KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Thousands of people will fill downtown Knoxville for its annual Pride festival over the weekend. Knox Pride is expecting almost 100,000 people to show up for the event. It starts on Friday with a march and parade at 7 p.m. followed by a silent disco at 9 p.m.
"'Celebrate. Pride. Protest.' is our theme this year. There's equal amounts of celebrating and protesting to be proud of who you are, whether it's the queer community or somewhere else. And especially with the legislature, we've been under attack this year," said John Camp, the CEO of Knox Pride.
The following day, crowds will gather in World's Fair Park for the festival featuring more than a hundred vendors and organizations providing resources. There will also be dozens of entertainers, including drag performers. Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon is expected to speak as well.
Then on Sunday, the fun moves to Sam Duff Park for a community market. On Sunday, Knox Pride will also be celebrating the second anniversary of when the nonprofit opened its community and resource center.
This year, Knox Pride will also be celebrating major signs of growth.
They found 51 sponsors for the festival this year — including one that offered around $15,000 to pay rent for the community center through January 2025. The previous year, organizers gathered 29 sponsors to help organize the South's largest free Pride event, according to Knox Pride.
"I think the work we've been doing in the community, in the state, in our region, and with the Pride Center really taking notice from a lot of people. They're putting their money behind that," said Camp. "We are the largest free Pride in the South. And to do that is corporate donation, to keep it free — especially for people in our rural areas that come to this. We don't want money to be a barrier. So, they really stepped up this year."
This year, Knox Pride also managed to source enough money to pay its CEO. Leaders said previous years' events were put on by a team of three people, with budgets that only covered the festival's expenses.
"The advantage of being able to hire on our CEO was that we were able to take Knox Pride from a glorified 'side-hustle' for all of the board members and our administrative folks, and actually get someone who really has even more skin in the game through getting paid, and also the motivation to fundraise their own salary," said Nathan Higdon, the treasurer for Knox Pride.
By finding additional funding, Knox Pride also said the team has been able to start focusing on procuring grants and finding more presence within the Knoxville community at other events, showing other LGBTQ+ groups how they organized festivals and events with a small crew.
This year, Knox Pride has also been able to bring on interns to help run the operations of the center.
"We're getting three to four interns each semester. And so, this is really helping us focus the help that we need in the areas where it's most needed," said Higdon. "Presently, our interns are unpaid, but one of our core goals is to fundraise enough money so that we can pay interns because it's something we fundamentally believe in. We just, unfortunately, can't afford it right now."
With the extra help, Knox Pride said they are able to start expanding services to help tackle some of East Tennessee's biggest problems. With rent paid on their existing space, Knox Pride plans to expand into the space near them and add around 6,000 square feet to the center to help accommodate the additional services.
"We do a lot of work with homeless youth in the area, and we need the extra space. We're running out of room. We have a thrift store that is free to the community. We have three community pantries that we keep going and we have 30 events, classes, life skill classes, and support groups a month that are free," said Camp. "We're out of room. We just partnered with UT College of Psychology. We're going to be offering free mental health care service to the community starting the second week of October."
Through that partnership, Knox Pride leaders said they will be able to help around 20 people per month get mental health services through UT's clinic.
"It's an issue we run into with so many of the queer youth who come through. They've experienced so much trauma that has led them to houselessness, of course. It's not just that, to be clear. It's also people who are transitioning or people who are just trying to live in a post-pandemic society. Life is hard. And so having this available with the UT Psychological Clinic allows us to help get queer folks in the greater Knoxville area able to live happier, healthier and more whole lives," said Higdon.
As the organization grows, leaders also said they hope to start focusing more on including more people from rural areas — expanding outside the city.
"We have folks from all over East Tennessee — some even in North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and we have some coalitions with areas there. So, it's a very regional, all of East Tennessee and a couple of the surrounding states, like northern Georgia. So, we see quite a lot of folks," said Camp.