The company runs a range of events and training activities aimed at supporting writers' artistic development, with a specific focus on queer-identifying writers and those of marginalised genders, including those who identify as trans, genderqueer, genderfluid or non-binary. During 2023, the company's activities benefited the community in the following ways: Writers were able to access a supportive, nationwide online community, with sharing of relevant artistic opportunities and options to access peer connection and mentoring, advice and support. We continued to support our digital community space on Discord to maximise the accessibility of these community aspects. In January 2024 we continued our writing series that takes place every day in January called Howling. This was well received again this year, with new prompts and guides supplied by established writers in the For Books’ Sake community. We received feedback that the weekly online drop in sessions we ran as part of Howling in 2022 were unnecessary and so opted not to run those again for 2024, and this worked as a more sustainable model. Our established They//Us group specifically for trans, genderfluid gender non-conforming and agender writers held a new term and cohort from February 2024 lead by Crow Rudd, the programme featured regular writing and social workshops which were held entirely online, in response to feedback from the They//Us members and community. Our Witch Season eZine got promoted in Spring 2024 featuring writing from themed events that took place in October 2023, in the form of four workshops lead by members of the For Books’ Sake community. These were well received by our community who welcome opportunities to be published, but provided no income stream for FBS. We worked internally on funding strategies since new directors took over in 2021, with very little success at gaining external funding needed to make For Books’ Sake more sustainable and offer fair payment amongst rising cost of living to our dedicated workshop leaders and writers. This is really important to our leadership team who have worked on an entirely voluntary basis but is no longer sustainable. Despite moving to a festival/touring model That’s What We Said, our spoken word cabaret style performance event, it wasn’t successful in any applications to appear at literature festivals in the UK for 2024. Instead we focused our efforts on a final live event in November to provide a space for our audiences and community to say goodbye to For Books’ Sake in its current form. Held in Manchester, the birthplace of For Books’ Sake, we celebrated with a lineup of spoken word artists who have been a huge part of the community throughout.

The company's stakeholders are the marginalised writers who make up our community, along with members of the wider arts, literature and spoken word communities. The directors have been participating members of these communities for many years and have many members of these communities in their personal and professional networks. Additionally, the company has a regular digital newsletter and daily-updated social media platforms, through which stakeholders can give feedback on the company's activities and share their suggestions of ideas for future activities which would most support their ongoing creative development and confidence. The few events and activity we held in 2024 were a great opportunity for us to gather feedback from our stakeholders, and we collect that feedback at each event to inform our activity going forward. With huge sadness we made a statement public this year that we were going to close For Books’ Sake, and it was met with a mammoth outpouring of support for our organisation. It’s extremely sad that the same outcome has and will befall many other small community focussed organisations on the fringes of mainstream cultural activity in the UK unless something drastically changes in the funding landscape. Specific community consultation has taken place on an ongoing basis with the aim of better including and representing the trans and non-binary members of our community. Our offering has adapted and changed this year in collaboration with our regular support group and a second regular group dedicated to those writers began. Going forward we are exploring funding and partnership options with a view to further developing this aspect of our work. The community has always been at the centre of For Books’ Sake and extremely generous with their support, it was the funding landscape that didn’t work for our organisation, not the people!

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration