Taxpayers fund working-class history events
DRAG queen events, homelessness and pigeon racing are among the projects to be handed taxpayer funding to mark Britain’s working-class history.
Historic England has allocated grants to 56 community-led projects over the next two years that it says are designed to “celebrate working-class histories”.
They include funding for community workshops to discuss the history of drag in the “Pink Triangle”, the gay village area of Newcastle, including “Musical hall ‘dandy’/’fop’ performers and 20th-century drag in working men’s clubs”.
It will be led by volunteers in the LGBT+ Northern Social Group, which has around 2,600 members and will urge attendees to create live performances that subvert traditional gender presentations.
Another initiative will “remember and memorialise... the ephemeral and neglected heritage” of homeless people who lived in Cardboard City, a camp constructed using hundreds of cardboard boxes between Waterloo Station and the South Bank in central London in the 1980s and 1990s. Artists will speak to those who lived there, many of whom have since fallen ill or have died.
Meanwhile, pigeon breeders, otherwise known as fanciers, will be celebrated in a village trail and public event in Skinningrove, North Yorks, organised by Joanne Coates, a local artist. “Pigeon racing is a sport with deep roots in traditional industrial working-class communities like Skinningrove,” Historic England said.
Each project will receive between £6,800 and £25,000 from an £875,000 pot of public money.
More than 380 applications applied for this round of Historic England’s Everyday Heritage Grant programme.