Trans Writes is to receive £5,000 in grant funding thanks to LGBT+ Futures: Equity Fund via LGBT+ Consortium and The National Lottery Community Fund. Money which will ensure we can continue to source amazing trans-led content for a whole year.
If you have been following my personal Twitter you would probably have noticed me anxiously banging on about applying for this grant and how cool it would be if we got it. Well it actually happened and Trans Writes is to receive £5,000 in grant funding via the LGBT Futures: Equity Fund.
in a few weeks im going to retweet this and explain why but for now let me just tell you
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— a wailing banshe/her (@notCursedE) October 28, 2022
Contractually; I’m to tell you “LGBT+ Futures: Equity Fund is a two-year £786,000 partnership between Consortium and The National Lottery Community Fund, designed to help community-led and grassroot organisations supporting some of the most under-represented and marginalised LGBT+ communities.”
But for us in real terms LGBT+ Futures Equity Fund’s acceptance of our grant application is four pieces of media – probably writing – per month for almost a whole year. That’s £5,000 given directly to transgender people for taking the time to speak their truth; be it on politics, social issues and even play reviews. That’s absolutely huge.
There is one minor caveat! This £5,000 is for UK contributors only. This could really suck if it weren’t for the fact that we already operated via crowdfunding and lots of lovely donations from the community. We will continue to operate our Paypal and Patreon – however for the next year we are going to exclusively be using funds raised there for non-UK based pieces and saving the £5,000 for UK based pieces only.
This way we get the best of both worlds, we get a minimum of 50 pieces sourced from the UK trans community and we get to live up to the “.world” in our domain name by using all of our other funds internationally. Trans Writes in 2023 is going to get a lot busier!
As a fledgling organisation with a very limited budget trying to establish ourselves, we’ve had to pick stories that we think will get the most clicks. That’s usually been news stories and talking about transphobia but that’s not what I wanted this site to be for. Sure, that’s what I do – but I want this project to be for trans voices on all topics, not just trans ones.
With the LGBT+ Futures: Equity Fund grant we can afford to do that. We will still cover important news stories of course, but the extra budget means we’re not tied down to that any more. We can source anything we want, be it travel blogs, media reviews and even poetry.
None of this would be possible without the love and support you have all put behind this project. When Lee and I threw this idea together we knew there would be demand for it but we truly did not expect anything like this.
Without you, trans people, there is no Trans Writes and therefore no LGBT+ Futures: Equity Fund applications. So from the bottom of my heart; Thank you. You are what makes Trans Writes worth all of this work.
I would also like to say thank you to LGBT+ Futures: Equity Fund ran in partnership by LGBT+ Consortium and The National Lottery Community Fund. Thank you for believing in our project and in the fact that trans voices are not only valuable but necessary; especially right now as the world is gripped by anti-trans moral panic.
What a lovely way to start #TransAwarenessWeek! Look out for some awesome content from contributors on that and if you hadn’t seen already; we are doing game night! #TransWritesGameNight will be Terraria and I’m hoping to have it up and running by the end of the month.
