Speaker 2 (00:00.27)
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. My name is Maria Lloyd. I'm your host today and today I'm speaking with Tom Price from Reading Pride. Tom, how are you? Thank you for coming on.

Thank for having me. I'm looking forward to it. Lovely view we got out over here.

It's amazing, isn't it? Thank you so much for setting the sex. We are in the beautiful flow building today.

Yes flow in central Reading on Station Hill, so thank you to Michael and his team for letting us have this building for today.

The view is amazing. Thanks to your quick thinking, we've pulled the blind across so people can actually get a rough idea of what the view is. Yeah, I didn't realize it was this pretty.

Speaker 1 (00:34.062)
You don't realise readings are that pretty when you're on the ground floor, do you? No, you really don't!

For people unfamiliar with you and Reading Pride, could you please just give a quick introduction to yourself?

Yeah, so I'm Tom Price, as you said, I'm the Chief Engagement Officer for Reading Pride. I've been part of Reading Pride since 2019 and I took over as CEO in 2021. And Reading Pride is a charity in the base out of Reading and we organize the Reading Pride Festival every year on King's Meadow on Napier Road, but we also do a lot of other charity work through the year.

What's it going for now, Reading Pride?

So the first festival was in 2003. So this is the 22nd year of the charity and it will be the 21st Reading Pride Festival.

Speaker 2 (01:23.384)
There is a difference between Pride of Reading and Reading Pride, although I have mistakenly used them interchangeably before.

Yeah, Reading Pride is the Pride festival aimed at the LGBTQ plus community in Reading and Berkshire and the Thames Valley. The Pride of Reading and Pride of Reading Awards award and celebrate all the wonderful, amazing companies and charities that we have in Reading. that's run by a separate team, a friend of mine and a couple of other people. And they do an annual award ceremony celebrating everybody in Reading. And in fact, Reading Pride is a Pride of Reading Award winner. So we won Community Event of the Year in 2024.

Well, it's very well deserved because the amount of effort that goes into organizing Reading Pride, I mean, let's just look at my figures here just to remind myself. So the annual event has about 15,000 visitors and about 3,000 people in the parade. That's just huge. How do you go about organizing something that big?

with a lot of stress and pain. It's a small team. There's about 15 of us in the team who all have their own sort of areas. There's a team that just look after the volunteers. There's a team that do the operations stuff like booking the loos and the fences. There's couple of people that do the parades. So we've got a designated roles. Yeah, it's been growing year on year and 15,000 throughout the day at one point it was, it's quite a lot. Yeah, we've got a lovely team and we meet up regularly.

We catch up. all friends as well now, since we've got to know each other, so it makes it a lot easier.

Speaker 2 (02:51.424)
It does. And like you said, it takes a long time to organize. So as soon as it's over, you're sort of organizing the next year, aren't you?

Yeah, for some of us it's even before we finish. But yeah, we usually take two to three weeks off after the event and then some of us will go straight into it. The ones whose role is year round, we start booking fences and stages and stuff pretty much straight away because those things get booked up. But yeah, and as I we are a charity so we run throughout the year. There's always stuff going on. And we've got a new community engagement team.

we've just set up because one of the goals of the charity is to support the community throughout the year. So the team, the community engagement team with Jamie and Ash and Antoinette and Kat, they are working on projects solely to support other charities and the LGBTQ community. For example, we're doing the CEO sleep out in a couple of weeks in Abbey Ruins, so myself and a couple of other people from the prior committee are going to be doing that, supporting all the charities that involves.

You've done a lot. So how has that developed over the years? You've culminated now in a special committee to do the community. But how do you do that? Do go to different groups or what's your process or what have you found out over the years?

Yeah, I think when I came in as CEO, my predecessor Martin, who's also my best friend, he said to me, I want you to take over when I retire. So I did. And he'd really built the festival up, but the sort of the community bit throughout the year had fallen a little bit. So that was really my focus, getting the community. So we go to make your first Friday club and connect part of the connect reading.

Speaker 1 (04:32.142)
We've built relationships with Home Start and few other charities around the community, but it's really sort of just going out. That's my role as a community engagement officer is going and knowing people and talking to everybody. And it's really just getting ourselves out there in the community. We've got a massive social media presence now. I say colleague, don't like calling them colleagues. My friend, Jamie from the committee, he's really built our social media up. So we're pushing sort of 10,000 followers and he's done an amazing job.

So it's really just getting out there and getting our name out there and doing things for other charities rather than just for Reading Pride. It engages and then obviously they come back to us and help us out.

I totally agree. The collaborative approach is definitely the best way to do it. One point I wanted to pick on there, which I think is important, is how you said Martin had already established very well the parade and the event. And I think you had the processes in place, didn't you? Which I love. So the fact that that was in place meant you could concentrate on this. So I think that's a nice lesson for everyone. You need to get something in place first before you move on and do something else.

Yeah, absolutely. Martin had really built it up and he'd established key sponsors and everything like that and operational processes. We still use his event management plan. And then last year, my friend Dan stepped up from being the marketplace runner to being the chief operations officer. So luckily for me, he gets to do all the fun stuff like booking lose and I get to concentrate on the actual engagement stuff and keeping those sponsors happy really. So yeah, Dan does the...

boring bits unfortunately for him but he loves it so it's great.

Speaker 2 (06:08.014)
was going say, think you looked out in that agreement there.

I did, yeah. I get to go to all the parties and he gets the loser.

How do you fund Reading Pride? Because the corporates are in place, but it's a free event. So the money has to come from somewhere for the fences, the stage, the acts. So how do you go about doing that?

Like I mentioned before, we've got some key sponsors that come back every year. People like Unite the Union, the NHS. But there's a lot of revolves around doing fundraising events through the year. We do a regular bingo at the Blargrave Arms. And we do various other things as well. We recently ran the Half Marathon, which I think I'm still recovering from, but it was fun to do. So that raises a bit of money and it's donations from the amazing Reading community. The community in Reading, as everybody knows, is amazing anyway and so supportive.

And then we have money buckets and tappies on the day so you can donate when you come into the festival if you want to. It is a free festival so we rely on people's kindness.

Speaker 2 (07:08.758)
And you've got some merchandise now, haven't you? Is that new?

Yes, that's new for this year. So we've got some coffee cups which are made by our wonderful friends. You can find the link on the laddie page. We're looking at some more stuff coming out as well. We've just had some t-shirts made which we tested out for the Reading Half Marathon and they were fantastic. Made by our friend Belinda Olympic Workwear and they were incredible. So we're looking to get those and push those out. And at the festival itself, we're going to have some reusable water bottles and pint cups so people can keep

refilling their water on the day with their Redding Pride branded water bottles.

You tested the t-shirts out for the half marathon. That was a dangerous move. mean, for itchy halfway. Yeah.

They were amazing quality. They were kind of the sports material. But they have the big Redding Pride logo on the front of them. they were amazing.

Speaker 2 (08:01.166)
they look good you all look very you know well branded.

Yeah, we were very noticeable. Everyone kept saying you could see us from a mile away.

How do you promote Reading Pride? Now the name, I think people just recognise the name after 22 years. So do you need to promote it and how do you promote

We do need to promote it still. There's still people who get a bit confused, like you said, with the Pride of Awards and Reading Pride. We still do need to promote it. The festival is always the Saturday after the bank holiday in August. So Reading Festival is the bank holiday weekend and then the weekend after it's always Reading Pride. So it moves occasionally. Social media is our biggest thing, honestly. We've got a great social media engagement and we promote through that. But you'll see things have out and

I think we're going up on the station monitor down there at some point. It will start ramping up through June and July and through Pride Month in June.

Speaker 2 (08:55.182)
please say your banner on the screen is going to be nice and colourful. That's the thing I love about Reading Pride. It's just all the colours.

You've seen the heart logo that we're using at the moment. The big colourful heart which is the progress flag colours so we'll be using that. I'm assuming people will have seen the pride bus that goes around the running buses.

I seen the pro? I don't know. Either way, I'm going to put all of these links and photos on the landing page.

There's a bus that Reading Buses made up a couple of years ago now. It says Pride in Reading on the side of it and it's got all the Pride colours all over it. It goes round, it switches between which number it's doing but it goes round the towns.

I'm going to be hunting a bus.

Speaker 2 (09:36.994)
Remind me when you took over.

I took over 2021.

2021. So now this is your fourth one that you're doing. What have you learnt over the years?

quit.

I think it's really been about managing relationships. We've built up a strong basis of relationships with not just with the community but with people, with suppliers. So, you know, some of our suppliers have held their prices through the cost of living crisis for us, which has really helped as a free festival keeping our budgets in check. And that relationship has come over. I think that's even started for me. But they love it and they come back every year and they

Speaker 1 (10:18.858)
support us and they help us and that's the kind of thing that really helps and what I've learned is keep those people on side, get those bills paid on time.

I mean, you must have so many relationships now. How do you manage your relationships? I'm always interested to ask people this.

I don't know, I just know people and I remember people, think it's just remembering. And keeping in touch with people is really important. Constantly going to these events like First Friday Club and through Connect Reading and people like that and just keeping in touch with people and you kind of become friends rather than colleagues and that's really helpful because then when you message saying can we borrow the flow building for the afternoon, Michael says yes straight away which is lovely. Just sort of keeping in touch with people and I think because people know that

as Reading Pride, we're really keen to support other charities and support other groups. So when we do get in touch with other groups, they go, yeah, absolutely. And then they get in touch with us and say, can you volunteer for this? And we're doing a volunteer fair for Reading Volunteers Association, RVA. And they got in touch and straight away we were like, yeah, absolutely. And then we've got a key group of volunteers as well in the background who aren't part of the committee. Charlie, who runs the volunteer group, and Marie messaged them and say, we need to the volunteers. And there's always

four or five people who will pop up and say, we'll do it.

Speaker 2 (11:34.712)
think this is the nice point that if you are collaborative and you're willing to help others, you know, what goes around comes around, then those people will be there for you as well, rather than expecting things and just being out for yourself and how people can help you.

Yeah, absolutely. know, Reading Community is incredible anyway, you know, without outside of all of that. having those groups and like you say, just collaborating, it does come back and people, there's so many people from different companies who volunteer on the day for Reading Pride, picking up litter and doing all that kind of thing. And it's fantastic.

What are your long-term goals for Reading Pride? 22 years now, going strong. You've just developed the community and a little more. What are your plans going forwards?

At the moment we've kind of reached a point with the festival that we want to plateau a little bit. We're going to keep doing what works. We're not going to try and fix anything at the moment. Keep that going. Just keep the festival running and really concentrate on building our engagement with the community. We've got a survey out at the moment which you can find on the Reading Pride social media which we're trying to find out what the LGBTQ plus community want in Reading because there aren't a lot of designated spaces. I don't like using that word but what people consider LGBTQ.

plus spaces, Rising Sun Art Centre and Blargrave. So we've put that survey out to the community. Fantastic response so far. Some things have come up like board game nights. The main thing has been non-alcohol based social nights. There is a LGBTQ plus book club in Reading already, but we're really going to look at helping them to expand that a bit. But yeah, it's really finding other community groups that we maybe don't know about. We discovered halfway through our marathon training that there was a

Speaker 1 (13:16.054)
running club we didn't know about and we're going to have a community directory on our website www.redincry.co.uk which will list all the other community groups and things that people can go in and have a look if they think I fancy going running today that's this year's plan

think that's a great plan and what I like is that you said that you want to just keep it steady. You know it works, you're just going to keep that going so you can focus on the community angle. But there is that one story that I really like about the fences. Do want to tell that story? I think it's brilliant. It's a good example of how where saving money doesn't always pay off.

So when I joined in 2019, we used to put the fences up ourselves. And you know how big the site is, Kingsman, it's bigger now even. And it used to take a good eight, nine hours putting those fences up with 20, 30 volunteers and then taking them down again on the Monday. So we decided to invest in a company to come and put them up. when it was mentioned last year saying, oh, maybe we can cut the company that puts fences up, we can do it ourselves.

There wasn't a single microphone that didn't hear the word no in that meeting. We are not cutting that. Honestly, it was the best three grand we'd ever spent. Taking the fences down was weirdly worse because you having to lift it out of the blocks and it was ripping his shins apart and horrible. yeah, we put the yeah, so we do have a company that comes and puts fences up for us because we're not doing that again. Not on my watch.

That is definitely money well spent. Like I said, not forgetting the 16 hours that each of you spent doing it, but then the pain of actually doing it, plus the stress of having to do everything else for the organizing.

Speaker 1 (14:52.526)
I think it also helped with people coming to volunteer because they knew that we didn't have to do the fences so they thought, I'll turn up and volunteer then on the Monday to come and clear down because they knew that it was going to be a bit of litter picking and some tidying up.

Can individuals and businesses actually get involved in Reading Pride?

So get in touch with us. If they've got an event going on that they want us to support, then we can do it. We're currently working on maybe doing some lunch and learns with companies. So we can go in and do some media and I chats. I mean, we're not qualified professionals, but we'll do it on lived experience basis so we can talk through our own experiences. But yeah, get in touch with us through the website, readingpride.co.uk, email info at readingpride.co.uk and get in touch with me. Sponsorship donations.

donations of time, donations of money, all of it is really important to us and getting our name out there, sharing our social media posts.

Do you have any final thoughts that you'd to leave our listeners with?

Speaker 1 (15:52.728)
There's a lot coming for the community. If you are a member of the community in your LGBTQ community and you're struggling and you need bit of lived experience guidance or you want to know where there's a community group going on, please do get in touch. We're all fairly friendly people and you can usually find me out and about in town with the group. And yeah, we love to help. If you are a community group as well, get in touch as well. We'd love to speak you.

You are all a lovely team. Tom, thank you so much. I've thoroughly enjoyed this and good luck with Reading Pride this year.

Thank you very much for Saturday 30th of August.