“There was three of us in this marriage, but I was two of them”

What Steven asked Hilary Cooke, CEO of Medway Pride

Electrologist Hilary Cooke is the CEO of Medway Pride and the manager of a pub in Burham. Steven met her at The Ship in Rochester and they talked about how Medway Pride started, Hilary’s previous career as a ship builder and her remarkable trip to America, which she mentioned after the interview had finished, but we managed to get the recorder switched back on…

Hilary Cooke

How did you come to be CEO of Medway Pride?
That journey starts back in about 2010 when I was asked by a local charity if I could help with some people that they were supporting. They were a mental health charity who they described as members of the LGBT community. But when I went to see them, they were actually ten people and eight of them were trans, hence they hadn't got a clue about how to help them back then. The short story of that is that led me to set up an organisation called the South East Gender Initiative initially to support those people through their transition route. In 2014, that group or that organisation became Medway Gender Sexual Diversity Centre and, come 2019, the community at large were wanting to form a Pride event in Medway. Questions were being asked, ‘Why had we not had a Pride event in Medway?’ To which I replied, ‘Well, we did have two.’ We had one in 2013 and one in 2014 that was formed by a group that were going under the name the LGBT Kent and Medway Community Action Group. We had a couple of picnics in the Vines back then. But that group as a whole then decided to go and help Margate Pride set themselves up again.
In 2019, we hadn't had anything going on since 2014. The group that were trying to get that together failed to raise enough funds to have the event go ahead. This would have been the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall events that led to the very first Pride parades in New York. So early in 2020, I was asked by some charities to see if I could find out what had happened with this event. I did a bit of an investigation and spoke to the organisers, and they explained how they tried to raise the money through one of these fundraising organisations, like a self-funded thing through donations, but that hadn't worked out. Although they'd got some money promised, because they didn't hit a target, they didn't get any money. I said to them at that point, “If I find some funders who are willing to come and help, do you want to put it on next year?” To which they all said, “Yeah, that's good.” I went and found some funders. When I called them up to say, “I've got some funders,” half the group had drifted off. There was only a couple of people left. They wanted to help, but they didn't want to be involved in the fundraising. When it comes to choosing a chair, they all stepped back and said, “You can do it, because you know the fundraising, you have the connections.” I thought, “Oh, okay then.”
The Medway Pride event, unfortunately, occurred during covid. We had to set up a Pride event that nobody could attend physically. A good friend, called H, and I worked on the support work that I used to do, or still do, and at the same time as I was organising that Medway Pride, they were organising the very first Gravesham Pride. We found ourselves in the same boat. We joined forces and the people we were going to have on stage, we got them together to make videos, and we live-streamed either people playing live or video recordings. For seven days, 24/7, we had this event roll on. World Pride managed one day virtually, and we did seven. It was after that that Medway Pride CIC was formed. Up until that point, we were a bunch of people who were trying to put something together. That's how I happened to end up as Chair.

How much of that time is spent wrangling funders?
Initially, we had quite a few funders who came in to support the following year's event. The very first event that was live-streamed. We didn't really need a lot of funding for that, because the artists all decided to give their time for free as it was covid and they weren't doing anything else. It didn't really cost us a lot other than people's time. The following year, which was an in-person event, we were lucky to have support from local businesses. The cost of that event wasn't immense. With some grant funding from local businesses, Medway Council, and sponsors, we managed easily to put that one on. When we moved on to the next year, which was at Rochester Castle with a parade, that was going to be a much bigger event. We needed to get more sponsorship or funding from somewhere. What occurred there was we went to some major fundraisers like the Arts Council and the National Lottery, and they stepped in with funding that covered about 50% of the cost. With our existing sponsors from the previous year, we managed to have enough money to put on that event. We've been lucky since that we've had committed funders from the universities in Medway, from a few of the local businesses, who've been repeat sponsors. We've been lucky each year that we haven't really had to go out and seek lots more sponsorship.
This year has been a different story because some of those large grants that we got from the Arts Council and the National Lottery aren't available. They're funding different things. Different priorities. The Arts Council funded us for three years, and they did say at the very beginning that they don't fund projects forever. I think they got to the end of their cycle of funding for our event. They've gone on to different projects because all these projects need support. That's meant that we've got to look for more funders, which is what we have been doing. At the moment, we are seeking ways to fill that gap. We've got new sponsors on board. It's been a difficult year for businesses with increases in tax through national insurance. The world view of diversity and equality projects has taken a dive with Donald Trump being in power and asking multinationals not to run those programs if they wanted to work with the US government, which has an effect outside of America. There's been lots of pressures on organisations, which has made it more challenging. When a Pride event finishes, we have about a month off to rest, write a report to give to our funders, and at that point we start intimating how they're to support us the next year. It's like an 11-month cycle of funding.