"All my life, I've been waiting for this," a 70-year-old man told Ask For Clive organizers during the charity's Pub Pride, a night of celebration to kick-off Pride month in hundreds of venues across the UK.
Ask for Clive is a charity that focuses on inclusivity. It asks inclusive establishments to put a sticker with the charity name on their door to signal that the LGBTQ community is welcome there. The charity also provides a brief for bar staff on how to deal with discrimination queer patrons may experience.
The initiative is unaffiliated with Ask For Angela, the campaign that encourages people who feel unsafe at a bar to ask the staff for Angela in order to seek help. There's also no asking involved — if pub-goers see the sticker, they'll know the pub is LGBTQ-friendly.
Over the last six years, reports of homophobic hate crimes increased threefold and transphobic hate crimes fourfold in the UK, according to data collected by Vice. The trend makes the Ask For Clive initiative all the more necessary.
In addition to the sticker, Ask For Clive also runs Pub Pride, a yearly event. This year, over 250 venues across the UK celebrated with live music, drag shows, karaoke, street art, and of course food and drinks. Among the celebrations, an outdoor club of middle-aged queer people who walk to a pub participated.
Ask for Clive began in early 2019 when co-founder and chair Danny Clare and others held an LGBT forum in their home city of St Albans, in Hertfordshire, which Clare said had no visible queer population at the time. What came out of that meeting was that the city had a queer population but no community and no local activities for said population.
Not only that, but every single person in the room had been physically or verbally abused while trying to enjoy nightlife — in pubs, clubs, on the streets, and bus stops.
"We decided we were going to do something about that," Clare told Mashable. He and organizers including Clive Duffy, a mentor and activist who is the charity's namesake, went to pub owners to discuss the issues. They decided on the popular "Ask For" format, and created a sticker with the pride flag and a message that "everyone is welcome here" to adorn participating pubs.
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It took off locally, Clare said, and soon Ask For Clive was featured on local TV and radio stations like BBC Breakfast. Now, the campaign sticker is on the doors of over 3,000 establishments across the UK. This includes iconic gay clubs in major cities, but also pubs in rural communities, which Ask For Clive celebrates even more.
"We touch spaces where you just wouldn't expect to see that pride flag," Clare said. "It's a very welcome sight for members of the community."
Ask For Clive also works with venues other than pubs — like an LGBT group within the UK veterans' association, healthcare groups, and churches.
In addition to positive feedback from Pub Pride, Clare described feedback for the campaign overall. "It makes it a more desirable place for a lot of people to work because they can see the values of the place on the front door," he said. "It certainly is a more welcoming place, categorically for the community."
Ask For Clive has received interest to expand outside the UK. Clare said the charity isn't quite there yet, but there are plans to expand and make it scalable. For now, Ask For Clive is about supporting the queer community, and the venues that welcome them.
