Badge Of Pride

Preserve LGBTQ+ History. Fuel Cultural Power. Make Change Real.

Badge Of Pride advances LGBTQ+ history as public knowledge, public culture, and public power. In just three years, we've grown from a grassroots idea into a nationally recognized force in North Texas's cultural fabric, activating a collection of 10,000+ artifacts and welcoming thousands into spaces where Queer history is visible, accessible, and alive in the present.

Our landmark exhibition Badge Of Pride: From Silence to Celebration! — the largest artifact-centered LGBTQ+ history exhibition ever presented in Texas — drew more than 3,000 visitors to the Irving Archives & Museum. Free admission. Gender-inclusive Spanish translation. Deep community partnerships. People came for the history. They stayed for the connection, the context, and the sense that their lives belong in the record.

Our Work, Recognized

- American Alliance of Museums, Museum Impact Award, 2026
- American Association for State and Local History, Award of Excellence, Leadership in History Awards, 2026
- National Council on Public History, Outstanding Public History Project Award (Small Institution), 2026
- Academy of Interactive & Visual Arts, 32nd Annual Communicator Awards, Award of Excellence, 2026
- International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, Anthem Awards, Silver, 2025
- Texas Association of Museums, Mitchell A. Wilder Publication Design Award, Gold, 2026

Why It Matters

Across Texas and around the country, LGBTQ+ stories are being stripped from classrooms, libraries, and public life. This is a decisive moment: either history contracts, or it expands. Your support ensures it expands.

When you give to Badge Of Pride, you help protect irreplaceable artifacts, capture voices that have never been recorded, and bring Queer history into the spaces where it's urgently needed. You are fueling visibility, education, and cultural understanding at a moment when all three are under direct attack.

Memory Into Momentum

Our programs don't preserve the past for its own sake. They put it to work. From statewide oral history work in Deep in the Heart to our performance series CORRESPONDENCE: Letters of Queer Resistance, Love & Revolution, we partner with artists, writers, historians, elders, and young people to animate history and speak directly to the present.

We design at the intersection of art, activism, and historical truth, creating work that moves people, provokes dialogue, and expands what the cultural record can hold.

Centering The Full Story

Badge Of Pride's work centers the full breadth of LGBTQ+ experience, across race, gender identity, disability, class, age, and geography. We prioritize the histories of Black, Brown, Indigenous, trans, nonbinary, disabled, immigrant, and rural Queer Texans whose stories have been underserved or erased.

Equity is the framework for everything we protect, present, and imagine.

Your investment carries LGBTQ+ history into the future. It moves stories from the margins to the center and ensures that future generations inherit a record that reflects truth, courage, creativity, and community.