Wilde Ones is the production company, that for the past 10 years has been responsible for the provision, organisation and management of all the infrastructure on Preston Park for the Pride Festival. It is also responsible for the provision of the catering facilities, the booking of trader stalls, and the management of the marketplace and community village.

Having been involved with Pride for this period, we feel we are in a unique position to comment on the situation that has arisen with Brighton Pride recently.
 
After the event in 2007 a number of changes happened to the Pride organisation that most people would be unaware of.

In September of that year the then Operations Manager resigned. At this time Pride was undergoing an organisational and funding review as part of its three year strategic plan.
 
A major part of this review was to implement a new staff structure, create the new role of ‘Director of Pride’ and ‘expand staff capacity’. In due course a new director was employed and a part time member of staff was made full time. The existing administrative member of staff brought the number of staff up to three.
 
Interestingly, in April 2008 we were told that due to Pride not making as much surplus as it had intended, the organisation was unable to afford to employ the fourth member of staff that it had intended to.
 
The staff changes undoubtedly increased the costs to Pride, but in a conversation I had with a trustee I was informed that the new director was ‘big in corporate sponsorship’. All sounded very positive, and many colleagues had had similar conversations that sang the same tune, reassuring them that some serious sponsors would potentially be coming on board to justify the appointment made.
 
However, two years down the line and we are now in the situation where Pride has a potential 50k deficit, and the proposal is to decimate the event formerly known as Brighton Pride.  (Don’t get me wrong, I think that the current proposal has certain merits.  But it certainly isn’t Brighton Pride. It’s an event that should be put on, say, the day after Pride on the Level. It’s what Brighton Pride should be EXPANDING to, a two day festival, not reduced to).
 
So what went wrong?

One of the reasons cited has been rising costs. In 2008 the costs for the infrastructure on the park was £132,255. In 2009 it was £132,583. So the increase in costs wasn’t there. The overall increase in other areas on the park (cleaning, security, first aid etc.) was no more than 5k. Not exactly a crippling amount.  Yet the ‘potential’ deficit is somehow 50k.
 
Pride has published today some financial information about its costs and income.

Its staff and office costs have gone from £93k in 2007, to £106k in 2008 to £123k in 2009. That’s a 30k (or 32%) increase between 2007 and 2009. So it can clearly be seen where some of those increases are.
 
But what of the other side, the money coming in? Sponsorship has increased from 63k in 2007 to 92k in 2008 to 104k in 2009. That looks great!  Except that the overall income has stayed pretty much the same (310k to 313k) over the past three years, with many of the other income streams declining year on year.
 
And what of any new ‘corporate sponsorship’? The only corporate sponsor that I am aware of on the park is Barclays, and that deal was initially struck in 2007 by the previous operations manager. Interestingly, according to the recent Pride statement, the director initially employed to bring in sponsorship does not now do that job - that role is now fulfilled by the former Business & Marketing Manager. Sorry, but does that make any sense to anybody else?
 
Since the lack of money is the problem here, shouldn’t raising funds be the key issue above all else, exploring every possible avenue to get that income in?
 
In 2008, Wilde Ones invested some £800 for four large ‘Donate’ flags to be used as focal points on the park for bucket collectors to stand beneath.  We contacted the local 180 Newspaper who ran a front page story on their newssheet that came out on the day of Pride, urging people to donate where they saw the flags. We also printed 200 laminated A3 signs that were put on barriers and fencing around the park, urging people to donate and ‘Keep Brighton Free.’
 
At the end of the day I’m not sure if this action had much effect.  But I feel it would have done if the Pride organisation had itself been prioritising its efforts to raise money through bucket donations.
 
For the past two years Wilde Ones has been constantly championing the idea of having a campaign to raise money for Pride, to get the idea across that though the event is ‘free’, it cannot happen without the public putting their hands in their pockets.
 
How ironic it is, that two weeks after this year’s event, a campaign is launched to raise monies for Pride. Isn’t there an idiom about horses and barn doors to describe that, especially as the Director of Pride told me in October 2008 they had a £60,000 deficit in the budget.
 
Wilde Ones has watched what has happened to Pride over the past two years.  From a business point of view Pride has made decisions that have not proved effective.

It increased its ‘staffing capacity’, consequently increasing its costs, but has been unable to increase its income to match that rise.  And now, in order to deal with that situation, it is planning on cutting back the event itself to pay for those rising costs. Sorry, but that simply cannot be allowed to happen.
 
The current statement released from Pride makes interesting reading.  As production manager, I would certainly challenge some of the costs for the tents as stated in that document. However, more importantly I’d challenge the reasoning behind some of the comments made in that document.
 
Pride are currently suggesting that the big tops should go because they are not being paid for in full by the sponsors: “the sponsor of the Wild Fruit tent paid £5k – but as you can see from the figures (£25,620) it costs considerably more than that for us to provide it”, Pride writes.
 
This is missing the point – by a mile! When the stage was removed from Pride in 2003, it wasn’t just because of its cost, it was because of its value for money.  The stage cost £23k back then, and given that the number of people in front of it for most of the day was in the low hundreds, it simply wasn’t cost effective compared to other areas.
 
The reality is, the Wild Fruit tent is very good value for money. When you divide this by its capacity (3700), its cost PER HEAD works out at £6.92.  Which, when compared to other areas, is very favourable:
 
Cabaret Tent - £9.84 per head
Women’s Tent - £6.91 per head
Calabash Tent - £7.33 per head
Line Dancing Tent - £6.89 per head
 
(Incidentally, when you take the income from sponsorship off the total costs, the costs per head reduce to £5.57 for the Wild Fruit Tent and £6.48 for the Cabaret Tent, making these two tents the best value areas on the park).
 
The point is, ALL these tents should remain on the park, as they represent the diverse nature of the community.  The issue of sponsors paying the full cost of the tents is a red herring. The Women’s Tent doesn’t have a sponsor at all, so is Pride saying that area shouldn’t be on the park at all because of that fact?
 
It increasingly seems that there is an agenda to remove certain elements from the park, because their image doesn’t sit comfortably with what the board sees the LGBT community should be.
 
Given that the theme for next year’s parade is ‘Pride and (No) Prejudice’, this seems somewhat hypocritical.
 
Wilde Ones believes that the park should remain as it has been in previous years, maintain its diversity and increase its reputation as the premier Pride event in Europe. It also feels that Pride currently is not in the position to deliver the event that the majority of its attendees want.
 
For these reasons, Wilde Ones will be tabling a rescue package to save this important event, hopefully giving the LGBT people of Brighton the chance to make a decision about the type of Pride they want.

Dean Parker
Wilde Ones