Out and Active NI describes itself as a “community-driven sports and social group dedicated to providing a welcoming, inclusive and supportive space for LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies”.<\/p>\n
Mr Gribben said groups like this are still needed. <\/p>\n
“We have loads of amazing things in 2025 like phones and apps, but we are finding a lot of our younger members don’t really know how to communicate with people in person without drink or an app,” he said. <\/p>\n
“They really struggle to just make friends unless it’s through a computer screen and it’s been really nice to see younger people really embrace just playing a game and making friends.” <\/p>\n
Since the formation of Out and Active NI, Mr Gribben has put together a committee to plan weekly events, workshops and activities. <\/p>\n
“Some of the feedback we’ve got is that if we’re playing a game of something, like rounders, some members have said that it feels really good to them and gives them a real buzz when people are chanting their name and chanting for them… and they’ve never had that before,” he said. <\/p>\n
“It’s kind of wholesome.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Out and Active NI describes itself as a “community-driven sports and social group dedicated to providing a welcoming,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-332419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-northern-ireland","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115002959754729949","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}