I Live in a Town With No Pride Events. So I Built One. A 30-Day Rural Pride Experience You Can Steal.

A first-person look at Out. Here., a 30-day Pride Experience for LGBTQ+ folks in small towns and rural areas, with a free template to run your own.

Two years ago, my wife and I traded a city with a massive Pride scene for a small town in Western New York. Population 1,317. One stoplight. It's beautiful here, and I love it.

And then June rolled around, and Pride got very quiet.

Here's the thing nobody warns you about when you leave the city. Pride has a geography problem. The parades, the parties, the pop-up events, they all happen somewhere else. If you're not within driving distance of a bar or a march, Pride quietly becomes something you watch through other people's Instagram stories, feeling a little like you got left off the invite list.

So this year I stopped watching and built something instead. It's called Out. Here.

If you organize Pride in a small town or a rural community, or you just wish someone would, read on to get the whole idea. Take it, make it yours, and launch it where you live. The rest of this post is the story of how "Out. Here." came together, and a blueprint for building your own.

Why Rural and Small-Town LGBTQ+ Communities Get Left Out of Pride

Most Pride Month event ideas you find online assume you live in or near a city. The map pins, the event calendars, the "here's what's happening near you" roundups, they all thin out fast once you get past the suburbs. For LGBTQ+ people in small towns and rural areas, June can feel less like a celebration you're part of and more like a party you're hearing through the wall.

A hashtag or a Facebook group can tell you Pride is happening. What it can't really do is make you feel part of it. The thing that goes missing out here isn't information. It's participation, the feeling of doing something together, at the same time, as a community, even when that community is spread across counties.

That gap, the one between watching Pride and taking part in it, is the kind of gap Goosechase happens to be good at closing. We're an Interactive Experience Platform, which is a fancy way of saying we help people take part in something together, wherever they happen to be. And it turns out the same thing that makes Goosechase work for a company offsite or a school field trip works just as well for a queer teen two hours from the nearest Pride event.

Out. Here.: A 30-Day Pride Experience Built for Small Towns

Out. Here. is the Experience I built for exactly this. It's a Goosechase template that spans a full month, with one new Mission unlocking each day. Thirty days, thirty Missions, a mix of photo challenges, video prompts, and trivia, all made for LGBTQ+ people in small towns and rural communities who are done sitting Pride out.

Because it's a template, you don't have to dream the whole thing up from scratch. You can grab Out. Here., clone it into your own account, tweak whatever you like, and run it for your community's next Pride. The hard part is already done. What's left is the fun part, which is bringing your people into it.

The whole thing is played online, so it works no matter where "here" is for you. And because everyone plays into the same shared feed, you get to see what other people are posting as the month goes on. Someone in rural Montana, someone in Appalachia, someone three towns over that you never knew was family. That is the part a solo scroll through social media can never give you. You aren't watching Pride happen to other people. You're all in it together, at once.

Inside a 30-Day Pride Experience: The Weekly Themes and Sample Missions

The month has a loose arc to it, which keeps the whole thing from feeling like a random pile of prompts. Each week has a theme:

• Week 1: Roots. Who you are, and where you're from.
• Week 2: History. Standing on the shoulders of the people who came before.
• Week 3: Community. Finding your people across the miles.
• Week 4: Joy. Unapologetic celebration, building toward the Stonewall anniversary at the end of the month.
• The Final Stretch: Forward. What you're carrying into the rest of the year.

Inside that structure, the Missions themselves stay varied so no two days feel the same. A few from the calendar:

• Rural and Proud. Photograph something beautiful about where you actually live, the field, the barn, the Main Street, the long light of a summer evening.
• Your Anthem. Film yourself lip-syncing to your personal anthem. Full commitment is the entire point.
• Chosen Family. Show us your people. Human, pet, or object, all answers accepted.
• Make Something Rainbow. Bake it, chalk it, wear it, build it. Any medium counts, as long as it ends up gloriously colorful.
• Settle a Debate. Some Missions are pure cheek, like making the case for your favorite queer pop culture moment of all time and refusing to hear counterarguments.

Why a Mission-Based Platform Works for a Virtual Pride Event

I'm biased, obviously. (I work at Goosechase!) But a daily community Experience like this needs a few specific things, and it's genuinely why I reached for Goosechase to build it.

It's mission-based, not quiz-based, so it rewards people for making something (a photo, a video, a moment) rather than just clicking the right answer. It's built to play from anywhere, so an Experience can run fully virtually and people can take part remotely, no matter how far from anything they live. It's the same setup that lets scattered teams run a virtual scavenger hunt across the country. It mixes the real world with the digital, so a Mission can send you out to your own Main Street and still connect you to everyone else playing. And the shared feed does the heavy lifting on the thing that's hardest to fake, which is the sense that you are not doing this alone.

Participation beats attendance every time. That's true for a Fortune 500 onboarding program, and it turns out it's just as true for Pride in a town of 1,317.

How to Host Your Own Rural Pride Event: A Blueprint for Organizers

If you're an organizer looking at your own small town and thinking "we could use one of these," you're right, you could. The fastest way is to clone Out. Here. and run it as-is, or tweak it to fit your town. If you'd rather build from scratch, or tailor it heavily, here's what I'd tell you before you start, learned mostly by figuring it out on the fly.

Pre-build as many Missions as you can. Thirty Missions sounds delightful on day one and slightly less delightful on day twelve if you're still writing them as you go. Draft the bulk of them before launch and you remove the single biggest reason these projects fizzle.

Design for your actual community, not a generic one. "Rural" isn't one experience. A prompt that feels joyful and safe for out folks in one town could put someone at real risk in another. Picture your most vulnerable potential participant, not your most comfortable one, and design from there. Getting this right is how you build community engagement that lasts rather than a one-off that fizzles.

Recruit before you launch, not after. An Experience with one player is just a very elaborate journal. Like all the best community events that bring people together, this one lives or dies on who shows up. Think about who's playing and how you'll reach them (your own networks, local LGBTQ+ groups, a PFLAG chapter, the right online communities) before day one, not on day three when you're wondering where everyone is.

Set a code of conduct up front. If it grows, people will post things that are moving, and occasionally things that need a gentle hand. Decide who's keeping an eye on the feed and what the ground rules are before you need them.

Find one co-creator. Even a single other person sharing the load turns "my project that I might abandon" into "our thing." It's the best momentum insurance there is.

And if 30 feels like a lot, start smaller. A tight, finished 10-day Experience beats an ambitious 30-day one you don't get to the end of. If you've ever helped plan a scavenger hunt, you already have the instincts for this. It's just a themed, month-long version. You can always go bigger next June.

None of this requires a budget, a venue, or a crowd. It requires an idea and a way to bring people into it.

Pride belongs everywhere, including the places with more cows than stoplights. If nobody's throwing the party where you are, that's not a reason to sit it out. It might just be your invitation to build it.

Happy Pride, wherever you are 🏳️‍🌈

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is a Rural Pride Experience?

A rural Pride Experience is a way for LGBTQ+ people in small towns and rural areas to celebrate Pride together when there's no local parade or event nearby. It usually runs through a mobile or web app, with daily photo, video, and trivia Missions that everyone completes and shares from wherever they are, so a scattered community can take part at the same time.

How Do You Celebrate Pride in a Small Town?

You celebrate Pride in a small town by creating your own shared activities that don't depend on a big crowd or a venue. That can look like a daily Mission Experience, a photo challenge, a small local meetup, or an online space where people post and see each other's contributions.

Do You Need a Big Group to Run a Virtual Pride Event?

No. A virtual Pride event works with any group size, from a handful of friends to a whole region. Because everyone plays into a shared feed from their own phone, even a small, spread-out group can feel connected. Start with the people you have and let it grow from there.

Is Goosechase Free for Community Pride Events?

You can create and run a free recreational Experience on Goosechase, which covers a lot of community Pride events. Larger events, or ones that want more advanced features, may be a better fit for a paid plan. Check the current pricing page for what's included at each tier. Goosechase offers steep discounts for nonprofit groups so if you are interested in running a Goosechase for your next Pride event, please reach out to us directly. We'd love to be able to support!

What is Goosechase?

At Goosechase, experience is everything. Originally inspired by scavenger hunts, Goosechase is an online platform that enables organizations and schools to engage, activate, and educate their communities through delightful interactive experiences. Sign up and get started with a free Experience, or check out our Pricing!