Pride: Out Loud! presents Jonathan Blake

British HIV activist and star of the film, ‘PRIDE’

After a holiday in San Francisco in 1981, Jonathan was feeling increasingly unwell and checked in to a sexual health clinic in London. He was the first at that clinic to be diagnosed with an emerging illness that we know today as HIV, and he was the first person diagnosed in England and became known as ‘patient number one’.

Living through HIV and AIDS in the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s, the hundreds of funerals and health scares, is only one part of Jonathan’s remarkable story. Because in 1984, when the British Conservative government cracked down on a strike by coal miners, he was one of a group of socialist activists called ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’ who stepped up and raised money for a small – and very heterosexual – mining community in south Wales, challenging norms and causing quite a stir in the village.

That brilliant story and defiance and determination was immortalised in the Golden Globe-nominated 2014 film ‘PRIDE’, in which Dominic West plays Jonathan – including his showstopper dancing at the miner’s social club.

We are delighted that Jonathan is our first LoudSpeaker in 2026. Join us to watch, laugh and cry at PRIDE, and to join us for Jonathan’s Pride: Out Loud! talk and Q&A after the screening.