Happy Pride Month! In honor of the annual celebration, LEGOLAND Resorts and LEGOLAND Discovery Centers are teaming up for a special project: the world’s longest LEGO Pride Parade.
The parade, which stretches nearly 100 feet when combined, was a major group effort. LEGOLAND California Resort, LEGOLAND Florida Resort, LEGOLAND New York Resort, and LEGOLAND Discovery Centers in Columbus, Michigan, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Westchester have all contributed a portion of the parade, which includes more than 1,530 LEGO Minilanders, musicians, floats and flags.
The LEGO Pride Parade is the perfect companion to the brand’s new “A-Z of Awesome” campaign, which extends into 2023 and aims to celebrate “inclusivity and embrace self-expression in the LGBTQIA+ community.” The letters of the alphabet will be created using LEGO bricks by members of the LGBTQIA+ community and serve as a way for families to open lines of communication about their identities.
The LEGO Group launched the campaign based on data from GLAAD, which reports that 45% of non-LGBTQIA+ people find discussions concerning gender identity confusing. It is the hope that the alphabet will help bring awareness to the different abbreviations used within the community and a broader acceptance and understanding.
Alero Akuya, VP of Brand Development with the LEGO Group shares “The wonderful thing about LEGO bricks is that they can be a powerful form of self-expression as you can build anything you can imagine. We also know people love talking about what they build, so we thought it would be a great medium for sparking important and sometimes difficult conversations about identity…We hope their creativity and our A-Z of Awesome campaign inspire people of all ages and help build greater awareness and acceptance. We want to show people that with more love and understanding people can be their true selves.”
If you’d like to submit a build as part of the A-Z of Awesome campaign, head to LEGO.com/AtoZ. Select submissions will be chosen and added throughout the year, with a complete alphabet by the end of 2022.
RELATED STORIES
7 Tips for Talking to Kids about LGBTQ
14 Inspiring LGBTQ Books for Kids
Be an LGBTQ+ Ally: 10 Phrases to Stop Using Today