Sydney Celebrates Opening of The Inner West Pride Centre
Image: Image: @darcy_byrne / Instagram.
The Inner West Pride Centre (IWPC) has officially been opened!
The new Pride Centre is being housed in the old Newtown Town Hall, which has been converted after a $2.6 million renovation.
The plan for the new centre is to offer support services and a central community space for local LGBTQI+ people of all ages.
This is New South Wales’ first LGBTQI+ Pride Centre in 17 years.
The previous centre, the PRIDE Sydney Lesbian and Gay Community Centre in Erskineville, closed in 2007.
Inner West Council & Mayor Darcy Byrne “very proud”
Inner West Council Mayor Darcy Byrne said the achievement was something the Inner West Council had been working on for years, and thanked the LGBTQI+ residents who helped make the Pride Centre a reality.
“For years we have been working away to become the first Council in NSW to create a Pride Centre and the outpouring of joy from the community was very special,” Cr Byrne said in a statement.
“The Pride Centre will be a place where people can access services and support but also hold events, gatherings and performances.
“I’m very proud that we have got this done. Thank you to the whole LGBTIQA+ community for your collaboration with the Inner West in making this happen.”
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Inner West Pride Centre: new home to Twenty10
The Inner West Pride Centre will be the designated home of Twenty10, a NSW LGBTQI+ youth counselling and social support service.
“It’s a total honour for Twenty10 to be able to run our services here and help facilitate this space as a safer space for community,” Twenty10’s co-chair Mon Schafter told the crowd at the opening event.
Peter De Waal honoured as first through the door
Community hero Peter De Waal was honoured as the first through the door of the new Pride Centre.
De Waal is a LGBTQI+ activist, a 78er, and a community hero.
He and his late partner Peter Bonsall-Boone shared Australia’s first televised gay male kiss, and are also known for creating Sydney’s first LGBT counselling service from their living room in Balmain, called ‘Phone a Friend’.
“My partner and I started a phone service, it was called Phone a Friend in 1973 in our front room of the house where I still live,” De Waal told the ABC.
“It was a wonderful thing to do, but it was difficult. That phone service, I know personally, had saved people’s lives. So many men, mainly men, who rang absolutely desperate, they had nowhere to go.”
De Waal also told the ABC that see LGBTQI+ support services evolve from that, to a Pride Centre with designated support services like the IWPC was overwhelming.
“It’s a fulfilment of a dream we could have never imagined in 1973 when it started just with one Bakelite telephone,” he said.
