Each year, the City of West Hollywood celebrates the LGBTQ+ community through the arts with its WeHo Pride Arts Festival. This year, the WeHo Pride Arts Festival will feature theatre, cabaret, music, dance, film, literary arts, art-making workshops, and much more! Held as part of WeHo Pride, the arts festival will take place May 23-25, 2025, at the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Village at Ed Gould Plaza, located at 1125 N. McCadden Place in Los Angeles. Since its inception in 2007, the City’s LGBTQ+ Arts Festival has showcased artists and storytellers who amplify LGBTQ+ pride through the arts, and this year there is special emphasis on the individual, the participant, as artist.

Among the many free participatory art-making workshops and events are: Fabric Patch Making, Live Model Drawing, Painting and Mantra Making, a Sing-Along with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles (GMCLA), an improv workshop with West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Jen Cheng leading to development of a collaborative poem, and much more!

Also returning are the Pride Poets, an LGBTQ+ poetry collective who had their genesis at the Arts Festival in 2019. Since then, Pride Poets have taken their talents to Grand Performances, the Getty Museum, and other Pride celebrations throughout the region. Each Pride Poet interviews participants, one-on-one, to hear their story, and creates an original, one-of-a-kind art/poem on a manual typewriter for participants to take home, because everyone deserves their story to be heard!

The WeHo Pride Arts Festival is organized in a choose-your-own-adventure model, with several concurrent programs. For the first three hours of each day, attendees can choose from theatre, cabaret, music, literary readings, dance, and film presentations, or can take part in art-making workshops. Closing out each day will be a single performance. Highlights include:

• Friday, May 23, 2025: the Big Dad Energy Trans-Masculine Comedy Show; BANNED Camp featuring readings from banned LGBTQ+ books; Queering Creative Flow workshop with West Hollywood City Poet Laureate; and Celebration Theatre presenting Sweet Lorraine, a play inspired by the enduring friendship of Black, queer literary icons Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin.
• Saturday, May 24, 2025: Singing with Pride and GMCLA; Q-Youth Foundation’s play about a queer brunch gone wrong; a House of AWT/REACH LA film screening; Planet Queer; and Teatro Nuevos Horizontes presenting “ARENA: A House MUSIC-al” based on the house music of the 1990s at the legendary ARENA Nightclub.
• Sunday, May 25, 2025: Live Model Drawing with Miguel Angel Reyes; HIV Writers Workshop; gina young’s SORORITY; Bodies in Play dance variety show; patch-making with Self-Help Graphics; and the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles (TCLA) and Mariachi Arco•Iris in concert.  

All events and workshops are free to attend, however some events are ticketed by advance RSVP, with ticketholders provided priority seating. RSVP is strongly encouraged. For full listings and ticketing information, please visit www.wehopride.com/artsfestival. Please sign up here for the WeHo Pride Arts Festival mailing list to receive updates on the festival.

Also don’t miss the City’s Harvey Milk Day celebration featuring the 3rd annual José Sarria Drag Pageant on Thursday, May 22, 2025, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at West Hollywood Park, located at 647 N. San Vicente Boulevard. Harvey Milk was the first openly LGBTQ person to win political office in California in 1977. José Sarria helped pave the way for Harvey Milk’s successful run for office by being the first openly gay man to run for office in the United States in 1961, and was a drag performer who founded the Imperial Court charitable LGBTQ organization. Details are available at www.wehopride.com/harveymilkday.

The City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Pride Arts Festival is organized by the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Division, which delivers a broad array of arts programs including: Art on the Outside (temporary public art), Urban Art Program (permanent public art), Summer Sounds, Winter Sounds, the WeHo Reads literary series, Free Theatre in the Parks, Arts Grants for Nonprofit Arts Organizations, Library Exhibits and Programming, the City Poet Laureate Program, Drag Story Hour, Human Rights Speakers Series, and the WeHo Pride Arts Festival. For additional information, please visit www.weho.org/arts.

For more information about the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Pride Arts Festival, please contact Mike Che, the City of West Hollywood’s Arts Coordinator, at (323) 848-6377 or at mche@weho.org. For people who are Deaf or hard of hearing dial 711 or 1-800-735-2929 (TTY) or 1-800-735-2922 (voice) for California Relay Service (CRS) assistance.

For up-to-date information about City of West Hollywood news and events, follow @wehocity on social media, sign-up for news updates at www.weho.org/email, and visit the City’s calendar of meetings and events at www.weho.org/calendar. West Hollywood City Hall is open for walk-in services at public counters or by appointment by visiting www.weho.org/appointments. City Hall services are accessible by phone at (323) 848-6400 and via website at www.weho.org. Receive text updates by texting “WeHo” to (323) 848-5000.

For reporters and members of the media seeking additional information about the City of West Hollywood, please contact the City of West Hollywood’s Public Information Officer, Sheri A. Lunn, at (323) 848-6391 or slunn@weho.org.