On the first Wednesday monthly we meet in the Chief Librarian’s Office, Manchester Central Library, St Peter’s Square, Manchester M2 5PD from 2.00pm to 4.00pm. Take the lift to the third floor and turn left through the doors signed “Meeting Rooms”.

For the rest of the month we meet weekly at Cross Street Chapel, 29 Cross Street, Manchester M2 1NL on Thursdays from 2.00pm to 4.00pm.

Monthly Women’s Meetings held on last Thursday of the month at Cross Street Chapel, 29 Cross Street, Manchester M2 1NL from 2.00pm to 4.00pm.

Meetings are “drop-ins”. There is no need to book, just turn up.

On Wednesdays (and occasionally other days), there are different activities, but you do need to book. Please contact us here. You are welcome to attend on one or both days.

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Next activities:

Trips need to be booked. Please note that some trips have a limited number of places and are available on a first come basis. If a trip is “Fully Booked Up”, please ask to go on the reserve list as there are often late cancellations.

Please contact us here.

Thursday, 26 February – 2.00pm – 4.00pm – Meeting in Cross Street Chapel

Thursday, 26 February – 2.00pm – 4.00pm – Women’s Meeting in Cross Street Chapel

Thursday 26 February at 5.15pm – “All Shall Be Well” Film Screening – Free

John Casken Lecture Theatre at the Martin Harris Centre, University of Manchester, Bridgeford Street, Manchester M13 9PL

The Drama and Film and The Film Society at University of Manchester are delighted to welcome Hong Kong Film maker Ray Yeung for a screening of his film “All Shall Be Well” followed by a Q&A with Dr Vicky Lowe.

Ray Yeung is a filmmaker who is also the Executive Director of the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. In 2020, he made the film “Suk Suk”, which is about two older gay men unexpectedly falling in love.

In 2024, Yeung followed that film with “All Shall Be Well”, which is about an older lesbian couple in their 60s. This latter film won the Teddy Award at the Berlinale Film Festival in 2024.

The film will be screened for free in the John Casken Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre on Thursday 26 February, at 5.15pm.  There is no booking required, There are 120 seats in the lecture theatre and they will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Friday, 27 February – 11.00am – 12.00pm – LGBTQIA+ History Month Tours – Free

Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3JL

Meet at the Information Desk, Ground Floor Atrium

Join the Visitor Engagement Team for a themed tour of the collection celebrating identity, gender, sexuality and community.

Free, no need to book.

Tuesday, 3 March – 2.00pm – 3.00pm – Out On The Radio Show (Live) on ALL FM 96.9 with special guest Jide Macaulay from House of Rainbow.

Wednesday, 4 March – 2.00pm – 4.00pm – Meeting at Manchester Central Library.

We are meeting in the Chief Librarian’s Office, Manchester Central Library, St Peter’s Square, Manchester M2 5PD. Take the lift to the third floor and turn left through the doors signed “Meeting Rooms”.

Thursday, 5 March – 6.00pm – The Hallé – Rush Hour: Shostakovich’s Symphony No 1 – Free

(10 tickets available)

Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3WS

Euan Shields conductor

Janáček Taras Bulba
Shostakovich Symphony No.1

Euan Shields takes to the podium to lead the Hallé orchestra through this dark and supernatural programme. Taras Bulba, based on the Nikolai Gogol novel of the same name, was written in the midst of World War One. It leads the listener through three key moments in the life of the Russian Cossack, including the death of each of his two sons (one at his own hand), and finally, his own capture and demise. Shostakovich’s First Symphony was a huge success right from its premiere, launching him into instant international stardom at the age of just 19. Written as a graduation exercise from Maximilian Steinberg’s composition class, the symphony possesses a profound maturity, as well as the simultaneous sense of wit and tragedy that would go on to become characteristic of Shostakovich’s later works.

Thursday, 5 March – 7.30pm – 8.30pm – The Em Show: Tales From A Little Laughing Lesbian – Free 

(3 tickets available)

53two, Arch 19, Watson Street, Manchester M3 4LP

Tales from a Little Laughing Lesbian is an electrifying one woman show packed with stand-up, improv and clowning, all delivered through Em’s signature energy and joy. From therapy to parenting, marriage to motorbikes – no topic is off-limits in this hilarious journey of self-discovery. Uplifting, bold and wildly funny, this is a show for everyone (yes, even non-lesbians!). So, are you ready to laugh, reflect, and maybe even see yourself in a whole new way?

Em Stroud is The Comic Coach. She’s an entrepreneur, performer, clown, speaker, emcee, best-selling author and two times TEDx speaker – having done one dressed as a banana! Produced by Manchester based artist Charlie Ayers this evening promises to be a night of laughter and joy.

Friday, 6 March – 1.00pm – 3.00pm – ‘Box of Me’ Future Planning Workshop – Free (but booking essential)

No. 3, Circle Square, 3 Hawkshaw Street, Manchester M1 7BL

‘Box of Me’ is a fun and informative group workshop for LGBTQ+ adults which invites you to think more about the plans you could put in place for your care and end of life. The aim of the workshop is to ensure you can be your authentic and full self throughout all of your lifetime (and beyond!). This session was created by LGBT Foundation’s Pride in Ageing programme in collaboration with St Ann’s Hospice (now Moya Cole Hospice).

How does the session work? The workshop lasts two hours. At the beginning of the workshop you will be provided with a box. Over the next 90 minutes you will have the choice to call at different ‘action’ stations to find out more about the plans you could be putting in place for serious illness or end of life care and add information about the things that are important to you to your box. There will also be a box decoration station where you can personalise your box.

Topics you could explore include:

• My life story, identity and who is important to me

• My advance care plan and decision-making

• My will

• Donating my organs

• What my funeral would look like.

For the final 30 minutes of the session there will be time to reflect with the group over tea and coffee. You are welcome to take your box and any information home to keep in a safe place for the future (make sure to tell a trusted friend or family member where it is).

This event is open to anyone aged 18+. This event has been produced by the Pride in Ageing programme at LGBT Foundation. If you have any questions about accessing this event please contact prideinageing@lgbt.foundation.

Please book here.

Saturday, 7 March – 2.00pm – 4.00pm – Golden Age Big Band – Free

The John Alker Club, Flixton Road, Urmston M41 6QY

Sing and dance along to the classics, with our seventeen member big band. Honouring musicians such as Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, Ted Heath, Nelson Riddle and so many more!

Afternoon tea and raffle included!

Wednesday, 11 March – 10.30am – Coach trip to National Memorial Arboretum, Burton-on-Trent, Staffs – Free – (Fully Booked Up)

Meet at Chorlton Street Bus Station, Manchester M1 3HY at 10.00am.

Coach returns at 4.00pm arriving in Manchester at approximately 5.30pm.

Thursday, 12 March – 2.00pm – 4.00pm – Meeting in Cross Street Chapel

Friday, 13 March – 7.30pm – Philharmonia Orchestra with Alisa Weilerstein, cello – Free

Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3WS

Marin Alsop conductor
Alisa Weilerstein cello

Arturo Márquez Danzón No.2
Gabriela Ortiz Dzonot
Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade

Alisa Weilerstein joins Marin Alsop and the Philharmonia for an outstanding new work by one of the world’s leading composers. 

The first cello concerto by Grammy-winning composer Gabriela Ortiz is inspired by the extraordinary landscape of the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico. Ortiz wrote it for ICS favourite Alisa Weilerstein, who will be performing it in its Manchester premiere.

We begin in Ortiz’s native country with Arturo Márquez’s exhilarating Danzón No.2. And then we’re hurtling across the Atlantic for Rimsky-Korsakov’s vibrant musical retelling of One Thousand and One Nights. 

Saturday, 14 March – 7.30pm – BBC Philharmonic – Four Last Songs – Free

Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3WS

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Nicholas Carter conductor
Sarah Wegener soprano

Wagner Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
Edmund Finnis The Landscape Wakes (UK premiere)
Bax Tintagel
Strauss Four Last Songs

Nicholas Carter, one of the leading opera conductors of his generation, makes his Bridgewater Hall debut.

Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde explores love and death through unresolved dissonance and ecstatic bliss, showcasing some of his most sumptuous music. Soprano Sarah Wegener joins the orchestra for Strauss’s Four Last Songs, the composer’s final, heartbreakingly wistful reflection on life, written in 1948 as he anticipated the end. For pure concentrated personal expression, there’s little like it.

Alongside, Tintagel by Arnold Bax, a rhapsodic tone poem inspired by Cornish myths and the mystery of Tintagel Castle. But before that – hear the latest work from Edmund Finnis, a fast-rising British composer of delicate melodies and glistening, sinewy textures.

Monday, 16 March – 7.30pm – National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine – Free

Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3WS

Volodymyr Sirenko conductor
Maria Pukhlianko piano

Berezovsky Symphony in C Major (Symphony No.1)
Beethoven Piano Concerto No.5, ‘Emperor’
Delius Two Pieces for Small Orchestra
Beethoven Symphony No.7 

The National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine makes a welcome return. 

Musical ambassadors for their homeland, the NSOU tonight pay homage to our nations’ bond with works from both Ukraine and England. Maxim Berezovsky’s Symphony in C, the first Ukrainian symphony, is a landmark in the country’s musical history. And music doesn’t get more English than Delius’s sumptuous ‘On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring’. 

That’s not all: there’s drama, too, courtesy of Beethoven. Maria Pukhlianko stars in the ‘Emperor’ concerto, before the same composer’s glorious Seventh Symphony. Slava Ukraini! 

Wednesday, 18 March – Trip to Harris Museum, Preston (to be organised)

Thursday, 19 March – 2.00pm – 4.00pm – Meeting in Cross Street Chapel

Thursday, 19 March – 8.00pm – 9.20pm – 1 Waterside Plaza, Sale, Trafford M33 7ZF – Jarman

Derek Jarman: film-maker, painter, gardener at Prospect Cottage, gay rights activist, writer … his influence remains as strong as it was on the day he died in 1994. But his story, one of the most extraordinary lives ever lived, has never been told. Until now.

This vibrant solo play from Mark Farrelly brings Derek back into being for a passionate, daring reminder of the courage it takes to truly live while you’re alive. A journey from Dungeness to deepest, brightest Soho and into the heart of one of our most iconoclastic artists.

Jarman’s works include taboo-breaking films like Sebastiane, Jubilee and  Caravaggio, pop videos for the Pet Shop Boys (It’s A Sin and Rent), his extraordinary borderless garden in Dungeness, his shocking last paintings, and his unforgettable final film Blue, consisting of a single continuous frame of blue and chronicling what it’s like to lose your sight … but never your artistic vision.

Get Tickets here £15

Thursday, 19 March – 7.30pm – The Hallé – Mullova plays Brahms (1) – Free

Sunday, 22 March – 4.00pm – The Hallé – Mullova plays Brahms (2) – Free

Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3WS

Kahchun Wong conductor
Viktoria Mullova violin

Wagner Tannhäuser: Overture
Brahms Violin Concerto
Bartók Concerto for Orchestra

The exceptionally versatile violinist Viktoria Mullova teams up with Kahchun Wong for a performance of Brahms’ Violin Concerto. Intended to be a test of both the soloist’s technical ability and their musicianship, the work overflows with cadenzas – short, often improvised passages of notes – which give the soloist ample opportunity for real virtuosic display. Viktoria Mullova, whose playing has been praised by critics and audiences alike for its immense agility and richness of tone, is sure to bring us an unforgettable performance. Where concertos are usually a work comprised of a solo instrument accompanied by an orchestra, Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra treats each instrumental family as if they were soloists in their own right. Let’s get ready to shine a spotlight on all sections of the orchestra.

Saturday, 21 March 2026 – 3.00pm – “At the Rainbow’s End” by Clare Summerskill – Free – (Out In The City has 12 tickets – 2 tickets available due to cancellations)

The play is also on Saturday, 21 March at 7.00pm and Sunday, 22 March at 3.00pm

The play is Free and you can book here.

Hope Mill Theatre, 113 Pollard Street, Manchester M4 7JA

Presented by members of Artemis Theatre Company.

A verbatim play addressing homophobic and transphobic abuse of older LGBTQ+ people in care and receiving care in later life.

These script-in-hand performances of At the Rainbow’s End by Clare Summerskill at The Hope Mill Theatre are all FREE.

Clare Summerskill’s latest play is based entirely on interviews with older LGBT people who have experienced homophobia and transphobia in care settings and when receiving care in their own home. It tackles an extremely important issue concerning older LGBT people who, having perhaps been out for their whole adult lives, are faced with the possibility of having to go ‘back into the closet’ at the point of accessing care in later life.

Each performance will be followed by a Q&A with the writer, the audience and informed panellists.

Performance and post-show discussion last approximately 1.5 hours.

Saturday 21 March – 7.30pm – BBC Philharmonic – Anthracite Fields – Free

Bridgewater Hall, Lower Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3WS

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
BBC Singers
John Storgårds conductor

Julia Wolfe Anthracite Fields
Laura Bowler New Work (world premiere)

‘I guess I have a bias towards the grit.’  – Julia Wolfe

Grit courses through Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields, her Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio for choir and ensemble that serves as a musical memorial to American miners and their struggle.

Wolfe grew up in coal-rich Pennsylvania – with vast deposits of anthracite, coal’s purest form – and saw firsthand how intertwined the means of fuelling a nation were with human toil and sacrifice. Through extensive research and oral histories, Wolfe weaves together stories of labour, loss, and resistance – stories that could just as easily come from the Yorkshire pits or the South Lancashire coalfields, where mining was not just a job but a way of life.

We hear testimonies from men risking serious injury, communities remembering the fallen, the fiery words of union leader John M. Lewis, and a few voices daring to hope. Wolfe’s writing is equal parts fluid and direct, drawing from her established sources — chorales, rock music, minimalism — as she looks unsparingly at the past.

Death and danger, community and power, all delivered with Wolfe’s trademark forthrightness.

Wednesday, 25 March – trip to be organised

Thursday, 26 March – 2.00pm – 2.30pm – Annual General Meeting in Cross Street Chapel

Thursday, 26 March – 2.30pm – 4.00pm – Meeting in Cross Street Chapel

Thursday, 26 March – 2.30pm – 4.00pm – Women’s Meeting in Cross Street Chapel

Sunday, 19 April – All aboard! The Rainbow Train is back for 2026

Bolton Street Station, Bury – Free

(tickets £10 / £8 concessionary will be paid by Out In The City. If you cancel, you may have to pay for the ticket)

Arrive 4.15pm, board the train at 4.50pm, departs 5.00pm

Arrive 5.30pm in Rawtenstall, departs 6.30pm, arrive back in Bury 7.00pm.

The Rainbow Train returns to the East Lancashire Railway, an event hosted by the Bury LGBTQI+ Forum.

Join the Bury LGBTQI+ Forum for the return of the Rainbow Train, bringing colour, pride and queer joy back to the tracks for another unforgettable journey.

Departing from Bolton Street Station, Bury, the vintage rainbow-themed steam train will travel to Rawtenstall and back again, delivering a two-hour celebration packed with LGBTQI+ performances, music and pure Pride energy.

This year, the House of Bridget Queens will once again be joined by the brilliant Bury Fire Choir, performing a selection of Pride anthems on the platform at Bolton Street before departure. After their hugely popular appearances at previous Pride events, they’re thrilled to be returning.

At the Rawtenstall stop, audiences will be treated to a live performance, and back in Bury there will be even more entertainment.

Funds raised will go to the efforts of fundraising that keep Bury Pride and the Bury LGBTQI+ Forum running each year.

To book a place please contact us here.

Saturday, 23 May – 7.30pm – Manchester Proud Chorus Jubilee Concert

Contact Theatre, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6JA – Price £19.50

LEGENDS, DIVAS & DREAMERS

We’re so excited to announce our very own concert, celebrating more than 25 years of Manchester Proud Chorus!

We will be singing a varied playlist of the LGBTQ+ icons who move us. We’re sharing decades of music at the heart of olur community.

But tickets here.

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Please contact us here if you are interested in attending the trips. There is no need to book to attend the meetings – just turn up. However, you may contact us if you wish.

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Also have a look at our other pages: Trips & Adventures, Photos, Resources, Audios & Videos, Timelines (Dropdown menu to see: LGBTQ+ Timeline, LGBT+ History Timeline, Significant Events Timeline and LGBT+ History in Manchester).