Celebrating creativity: Pride 2024

This year’s Pride is set to be bolder and bigger than ever as the LGBTQIA+ community and its allies march, parade and connect in solidarity and celebration.

In the UK and US, 2024 is a pivotal year as we prepare to make our voices heard in upcoming general elections. For the 3.2% of LGBTQIA+ of the population in the UK and the 7.6% in the US, and the increasingly gender fluid younger generations, this is a time to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ individuals that are paving the way for greater equality, diversity and inclusivity in the world.

This Pride Month, we’re featuring our favourite LGBTQIA+ artists, designers, writers and thinkers who inspire us at Wolff Olins.

Olly Pike

Multi-talented creator Olly Pike is the author of multiple LGBTQIA+ children's books and videos that combat homophobia and transphobia.

His company Pop'n'Olly Ltd is the UK's leading LGBT+ educational resource. Millions of people globally have engaged with Olly’s content. He crafts all aspects of the stories, from writing the copy, to illustrating the pictures, to animating the videos and even stars in them using skills from his theatrical and children’s television background.

Olly has distributed over 30,000 books worldwide and donated over 9,000 copies to UK primary schools to help educate children and teachers about diversity and equality.

Isabel Rower

Isabel Rower is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist. Her art blends mediums, from ceramic and wood to drawing, and carries a mystical quality, mutating a world of media excess into one of parallel whimsy and sacredness. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, where she began making work operating as both furniture and sculpture, Isabel has exhibited at galleries such as Fisher Parrish Gallery, MARTA, and Superhouse. Her work alongside Pink Essay and projects she has developed for Kanye West have been featured in Architectural Digest︎︎︎.

Isabel believes in wealth redistribution, mutual aid and collective action. 15% of all profit from her commerce shop is directly donated to various mutual aid organisations.

Bence Borbely

Boundary-breaking fashion designer Bence Borbely is known for his balloon-focused pieces that range from glasses and bags to ready-to-wear garments.

Borbely began designing with balloons aged 12 in his home country of Budapest. Now he works with some of the biggest names in fashion, from Vogue Portugal to House of Sunny, moulding the balloons to compliment classic styles with an architectural influence.

His inspiration comes from varying sources, such as nature and architecture, and his style is Avant Garde and futuristic modular design. Currently working with biodegradable balloons and custom-made designs, he plans to release a durable, ready-to-wear collection, alongside creating couture and custom pieces.

Daniel Peach

Daniel Peach, Head of Customer Programs at Google, is a digital growth architect and a leader in the LGBTQIA+ community who co-leads Pride@Google UK.

Daniel has influenced Google's policies, including a YouTube ban on content that promotes conversion therapy, creating a culture of inclusion for over 500 LGBTQIA+ employees and allies.

He aims to support queer people by effecting structural change to improve workplaces and communities, and continues to build partnerships with LGBTQIA+ nonprofits. By harnessing Google funding and tech expertise, he is helping charities such as Stonewall Housing and ParaPride better reach marginalised communities.

Daniel is also a Board member of ReportOUT, a global nonprofit focused on improving the rights of sexual and gender minorities through research, training and institutional change.

Becca McCharen-Tran

Becca McCharen-Tran is a fashion designer and founder of progressive New York-based bodywear label Chromat, which has been lauded by the likes of Vogue, Elle and DAZED.

In her work, McCharen-Tran challenges cultural norms around representation and inclusion to create clothing that doesn’t just empower women and nonbinary people, but where everyone, whatever their shape, size, gender expression, age, ability levels and ethnicity can feel empowered.

With a degree from the University of Virginia School of Architecture, McCharen-Tran fuses architecture, fashion and technology into striking designs which have clothed ground-breaking women including Beyoncé, FKA Twigs, Madonna and Nicki Minaj. A Forbes 30 Under 30 choice for "People Who Are Reinventing the World", McCharen-Tran is on a mission to reshape the fashion industry into a more inclusive and accessible space.

Sunil Gupta

Sunil Gupta is an Indian-born Canadian photographer, based in London. He draws on his experiences in all three countries to highlight LGBTQIA+ issues within each culture.

With hundreds of solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, books, articles and lectures to his name across four-decades, Sunil’s career has been spent "making work responding to the injustices suffered by gay men across the globe, himself included", touching on themes of sexual identity, migration, race and family.

Gupta has played a crucial role at the centre of grassroots queer and postcolonial action and he has maintained a visionary approach to photography, producing pioneering bodies of work that focus on social and political commentary.