A festival in Australia plans to attempt to set a new world record for the largest human rainbow ever.
The ChillOut Festival in Daylesford, Victoria is the longest-running regional LGBTQ Pride festival in Australia.
This year’s festival features one extra-special event on March 7: an enormous human rainbow, which organizers call “a visual demonstration of solidarity” with the LGBTQ community. Australia just legalized same-sex marriage in 2017.
“We’re calling for 30,000 community members, allies, families, and supporters to come together to celebrate and show the world that we support queer country pride,” a ChillOut representative said. “Come and show your support for the LGBTQI+ community in this visual demonstration of solidarity. Together, we can show the world that Australians believe in equality and diversity.”
Specifically, the festival needs 30,366 participants to break the Guinness World Record. The current title is held by the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, which created a human rainbow with 30,365 people in 2004.
Each ticket to ChillOut (available through Eventbrite) comes with a T-shirt in one of the six colors of the official Pride rainbow. So, festivalgoers can easily participate in the stunt.
The three-day festival will also attempt to break a second world record on March 8 for the longest line of dancing drag queens. For this, they’ll need over 145 people to attend in drag. They’re going with a Dolly Parton theme, naturally.
In addition to the world record attempts, the festival also features parties, a Pride parade, wellness activities, and more. It’s Alice in Spa Wonderland-themed, so there will also be a Mad Hatter tea party and a circus show.
Rainbows are a long-standing symbol of LGBTQ pride, and this isn’t the first example of an extra-large rainbow at a Pride event. In June 2019, New York City unveiled a massive 12-foot by 100-foot rainbow on Roosevelt Island. At Iceland’s Pride in Reykjavík, entire streets are painted in rainbow colors.
