Hello, it's Dan and welcome to today's episode of a gay and non-gay, which was recorded

a few months ago in my hometown of Solihull a couple of days before Solihull Pride.

So Solihull is a big town just outside Birmingham and it's supposedly the straightest part of the UK.

And it's also the number one place to live in the UK according to the Daily Mail.

So make of that what you will.

But it was quite a big deal in the area when Sutterhall Pride was announced and ahead of the event I called up with Melanie Palmer,

who is the CEO of Sutterhole Business Improvement District, which puts on the event.

It was an amazing conversation.

And coming up, you're going to hear how Mel learned about what a pup is, because she's straight, how as soon as the team put up lots of posters and branding around Sutherhole, they were immediately taken down and dumped in a car park.

But in spite of this, the overwhelming support and love for the event from everyone local in one of the

straightest parts of the UK was amazing to see.

But I started by asking her, where did the idea come from for Sutherland Pride?

So we do all the events and festivals, food festival, jazz festival in the past, music festival,

etc etc. So we know that just putting on a festival is not what we're about.

We do things that are going to elongate a campaign to drive footfall back into the town centre and to make sure that

people consider Solihull as a place to be and a destination to visit.

So we do lots of research and go and talk to our businesses all the time.

We've got 475 businesses that we look after. So the team here, there's seven of us in total, including security.

So maybe five that are on the project team.

And we just spend most of our time going out speaking to businesses.

And it's from that that people were saying, well, you know, we feel it's great,

but where is your sort of offer for the LGBTQ plus community?

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