Equity calls on Manchester City Council to ensure Pride performers are paid

With six weeks to go until Manchester Village Pride, performing arts union Equity is calling on Manchester City Council to ensure that performers out of pocket from last year’s Manchester Pride collapse get the pay due for their work.

Pride takes place from 28-31 August this year under a new Community Interest Company rooted in Manchester’s Gay Village. This follows the collapse of Manchester Pride in 2025.

The new Manchester Village Pride event will be one of the first Pride events to operate on a union agreement, after Equity and Manchester Village Pride signed a house agreement for minimum terms and conditions for performers, including stronger safeguards around payments.

But Equity is still working to secure funds for unpaid performers from last year. The union is working with more than 50 performers who were impacted by non-payment for their work at last year’s event, with individuals owed between £150 to £5,000 each, totalling over £70,000.

Despite some encouraging initial conversations with Manchester City Council, communication has ground to a halt and there has been no material progress in securing funds for the performers, many of them local Mancunians, who went without pay for their work.

According to Manchester Pride, the annual event generated over £104m for the city between 2021 and 2025. This means the City Council benefits and has a financial interest, as well as being a supporter of the event.

Equity’s North West Official, Karen Lockney, said:

In the run up to this year’s Manchester Pride, we renew our call to Bev Craig – current leader of Manchester City Council and Labour’s candidate for Mayor of Greater Manchester – to ensure performers who are owed money for last year’s Manchester Pride are paid for their work.

Despite passing a motion in November last year to ‘work constructively’ with Equity, Manchester City Council are yet to update us on how to recoup money owed to performers.

We also met with Bev Craig in November and pushed for a follow up meeting with deputy leader Garry Bridges in February, but have not received any response to subsequent requests for information. There has also not been any update on our applications to suggested funds.

While it is positive that Manchester City Council champions Pride – especially when such events are under threat from Reform councils elsewhere in the country – this means little unless there is meaningful action to support the event’s workers, without whom Pride could not take place.

Featured image via the Canary