Pride Month 2022

Pride 2022

We’ve been working closely with our Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Committee (DEI) to raise awareness about the importance of representation, inclusion and issues faced by the LGBTQIA+ community. Now, more than ever, it is important to stand with the community and raise awareness and money.

Mermaids was chosen as the Coatsink Pride 2022 Charity, one of the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ charities, empowering thousands of people with its secure online communities, local community groups, helpline services, web resources, events and residential weekends.

Also educating and informing wider society on gender identity by helping professionals accommodate and reassure gender-diverse young people.

Being Proud in the Office

Pride flags were proudly displayed throughout the Coatsink office, bringing a beautiful splash of colour. Alongside the decorations, it was important to ensure that LGBTQIA+ resources were available for the team to refer to and learn from. These were collated and compiled by members of the DEI committee, as well as Allana from Mermaids and Dom from UKIE who gave us a talk about the work Mermaids do and the wider LGBTQIA+ community in the games industry. Throughout the month of June, different topics were discussed in virtual roundtables within the team, including LGBTQIA+ history and inclusion.

Gaming for Good

A variety of gaming events were organised throughout the month including a game night in the office. An online game night was also hosted and members of the Coatsink team joined Kal for a Minecraft stream to round out the month.

The gaming events helped to raise a lot of money and showed the competitive spirit within the team with Ewan emerging victorious.

The online game night was held on the Coatsink staff Discord server so that remote team members could be involved. The team played Fall Guys for a few hours and raised £300.

The final Pride stream had a mix of stream community members and Coatsink folk playing Minecraft. The ‘drowned’  tormented everyone, murdering the unsuspecting which was hilarious.

Beach Clean & PT Session

On 14 June, members of the team headed to Roker Beach in Sunderland to team up with the Marine Conservation Society for a Pride Beach Clean event followed by some PT activities put together by the team at Odyssey PT & Wellbeing. It was a fantastic and rewarding experience.

Stream Team

Throughout the month we were joined by a group of streamers on Twitch who, with their fantastic communities, have helped us to raise even more money and awareness for Mermaids.We’d like to thank them for all their hard work and dedication.

To date, the team have raised £2,701 but the fundraising page is going to remain open for donations until the end of the year. Pride month might be over but our support isn’t.

Wear it with Pride

Pride t-shirts designed by our very own Akira were sent to all Coatsink team members. Don’t they look fabulous?!

We’d like to thank everyone who took part in our Pride fundraising, donated, shared our posts or supported us in any way. We couldn’t have done it without you.