***Day 4 Update***

We've hit the initial target! We're so overwhelmed by everyone's generous support.

It's been a huge confidence boost, things feel more possible now...

For such a long time we've not known how to ask for help, and we finally found a way and our communities have responded with such care. It renews hope.

Hiring help in for everyday things will make the burden a lot lighter. It really is just the tip of the iceberg though, so we're hoping to hit £5k in order to contribute towards:

- Therapy

- Sustainability advice for our NGO

- Keeping an assistant going into autumn

- Paying off credit card interest for basics (food/bills)

- A rainy day pot for if things get worse

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Hello friends, comrades, collaborates, schemers and dreamers...

Another friend crisis. Two this time. Wooh!

Me, Alex Etchart (aka Owl) and my best friend Siobhán Knox have been working full time doing community arts work for years now. We're really proud of what we do and want to keep doing it. We have an NGO and modest funding but we just about scrape by on minimum wage. However we just did it again, we produced a really big project, burned ourselves out, and now are tightrope walking the consequences. I am in serious unexpected personal debt and Siobhán is having to support family, continue healing from losing her mother to suicide and also support me, when she has no spoons to give. We love each other dearly and we support each other all we can, but right now it's like two haggered crones trying to help each other walk down the stairs, each as likely to tumble and break some bones. We really need support from outside.

That's why we're trying to raise some money to give someone a summer job working two days a week as a personal assistant to both of us to help us cope. We just need support with shopping to NHS appointments to managing HMRC debts to pet insurance claims to all the things that end up being postponed because life is happening. We're currently trying to write and edit some marginalised-led screenwriting to a deadline but it's so hard to be creative when dealing with debt, admin, endless to do lists all while burnt out. We've both just started to have a regular social life for the first time in years, and to get our health routines up and running, so being able to keep those going will be a mental health lifeline.

It's really hard to ask for support when so many people are facing so much shit right now. But we hope a lot of our friends know how much we've prioritised the intersectional marginalised communities we are part of, for so many years now, and might consider giving a little to lighten the burden during this rough patch. We especially want to keep supporting Sex Worker's Opera and avoid asking them to delay their invoices or to give back money we pay them for their precious creativity. So we're asking for support from further afield.

Finally, if you or someone you know needs a summer job and thinks they could give 2 days a week in person plus a check-in every morning for £1,000/mo which is roughly 20hrs/wk at £11.50 an hour then by all means leave a message.

All our energy is going to putting our fires and staying on top of the basics. We want to use any spare capacity to help us build resilience, making medium term plans, look into counselling, getting back on benefits if possible, find ways to avoid getting to crisis point again. We are both multiply marginalised while supporting our own communities but have rarely taken space for ourselves, and holding our communities through shit while facing the same shit takes its toll.

Hate to be the ones asking.

Thanks for listening.

Lots of love and solidarity.

Current projects:

What we've been doing the last few years:

SWO in Amsterdam

SWO Audience reactions

Alex singing