Pride Event

By Robbie Jennings

In June, employees came together to celebrate Pride at our event with inspirational artist KV Duong and reflected on ‘what Pride means to them and why it’s important’. It was a fantastic event to celebrate 50 years of Pride in London this year and was in partnership with LINK, the LGBTQ+ insurance network.

Robbie Jennings, Assistant Commercial Underwriter, attended the event and writes about the experience below:

The event began with an introduction from KV Duong who was displaced by the Vietnam War and grew up in Canada. Now based in London, he is an artist practicing in painting, sculpture, and performance. For KV, the combination of war trauma and integration correlate with his coming out as a gay Asian man. During the event, the group discussed Pride, and this was used to form the proposal for our sculpture.

We kicked off with a brilliant ice breaker so we could all get to know each other, there were people who I had never met before from different departments at TMHCC. We were then split into groups and had to brainstorm words that we thought related to Pride and what Pride means to us. We used these words to help develop what our maquette could look like and experimented with drawing/sketching, painting and even using plasticine! The tasty refreshments also helped get the creative juices flowing.

Over the course of the workshop, we discussed what Pride means to each person, why the parades exist and different lived experiences by members of the LGBTQ+ community. There was a mixture of feelings in the room, from strong frustration of the continued lack of equality, to positivity in the progress that’s been made by society. The session was intended to be thought-provoking, educational and, of course, a lot of fun as we used art as a medium to express these different feelings.

We had a wide range of people in our group, so it really was a team effort and having KV and Amy (from Artiq, an international art agency) there was brilliant, as we tried to explain our vision and what we wanted for the maquette. With their wealth of experience, it helped to guide us towards our final proposal. Hearing how passionate they are about the work they do was very inspiring, and I was lucky enough to see a collection of professional pieces at the Queer Frontiers gallery opening the following evening, which was incredible.

TMHCCI are pleased to be a part of LINK’s market-wide design competition and to have sponsored their Pride campaign this year. Please see below for a copy of our final proposal.