Reading Pride and Sponsors – 2024
Reading Pride has, over the past 21 years, created a fun, safe environment for our LGBTQIA+ community, championing local groups and creating a day when the whole breadth and scope of the Reading Community can be proudly on display. A big part of this is keeping the event free, donation only, to allow everyone to feel they can attend and be part of something amazing. In order to do this, and to meet the costs of organising the festival, we seek local organisations and employers to help us meet the costs of putting on the festival.
Reading Pride costs over £100,000 to put on each year, most of which is spent on the general infrastructure of the event – such as fencing, toilets, waste handling, parade management, furniture, first aid, security, signage, equipment hire, stages, acts and event spaces.
In return, bar takings, marketplace stalls, fairground, fundraising events and donations on the day (including Pride Plus tickets) raise around £37,000. We receive no council or lottery funding and we’re organised by a team of dedicated volunteers.
We believe Reading Pride has created, over the years, an amazing platform for LGBTQIA+ issues. With around 14,000 people visiting each year, the community and our allies have a safe space to find out more about what our community have to offer. We believe that our size creates a strong platform for people across the region, increasing exposure to charities, LGBTQIA+ businesses and acts which help support our community year-round. To do this, we encourage and seek sponsorship from organisations with strong LGBTQIA+ values for a mutual partnership – allowing organisations to show their support to their employees as well as the wider community.
Why do organisations sponsor Reading Pride?
Reading Pride helps represent a broad part of our community. We have found that our sponsorship partners have often come through strong LGBTQIA+ groups and advocates within those organisations, who want to share the pride they have in working for them. In return, My Umbrella, a project run by Reading Pride, can often help those groups shape progressive policies to benefit all employees.
How do we choose our sponsors?
Reading Pride Trustees have reserved the right to select our sponsor partners. Each sponsorship agreement is reviewed by Trustees who look at:
- The progressiveness of the organisation
- Their motivations for supporting Reading Pride
- How their aims align with the aims of core values of Reading Pride
This includes background research into the organisations as well as speaking with LGBTQIA+ representatives within the organisation.
In deciding whether to receive the support of a sponsor, the main criteria we use is that they demonstrate support for the values of Reading Pride, in particular with regard to inclusiveness and allyship for LGBT+ rights and support of the local LGBT+ community.
Potential sponsors can evidence this in a number of ways, for example public policy statements, the presence of a company LGBT+ network (Employee Resource group), support for other LGBT+ causes or pro-equality campaigning.
Are you interested in sponsoring Reading Pride?
To get in touch with our sponsorship team on how you can help Reading Pride achieve our charity aims,contact [email protected].
Reading Pride and Political Parties – 2024
Reading Pride annually invites political parties to our event, allowing the community to share experiences with elected representatives. The 2024 General Election brought anti-trans* sentiments into manifestos, creating harmful debates around gender recognition, which deeply affect the LGBTQ+ community. This is unacceptable to Reading Pride.
We aim to provide a safe space for debate at Reading Pride. Trustees are considering barring the Labour and Conservative parties from participating this year due to the harmful nature of the current political discourse. Trans* rights are human rights, and the political discussion in the UK has not progressed as it should.
Labour’s stance on opposing ‘self-ID’ for Trans* people, allowing sports bodies to exclude Trans women from women’s competitions, and banning Trans* people from single-sex hospital wards is harmful. Whilst Labour supports extending the conversion therapy ban and updating gender recognition laws, it retains outdated requirements, and the current school guidance on gender is regressive, harking back to the days of Section 28 introduced by a Conservative government in 1988.
Labour’s stance on the continued ban on puberty blockers is removing treatment options for patients from Healthcare Professionals, who should have a choice in how their patients are treated and managed.
The Conservatives’ manifesto promised to redefine sex to biological sex, exclude Trans people from female-only spaces and sports, and ban discussions of gender identity in schools. Their stance on banning puberty blockers and omitting a conversion therapy ban is unacceptable.
Participation in Reading Pride is a privilege, not a right. This position will be reviewed annually and applies to all political parties. Based on their recent actions, we have invited local representatives from the Labour and Conservative parties to meet with Trustees and the Reading Pride Committee before participating in our events, so they can hear the views of the impacted communities.
If you would like to share stories or viewpoints with representatives of the political parties, please get in touch with us.
