This week we invite you to make your own Pride decorations for outside where you live or to wear. Based on the design by artist Gilbert Baker, we’re using the colours from the best-known, six-stripe version of the rainbow pride flag: red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for harmony, and purple for spirit.

1. You will need to collect at least six (twelve if you can) cardboard cylinders from the inside of toilet paper and kitchen roll.
2. Paint them in the six colours of the rainbow Pride flag – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
3. Lay out the cylinders in the shape of a rainbow arch, use lots of sticky tape to attach them together, criss-crossing the lines of sticky tape to make it secure and to close the gaps.
4. Draw and write your own messages on the cylinders. Use string to hang it on your door or in the window.

For this project we drew inspiration from Gilbert Baker’s Rainbow flag. From Encyclopaedia Britannica: “During pride Month, it is not uncommon to see the Rainbow flag being proudly displayed as a symbol for the LGBTQ rights movement. The flag became a symbol of LGBTQ pride back in 1978, when the artist Gilbert Baker, a gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag. Baker later revealed that he was urged by Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S., to create a symbol of pride for the gay community. Baker decided to make that symbol a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride and he saw the rainbow as a natural flag from the sky.”

The best-known, six-stripe version of the rainbow Pride flag was established in 1979, and still assigns a meaning to each colour: red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for harmony, and purple for spirit.