Understanding our Journey
Organisational Timeline
The Sparkle Weekend was born as a pageant in 2005, mostly attracting trans women and those with mixed presentation. This 1-day event attracted around 80 people in the Thompson Arms within Manchester’s Gay Village.
The following year, the celebration moved to Sackville Gardens. By 2008, the Sparkle Weekend was attracting 600 people, through developing partnerships with brands and organisations.
In 2015, the organisation developed a business plan for growth, and attendance rose to around 3,000 people. During this time, the Sparkle Weekend became visibly more inclusive to trans men and non-binary people.
Visitor numbers peaked in 2019 to over 20,000 over the weekend!
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, we significantly struggled as an events-based charity. The online Sparkle event in 2020 saw 3,200 viewers.
The first in-person Sparkle Weekend since the Pandemic saw a soft relaunch, attracting over 7,000 attendees.
Since then, numbers have gradually risen, seeing over 12,500 visitors at the Sparkle Weekend 2024.
In 2024 we launched Sparkle Sanctuary: wellbeing social events for the trans and gender diverse community.
The priority of Sparkle Sanctuary is for gender variant people to have spaces to express themselves, learn new skills, and gain meaningful connections.
The importance for trans safe spaces cannot be underestimated, as one of the marginalised groups of people in the UK. We are coming up to one year of running Sanctuary, and are so proud of how it has grown.
As an organisation, we are doing more than we were originally set up to do. We have adapted when we have seen the growing and changing needs of the community which we serve.
Our team strives to gain significant funding this year in order to improve the overall future proofing of the charity
As we continue to navigate the challenges of supporting our community, Sparkle – The National Transgender Charity is facing some difficult decisions about our future. Like many organizations, we are working hard to balance our funding needs with the services we provide.
While we are committed to pushing forward and doing all we can, we want to be transparent with you about the realities we are up against. We are incredibly grateful for your ongoing support, and it is because of people like you that we remain hopeful for the future.
Together, we can continue to build a strong, resilient community, even as we explore new ways to ensure Sparkle’s sustainability moving forward.
History of UKTrans Life
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1988: Section 28 is introduced, until it was repealed in 2003. This prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools and local authorities. This repressed a whole generation of LGBTQ+ people and has lasting impacts.
1992: Homosexuality is removed as a mental disorder by the World Health Organisation.
2000: The ban is lifted on LGBT+ people being able to openly serve in the UK Armed Forces.
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2004: Gender Recognition Act is passed, allowing trans people to legally change their gender through changing their birth certificate.
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2007: Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations is passed, meaning discrimination based on sexuality is banned.
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2010: "Gender reassignment" (trans identity) is added in the Equality Act as protected characteristic, giving the first legal protection for trans people.
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2013: Same sex marriage is legalised in England and Wales. Followed by Scotland in 2014 and Northern Ireland in 2020.
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2018: The Government announces plans to ban conversion therapy; today, we are still waiting for legislation to be passed. Gender Recognition Act (2004) reform consultation receives over 100,000 responses, the vast majority (70%) being supportive of reforms.
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2019: Transgender identity is removed as a mental illness in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). This is 27 years after homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness.
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2021: Gender identity and sexuality are included on the UK Census for the first time.
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2025: Present day - trans rights are severely lagging behind in the UK, even compared to LGB rights.
