Today, on the UK’s 33rd National Coming Out Day, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) raises the rainbow flag for LGBTQ+ causes across its UK production and non-production sites.
Pride flags are flying across Jaguar Land Rover’s UK production sites at Halewood, Solihull, and Castle Bromwich and its Whitley and Gaydon design and engineering facilities thanks to the support and dedication of the JLR PRIDE Network. The employee-led network, established for all Jaguar Land Rover employees, provides resources, support, and networking opportunities to foster a safe, open environment for all and promote inclusivity across the organization.
Mike Tickle, Jaguar Land Rover Transformation Director and co-Exec Sponsor of the JLR PRIDE Network, said:
In the last 12 months we’ve grown our internal community network significantly, worked to educate and support our teams via monthly ‘Lunch & Learn’ sessions including a really successful session on LGBTQ+ parenting in conjunction with national charity FFLAG. We also supported Warwickshire Police Fun Day via our outreach programme and celebrated Birmingham Pride in September by joining this years’ Pride Parade. Today, each of our UK sites is celebrating NCOD by raising the rainbow flag. Each year we learn and we grow.
At Halewood, Pride inspired furniture including love seats and a Pride ping pong table have been created for by employees for their colleagues to enjoy during breaks and at Castle Bromwich, Mark Trowbridge, Director of Operations, Strategy and Planning has been leading his team in the conversation on inclusivity whilst donning a Jaguar Pride t-shirt.
On Wednesday, Jaguar UK partnered with Attitude magazine for the sixth consecutive year to celebrate its annual Awards and raise money for the Attitude Foundation. The star-studded event took place at Camden Roundhouse and was hosted by Comedian Tom Allen. Winners included Tom Daley (Sports Award) presented by Alan Carr and Tia Kofi and Max Harwood (Breakthrough Award) for his role in ‘Everyone’s Talking about Jamie’, both awards ‘supported by Jaguar’, and Billy Porter, ‘Pose’ star, singer, actor and LGBTQ+ activist, won the Man of the Year Award.
The event, powered by Jaguar, featured performances from ‘Self Esteem’, Elaine Paige and was headlined by STEPS with a guest appearance from an all-electric Jaguar I-PACE, dressed in the Progress Pride colors. All 30 award-winners and presenters were chauffeured to and from the sparkling event in a fleet of Jaguar cars
The Attitude Awards is produced to benefit Attitude magazine’s registered charity, the Attitude Magazine Foundation for LGBTQ+ causes, which has raised and distributed more than £250,000 since summer 2018.
We created the Attitude Awards to showcase the very best of the global LGBTQ+ community – to give a platform to those role models who demonstrate so clearly that who you are, or how you identify, is no barrier to what you might become.
A year away on account of Covid meant the world’s biggest LGBTQ media brand switched to an online offering in 2020, garnering more than two million viewers on multiple channels along the way. But there is nothing like 650 people in a room, dressed to the nines, celebrating the LGBTQ community to get the blood pumping.
Especially if you headline with Steps – 2021 is the comeback year, the year to say you were there!
Darren Styles OBE – Publisher and Managing Director of Attitude magazine
To learn more about Jaguar UK’s partnership with Attitude, its work as a Stonewall Diversity Champion, and its drive towards equality please visit: https://www.jaguar.co.uk/partnerships/jaguar-x-attitude.html
Note: Press release courtesy of JLR Jaguar Land Rover UK.
