beach Pride in April.
Amidst heat waves, tropical storms, and a trend of LGBTQ+ individuals flocking to Fire Island, the annual Pride celebration on the mainland of Miami remains resolute in its rebellion. This event boldly asserts that the LGBTQ+ community of Miami deserves recognition on a global scale, including a proper World Pride celebration together with other communities around the world.
In 2019, a trio of co-founders – Jose Atencio, Scott Bernardez, and Jor-El Garcia – detected a burgeoning diversity in Miami’s social landscape. They recognized a pressing demand for improved and expanded venues to commemorate this range of multiculturalism. The first-ever Wynwood Pride event at the Wynwood Marketplace was successfully planned and launched by friends with varying marketing, design, and promotion backgrounds.
The plan was to establish a more musically- and theatrically-oriented space in the heart of Miami’s flourishing arts district, attracting people of all ages and marginalized communities.
“The core belief was to be a Pride for everyone,” Liza Santana, Wynwood Pride’s founding spokesperson, said, according to TimeOut.
A three-day festival was held with a lineup featuring Pabllo Vittar, Ivy Queen, and Poppy, attracting a staggering 50,000 attendees and raising almost $25,000 in charitable donations. The event was built from the ground up and was a huge success, earning recognition from notable local officials such as City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Audrey M. Edmonson.
In the middle of the pandemic in 2020, Wynwood Pride underwent a significant transformation, shifting its focus towards a 12-hour virtual festival broadcasted across four Twitch channels, each with unique programming. It was an enormous hit, garnering over $16,000 for various philanthropic causes, including The Bail Project, Contigo Fund, and the Equal Justice Initiative. The festival returned in a big way to Oasis Wynwood in 2021 with notable headliners like Charlie XCX, Honey Dijon, and Derrick Carter.
With four performance stages headlined by Marina and Azealia Banks and a more focused goal of supporting Equality Florida, the group fighting the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” law, Wynwood Pride 2022 increased its scope even further as it occupied Wynwood’s iconic RC Cola Plant.
In honor of Wynwood Pride’s fifth anniversary, the team has created its most ambitious program yet. Wynwood Pride 2023 is set to be a month-long celebration of World Pride, featuring a series of panels, parties, and performances primarily taking place over the weekends throughout June. This marks a departure from the traditional weekend-long festival format.
In a successful collaboration with III Points festival, Perez Art Museum Miami hosted a night of discussions and live music. This year’s official host hotel, Arlo Wynwood, also kicked off the festivities with a lively pool party.
This year’s can’t-miss events include the Wynwood Pride Music Festival at Oasis (June 10), the Wynwood Pride Bar Crawl (June 17), and DJ Eli Escobar’s set at Floyd (June 23), and Miss Toto’s latest iteration of “Funhouse” at the psychedelic kids’ play space FunDimension (June 9).
Evie Blanco is a journalist with nearly a decade of experience born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Queens, New York. She is extremely well-versed in hip-hop music and culture and is always aware of its developments. Whether it’s the latest in pop culture, a fascinating foreign destination, a truly amazing new restaurant, or breaking news, she loves to write about it all. Evie can be reached at evieblanco@detourxp.com.
This story was originally published June 6, 2023 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Wynwood Pride marks its fifth anniversary with a jam-packed month of events."