Funding

Summary

We won't accept funding or partnerships from companies involved in fossil fuels, weapons, genocide, exploitation or oppression. We follow the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement’s guidelines and aim to be open about how we’re funded.

In 2025, we’re not taking on new projects or sponsorships while we review our internal processes. We now rely on public donations and welcome respectful conversations about our approach.

For more details on our approach, see below.

Our approach to funding and sponsorship

In this statement, we outline our revised approach for working with funders, sponsors and future organisations, as well as contextualising our journey in reaching this decision going forward and outlining ongoing process developments. 

besea.n has always been proud to be a grassroots organisation, with a group of core team volunteers who all have work and responsibilities separate from the organisation. Since our founding in 2020, we have grown and shifted as a group, learning through mistakes, successes and critical connections with many other individuals and organisations.

After ESEA Heritage Month 2024, we finally decided to take a break, for the first time since our inception. It became clear to us that we needed to rethink our mission, strategy and how we operate, to ensure continued alignment with our evolving core values and beliefs both as an organisation, and as individuals. Many other grassroots organisers will understand the challenges of managing constant projects and activities alongside the wider need to develop robust strategies for the short and long term. At our February 2025 AGM, we decided to pull back on external activities and focus on an internal restructure. It had also become clear that many of us were still struggling with grief and emotional burnout after a difficult year, and we needed an extended break from organising.

The below will be reviewed on a rolling basis to ensure that it reflects who we are and how we want to operate as an organisation.

We believe that community spaces for ESEA people should not come at the expense of the liberation of oppressed peoples, workers’ rights, Queer liberation, Disability justice or our planet. We call for divestment from fossil fuels and genocide, occupation and apartheid across the arts and cultural sectors, although we recognise that our communities reach across many other spaces and industries.

In 2024, we were made aware of the investments of a sponsor for our flagship ESEAHM event in Israeli companies. This prompted an investigation of the partnership, a rejection of the sponsorship from us, and a commitment to formalise our stance on funding, our model, core beliefs and the realistic actions we can take as a small collective of volunteers. We have rejected sponsorship and partnerships in the past, but not as part of any standardised framework or protocol.

Since the sponsorship rejection in September 2024, to inform our decisions on how we express solidarity with Palestinians, we have referred to the guidelines of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and aligned our approach with the PACBI, The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. In addition, we defer to our own position on fossil fuels and arms industries, in recognition that resistance struggles in various spaces are intrinsically linked. The complicity of certain corporations, institutions and organisations in Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights, as stipulated by international law, is part of the way in which the occupation has been normalised; through cultural partnerships, economic investments and diplomacy. This normalisation weakens the global movement for Palestinian liberation.

We will not accept sponsorship nor invitations to partner from any of the following:

  • Fossil fuels companies or companies that directly facilitate environmental destruction

  • Arms companies or companies that facilitate or are affiliated with the arms trade

  • Companies on the BDS list or companies based in Israel

  • Academic and cultural institutions associated with or working with the Israeli state, or which are complicit in Israel’s occupation of Palestine

  • Projects that normalise the occupation of Palestine, the genocide in Gaza, or any other genocides worldwide

  • Companies or institutions directly involved in the dispossession and displacement of oppressed and marginalised groups worldwide. This includes Indigenous and Global Majority people, migrants, Disabled people and LGBTQIA+ people

  • Private prisons, detention centres, or entities profiting from carceral systems.

In addition to sponsorships, wherever possible in our organising work, we aim to avoid purchasing from pressure targets of the BDS movement. This includes things like refreshments for events, accommodation, website hosting, financial management, etc.

We do also recognise the challenges for us as a small, grassroots organisation trying to operate within a capitalist, globalised environment. We are trying to strike a balance of having to utilise certain technologies (such as search engines, computers, software) to carry out our operations, against support for targeted boycotts where they can have the most impact.

How is besea.n funded?

In the past, besea.n has accepted payment from various organisations, institutions and corporations in exchange for services such as workshop facilitation and speaking events. While we have declined many opportunities that directly contravened our views on certain issues, such as fossil fuels, we have accepted payments in the past from private companies that will likely have ethical implications that do not align with our latest pledge. We have generally used this money to fund free community events, an exception being our partnership with the British Library in 2023, which was ticketed, with profits being used for team travel costs, and payment and travel for external speakers. In addition, we have previously received funding from the National Lottery Fund through our partnership with Protection Approaches to deliver active bystander training, as well as funding from the Mayor of London, the Lush Charity Pot, and the Network for Social Change. We also benefited from a significant donation from the Stop ESEA Hate fundraiser that was organised in 2021, which was paid out across 2022 and 2023. Since September 2024, all income streams have been through public donations.

What we hope to see

We are sharing this information in the hope of contributing to a new standard in our organising spaces, as many small groups and organisations will undoubtedly face similar pressures in the future, particularly as arts and culture funding faces further cuts. We hope to encourage others to participate in a culture of transparency and openness around decision-making and funding processes in this space. With regards to previous partnerships, we are actively in discussion with our contacts in those organisations to request conversations around future divestment from harmful industries and systems of oppression.

Our collective does not have a hierarchy, or any full time staff, so it is difficult for us to apply for restricted grants, as we do not have the capacity to meet the strict planning, reporting and project management requirements that are often involved. We are aware that many grassroots organisations diverge on their approach to corporate funding, and we are working to establish a consensus on how we approach these partnerships, if at all, in the future.

Actions currently in progress:

  • We are reviewing our financial model, including how and when we accept funding, where we keep our finances, and how we interact with state and corporate parties.

  • We are working to develop a framework for our decision-making and due diligence. Because we are actively resisting the pressures of hyper-productivity in our circles that often lead to burnout, we are trying to do this slowly and carefully, though the importance of this work is not diminished for us. We are a group of volunteers with very little free time, and we want to make our policies robust and sustainable in the long term.

  • In the meantime, to avoid rushed decision-making, we are not accepting any projects or sponsorship in 2025. We have decided to focus this year on redistribution of funds, supporting other events, and sustaining the network we have built.

As a small team, we accept that mistakes can occur or that a lack of financial transparency in a lot of partnerships means that information can be hard to surface. Wherever new information arises that compromises our pledge, we will take appropriate action to course correct and ensure that our actions align with the commitments we have outlined. This may at times mean that events or programmes cannot go ahead.

Finally, we believe that community members have the power and responsibility to support each other in accountability, resource and knowledge sharing as we continue to develop new ways of growing and organising together. Refusing sponsorships as a small organisation can be scary, but we believe in the supportive capacity of the communities we hope to have helped to nurture, and we encourage other collectives, organisations and individuals to join us in these considerations. Our door remains open for respectful, constructive engagements on this topic; if you would like to request a meeting, please drop us an email hello@besean.co.uk, since we don’t actively monitor social media DMs or comments.

Last reviewed: June 2025