You may have seen that, with great relief, Pecs Drag Kings have received Emergency COVID-19 support from Arts Council England. We are extremely grateful to ACE and the National Lottery as we, like many others, have had many projects and gigs cancelled between April and December 2020. Without this support, Pecs Drag Kings would have had to at minimum gone into hibernation during this pandemic - and possibly have had to dissolve our company, the idea of which made our hearts heavy for the queer community that we exist for.
We know it’s a lot of responsibility to receive this money. All artists are struggling in a time when we shouldn’t have to ‘prove’ our right to survive, or ‘prove’ that our work should exist. Pecs exists in both the cabaret and theatre worlds - and we see how many people are falling through the gaps across the performance spectrum.
We’ve always made work for the LGBTQ+ community. We use drag to explore gender identities, politics & sexuality, to create cultural space for queer women, trans* & non-binary folk. For the next 6 months, we’ll be focusing on finding new ways of producing this work, connecting with our audiences and doing some much needed company development, which will let us focus on ways to be properly sustainable for the first time.
So, this is what to expect from us in the next 6 months - what we’ll be using our grant for. For full transparency, we are topping up this grant with the Theatre Tax Relief from SEX SEX MEN MEN, and our own company reserves.
Stabilizing our team:
Pecs has 10 company members, so any activity we do starts with a large budget. In 2020 we were due to perform 5 one-off shows, a 2 week run in August of a new show and then develop this further for another Autumn run. As a result, the income loss to our team has been really significant.
We’ll be using £5760 to pay cancellation fees to our company members to help them stabilize their income and make up for some of their lost Pecs work.
We’ll also be paying our 2 producers to maintain our work, output & project management, and to run & develop the company. Some of the things they will be This is something we’ve never been able to do before! It comes to 1 day a week for two people at £100 per day. 26 weeks each, so £5200
Digital
We’ll be launching a much-lusted after Pecs ambition, a Podcast! Our podcast will be prioritising and centring QTIPOC and Queer Disabled guests first and foremost. £4000 will be spent on delivering this project - on writing & development / recording time, equipment, paying contributors, editing time, marketing content, etc
After the success of our first instagram tutorial, we’ll also be delivering a wider range of digital content from all of our Kings to help you all get kingly at home! £1600 will be spent here.
Archive
Pecs has been alive since 2013, and we are yet to formally archive any of our work. With this funding, we can employ a member of our team to do this. Drag Kinging is still marginalised within LGBTQ+ culture, often drowned out by other more mainstream drag. We hope that in archiving our 7 years of work, we will be able to submit it to an organisation such as the Bishopsgate Institute and help to formally recognise the significant impact of drag kings on LGBTQ+ community and culture.
£400 will be spent here.
Access
We recognise that cabaret and ‘gig’ culture within the scene can often be extremely inaccessible for disabled people and we want to address this structurally within our company. The whole team will be receiving disability equality training, and from this we will then lead a series of workshops together at how we can better integrate access for disabled folk into our work in all its many forms. From this we will create our own set of best practice guidelines for producing any of our future work in regard to access. £180 is allocated here. (for full transparency this is a discounted rate as an internal team member is a DET trainer)
We’ll also be exploring access in its wider context of class, race, gender and inclusion between club promoters, venues, cabaret and other queer performance collectives and what structural changes need to be made for better inclusion. We’ll be exploring if these conversations already exist, and how we might access them if so, or how we might be able to bring together these people to create best practices. We’ll be assessing our reserves at the 3 month (or earlier) mark to see if we can provide further training for our company members on these matters.
Audiences
We’ll be spending time learning more about our audiences through sending out forms and surveys - we want to learn more about who comes to our shows, but more significantly we want to know who is NOT in the room so we can begin to address this.
We also want to connect with other grassroots movements, organisations and artistic groups across the country to see how we might significantly contribute to their queer community through co-creation or collaboration. We recognise that Pecs has been a mostly London-centric group and want to move beyond this, but only if it’s meaningful.
Administrative Development
We’ll be upgrading our communications and administrative platforms! This means being able to invest in Basecamp Pro, Zoom Pro, social media software, accountancy software and bank account software to enable us to work more smoothly. £852 will go on these various subscriptions.
We’ll also be spending time on formalising our company policy, business plans and communication structures.
Fundraising
We’ll be looking to diversify our fundraising beyond ACE. In these turbulent times, both ticket-buyers and private donors are not able to support the company. We’ll be looking for more sustainable funding opportunities.
Through doing this activity, we’ll be making a 3 year artistic strategy for Pecs, enabling us to have multiple strands of work and ambitions to better serve our community.
Here’s a full cost breakdown which includes some other bits and bobs
Emergency funding from ACE: £18550
2 x Pecs Producers x 1 Day per week @ 26 Weeks - £5200
Cash grants to x 8 pecs members - £5760
Archival project - £400
Fundraising costs - £150
Accountancy cost - £630
Storage Unit - £100
Bank charges - £39
Comms software subscription - £480
Zoom Pro - £144
Xero Subscription - £150
Social media - £150
Website redevelopment - £500
Podcast budget - £4000
Video content and captioning budget - £1600
Disability Equality training - £180
Contingency - £300
Total: £20,593