In Queerflow — our affinity group for self-identifying 2LGBTQIA+ Webflow employees — we honor that our members come from different perspectives and backgrounds and, as a result, have different preferences for how they celebrate pride. 

For some, pride may mean coming together as a community. For others, it may mean self-care, or a quiet moment. Pride may also mean learning, growing, and educating others about what it means to be part of the ever-expansive and beautifully intersectional queer community.

As Queerflow leaders, this year we decided that our pride celebrations wouldn’t be a singular event, but a series of events throughout June and the rest of the year that celebrate and honor our Queerflow members in different ways. 

When planning the programming for this year’s events, we bucketed them into the following categories: 

• Celebration and community (queer joy) 
• Self-care 
• Pride year-round

Here’s a closer look at everything we did. 

Celebration and community (queer joy) 

A big theme of our conversations within Queerflow for the past year has been celebration and community, which we fondly group into one phrase: “queer joy.” This was the inspiration behind many of our initiatives for pride this year (so much so that we’ve incorporated the phrase in this year’s pride merch designs.)

Part of queer joy means recognizing and honoring all of the ways in which our identities are so uniquely intersectional and layered. So this year, we wanted to honor different parts of our community by hosting three separate events: two with fellow affinity groups (AGs) and another designed to encourage folks to take a break with live music performances by queer artists. 

Asians@Webflow X Queerflow cooking class 

It was important to us to find other communities within Webflow that we could celebrate diverse thinking, culture, and joy with. Queerflow partnered with the Asians@Webflow affinity group for an event to close out Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month and kick off Pride Month.

We chose to put on a cooking class led by celebrity chef, TV personality, restaurateur, and culinary instructor Arnold Myint. All participants were sent a box with a note from the chef, an ingredient list, and a grocery stipend. During the event, we all hopped on Zoom, cooked incredible food together, and found joy in the collaboration of our affinity groups.

We believe community building is important within your core community, as well as with other communities at our organization. On top of this, we also prioritize community building with the tech industry at large by hosting mixers with queer AGs at other companies and organizations.

Sofar Sounds virtual concert featuring queer artists

To bring both the Queerflow community and allies at Webflow together, we hosted a virtual concert with Sofar Sounds that featured queer artists from around the world. This was a public event that was available to all employees at Webflow — and we all gathered around (virtually) to let music bring us together.

Finding ways to meaningfully educate while also providing entertaining and stimulating content is key to creating an equitable event. The stories and perspectives from the artists brought awareness of queer experiences to our overall team through music.

LGBTQ+ inclusive parenting and caregiving

Queerflow is incredibly grateful to be surrounded by a community of active and engaged allies here at Webflow. One of our members had the idea to offer LGBTQ+-inclusive parenting and caregiving resources to folks at our company, and it was a perfect fit for a cross-collaborative initiative in partnership with the Caregivers@Webflow affinity group.

We brought in early childhood educator and inclusivity consultant Leah Barker from Belonging Inclusivity Consulting for a presentation on gender stereotypes, creativity, using non-gendered language with children, inclusive language around bodies and consent, and how to incorporate inclusive stories in books, play, and conversations. This session was open to the whole team at Webflow and was an incredible opportunity to better understand how to raise and care for children with a more inclusive lens — especially during crucial developmental years. Plus, it was great for folks on the team to better learn how to unlearn unnecessary gender binaries often taught from birth. (Interested in learning more? Get in touch with Belonging.)

Self-Care 

Beyond celebration, we also wanted to support and encourage Queerflow team members to take personal time for themselves and encourage self-care during Pride month.   

Queerflow self-care stipend 

Each quarter, all members of Queerflow receive a stipend they can reimburse for anything that brings them joy. This could be buying that amazing piece of clothing they’ve been eyeing, purchasing a concert ticket, or treating themselves to a spa day. During Pride month, we  increased the stipend to encourage and celebrate self-care even more during this special — and sometimes exhausting — time.

Reminding your community that self-care is vital and is something to be prioritized is a great way to reinforce that the affinity group is there to prioritize their wellbeing both inside and outside of the company.

Group and individual tarot readings

Spirituality can be an incredibly grounding tool for those in the 2LGBTQIA+ community. To help our members feel even more connected to themselves and each other, we hosted an optional full moon tarot group reading, led by Cyree Jarelle from Temperance Queer Tarot. It was then followed by individual tarot readings for those interested.

Pride year-round

Although pride month is a wonderful opportunity to shower our queer communities with even more events and activities, we’re also committed to keeping the queer joy and education alive all year long. Here’s some additional initiatives that we’re leading. 

Ongoing education initiatives

As Queerflow co-leads, we used the additional planning and development time we set aside for pride planning to research and reach out to potential partners for ongoing education opportunities at a team-wide level.

Looking forward, we hope to bring ongoing gender inclusion training to all employees at Webflow, especially for people managers and leadership, on an ongoing basis. This training will help fill gaps in awareness and allyship at the company-wide level, ensuring better and more integrated inclusion for our queer, trans, gender non-conforming, and gender expansive communities at Webflow for years to come.

Inclusive language as intrinsic, not an add-on

Inclusive language at Webflow is intrinsic to who we are. All employees and teams are educated on inclusive language, including racist, ableist, gendered, sexist, and culturally appropriative language through our onboarding materials and internal conversations. 

We also have our beloved and widely-used inclusive language guidelines, which are continually updated for the team so that they can stay updated on common terms and phrases that may unintentionally cause harm.

Celebrating 2LGBTQIA+ employees at your company 

When planning programming for 2LGBTQIA+ employees, here are some guidelines that we’ve used as our north star: 

• It is key to bring joy to your queer peers, we all need it. 
• Build a sense of community and trust for your queer peers.
• Provide meaningful education on the queer experience for the entire company.
• Create opportunities for people to unlearn what they've been taught year round.

If you found our recap of Pride at Webflow resourceful, we encourage you to use our programming ideas as inspiration for events at your own organizations. And as always, please don’t hesitate to share this post on social.