Westwood Cross wants your help to create Pride mosaic

Westwood Cross

Westwood Cross Shopping Centre is calling on schools, colleges, workplaces and its customers across Thanet to help create a unique piece of art featuring 1,000 images in celebration of Pride month this June.

The Centre is asking people from the community to send a picture of themselves via the Westwood Cross website by June 30. The images will be edited together to create a large rainbow flag mosaic. The mosaic will be revealed in time for Margate Pride’s Celebrations later this year.

The community project is part of a series of activities and initiatives that Westwood Cross will be running throughout June, to celebrate and show its support for Pride month.

Fran Donovan, Centre Manager at Westwood Cross Shopping Centre, said: “Westwood Cross is proud to support Pride, we celebrate diversity and respect people’s choices and promote inclusivity.  We would love for everyone to get involved with creating the mosaic artwork which will be displayed in the Centre later in the summer.

“We also have some big plans to bring the Centre to life throughout June with giant Pride flags and rainbow lanyards. We will also be giving away positivity gift boxes filled with goodies from various retail outlets to visitors chosen at random.”

As well as bringing the Centre to life, Westwood Cross will be updating its website and social media pages with Pride versions of its logo.

For more information, visit westwoodx.co.uk.

31 Comments

  1. Now for something inflammatory. Is it only me or does anyone else feel that those of us who are heterosexual have something to celebrate as well? If people want to be gay that is absolutely fine by me, my closest friend is gay, but why does gayness require celebration? I know that until 54 years ago to be gay was against the law but I think everyone is glad that law was squashed and that any form of sexuality is now legal.
    Accept everyone for who and what they are but stop making it sound as if being gay is something special; it isn’t.

    • No, I don’t see why anybody needs to celebrate their sexuality, colour of their skin, what country they are from etc. As Frank Zappa said you are what you is. Of course being a white heterosexual male or female-or ‘cis gendered’ as they call it now pretty much has a negative connotation & if you tried doing a straight or Caucasian celebration you know exactly what would happen.

  2. Another place I’ll avoid in Thanet for not being representative of the silent majority.

  3. Why are 2 percent of the population allowed to tell the remaining 98 percent how to live?

    Be gay or any other persuasion but shut up and leave other people to enjoy life without their perpetual whining and bragging.

    • Why? Because they’ll come up with their usual “homophobic” or “transphobic” remarks, when most people (me included) really don’t give a monkey’s what other people’s sexuality is.

      • Really strange these people seem so obsessed with it, yet those they accuse of hating or discriminating against them really couldn’t give a fig in reality.

    • Because they shout the loudest-infiltrate/indfluence government & the media & hold the homophobic/transphobic/genderphobic & whatever else they can invent phobic/cancel cards to intimidate people & businesses into playing their silly games.

    • Haygordon- well said. Like you, I am sick and tired of their whining etc and having it shoved down my throat at every turn.

  4. well for once i totaly agree with the above comments – my idea of pride is very different to the 2% , like others i shall be avoiding westwood cross , and i definitely will not be any where near margate while that malarkey is going on . i thought i had heard it all about this area – but for me this is the last straw !

    • Yes, there seems to be some huge desire in recent years to become Brighton or London with all the pretentious ‘art’ & wokeness. Reality is this is not a metropolitan area full of wealthy people, but a run-down little area of poverty & 95% plus white.

  5. FedupB i think you might want to re think your choice of words – or was it deliberate ? in which case its hilarious.

  6. Will anyone be eligible for a ‘positivity gift box’, or just gay customers? If not, am I being discriminated against?

  7. great comments steve and FedupB ! and it saved me from getting ” chastised ” by the local artists and theatricals that are planning a ” new brighton ” for all us old fashioned folk.

  8. Westwood cross may read these comments and think “Well, that didn’t go the way we thought”. I think they have misjudged people.

  9. I sent an email to Westwood X telling them about these reactions. I hope they read them but bet they don’t change their mind.

  10. Your comments are the reason why we March. Your criticism and the fact that we unite together because still people are being murdered for being gay, trans, bi, pan you name it. At what point will people open their eyes and see what’s going on around the world rather than not seeing past the end of their noses?. Did you have to March for what you believe in? Did you ever get stopped in the streets or glared at or called names for being what society calls normal? You all say you aren’t homophobic but your comments suggest otherwise. Yes your friends might be gay but thanks to the protests over time that has given your friend the opportunity to come out into the open and be known as gay. Consider living back in time in a world that stoned people to death for the likes of someone that was “different”. How open and free our country may be does not stop other countries from continuing to beat the living S out of people for being someone they aren’t allowed to be. Yes maybe it does feel like it’s being rammed down your throats as if pride MONTH was an overall daily occurrence. We stand together and unite and we celebrate our rights and we fight for those that don’t have a voice or can’t have a voice and be heard. Think of the people who are living their life trapped in a world that doesn’t allow them to love who they want to love. Could you imagine just for a second how that would feel? Being trapped inside your own body and mind. I don’t represent anyone but I speak on behalf of myself who is gay. Whether you are trans, gay, bi, pan whatever you are or want to be. Whatever society would call “different” we March for. This has nothing to do with Westwood. This is about you and your selfish uneducated ways. You might not give two S about who is and who isn’t but we March because we can and we will with or without your support.

    • I’m not against the pro-gay marches of days gone by, but these days in the UK there isn’t just equality (which I’m all in agreement with), there’s almost a feeling of making people feel GUILTY for being straight, or white, or male, or old. THAT is why we don’t need a Pride mosaic.

      On the more light-hearted side, I’ve an old friend who came out as gay even before it was legal to do so in the UK, but he’s against gays marrying – as he told me, “Not having to marry anyone was one of the benefits of being gay!”.

    • Who cares , who’s interested? Most people just want other to carry on with their private lives, in a modest quiet way.It’s nobody else’s business after all.

    • Then why not trot off to foreign lands where the rights and freedoms here are not so common, or at the least ptotest outside their embassies etc. Stop forcing issues on everyone here and perhaps you’ll find that the majority in the uk are as accepting as say the Thai’s where no one cares about anothers preferences and choices. You might also protest about the behaviour of those we welcome to this country who accept the best of what we have offer but als cling to their home beliefs some of which will be at odds with yours.
      When you’ve actually done things that confront ireal issues , rather than take the safe option of rainbow coffee cups, vodka bottles and publicity stunts such as westwoods mosaicwhich are little more than an attempt to force an illusion of support on those who’d much rather not do so, then reassess what needs doing or just let society move on peacefully.

  11. if its all so normal , why do you have to keep shouting about it , and whats this mosaic all about in a shopping area ? do you really need to march through the streets showing your lurid behaviour , i would not want to try to explain one of those marches to my grandchildren. and what would happen if the 98% had a straight parade and a mosaic?

  12. All these comments asking why do we need this whilst simultaneously proving why we do – quick remarkable.

    • I think you may be ignoring the difference between acceptance and understanding. The vast majority of people are quite happy to accept others choices and see them live as they wish. However understanding the reasoning behind the choices and being asked to believe some of the statements made is to many a step too far. One of the most obvious examples being expected to accept the idea of a female born as a male taking part in womens sporting events is fair. We can have statistical data on hormone levels to the nth degree but we are all capable of determining the physical differences that have traditionally meant that sporting events have had gendered classifications. Its the same in everyday life people instinctively react to others based on the concious and subconscious information we gather, to expect millions of years of social interaction to be overturned and for people to instead have to alter these norms is daft. Very few people wish to cause offence but insticntive reactions are hard to stop. We can all respond to a voice and make assumptions about the person speaking to us without seeing them, but expecting society to change the pro nouns it uses to avoid upsetting a tiny minority is just a bit too much.
      It’s nothing to do with prejudice more an objection to social engineering at breakneck speed, language and reactions will change overtime surely enough , it will never change in the short term.

  13. Some of these comments are absolutely disgusting. I could go into a whole rant about it but at this point it’s just too exhausting. It must be even more exausting for you guys who find the energy to be so cruel about a group of people who’s life choices have no impact on yours whatsoever. I’m so tired of it. I’ve literally have to hide my sexuality from certain people in my life knowing that if they found out I could be discriminated against. I get yelled at and stuff thrown my way for simply holding my girlfriend’s hand in public. How is that equality? And how is that affecting anyone else’s lives at all? I’m losing the will at this point. I’m not even angry anymore, I’m just really sad.

  14. It could all be sorted by simply legislating that we have one over riding law of
    Free speech on all and any subject and the right to state your disagreement on any subject.

    Equality for all but a right to disagree.

  15. What about a pride day for the heterosexual community? We seem to be missing out on these celebrations. Lol..

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