Pride Spotlight: Tony Ereira on the importance of sharing opportunity for underrepresented creatives

Celebrating Pride and the LGBTQIA+ community is an all-year-round commitment, so we’ve curated a special spotlight series where we chat with the visionary creatives in our far-reaching communities, to learn more about what they do, why they do it, and what value Pride holds for them.

We sat down with Tony Ereira (he/him), the founder and director of the Leeds-based company, Come Play With Me. Set up almost ten years ago, Come Play With Me is a music development organisation whose mission in life is to support underrepresented and marginalised communities in the music industry, and help them build sustainable careers in music. Tony shares his love for Prince, the importance of sharing power when you have it, and demonstrates why the Creative Industries need more organisations like Come Play With Me.

When did you first realise you wanted to work in the Creative Industries, and what were the driving factors to making it a reality? 

TE: I spent most of my life working in the world of finance until I realised, I didn’t particularly enjoy the politics of it, and I didn’t really align with the people around me. But I learned lots of good transferable skills. I’ve always loved music; I’ve always loved the arts. So, I set up a record label many years ago and it was through that which I became more involved with the music industry, and I wanted to see how I could help others get stuck into it. I’ve never looked back since – I love it.

How do you, or how does Come Play With Me, champion Pride in the work you do?

Come Play With Me (CPWM) is a queer-led organisation, and we champion all underrepresented communities in music including women, gender minorities, global majorities, and LGBTQIA+ people, so championing Pride is intrinsic to our work; it’s at the heart of everything we do. I think for a lot of companies, EDI is a bit of a tick-box exercise or something that sits as an aside to their work, but for us, it permeates our entire business operations. Originally, CPWM started out by supporting all musicians and emerging artists in music. But it became clear that if you were a straight, white cis-gendered man, you had a few more opportunities than if you weren’t. So, we started catering to other communities through our work instead; really trying to understand not only what it means to exist in a certain community, but also what it means to struggle to access opportunities or training because of that. We also really try to bring allies into the work we put out because we care about allyship so we think ‘How can allies of the LGBTQIA+ community support this project’, for example.

The Come Play With Me team

What value do you believe diversity, inclusion and representation to bring to the Cultural and Creative Industries?

I believe they are essential for the creative sector. We, as in those who work across the sector, not just the music industry, should be representing all the people who consume music or theatre or dance or film, and it’s not very inclusive if all you see in what you consume is people representing older, straight, white, middle-aged blokes – people that look like me actually! There are certainly voices that aren’t platformed as much as others, and it’s important that we hear those voices because not everybody looks the same or has the same story. CPWM has always been centred in Leeds and effectively, emerged out of guitar music at first. But as the company has evolved, we’ve deliberately chosen to work with people from all different genres, and with that, we’ve established a wide representation of artists and sounds. We even support people beyond Leeds because of the variety of outlets we have – we’re a record label, we host a podcast, we publish a magazine, we do LGBTQIA+ inclusion training – we do all sorts of things, and because of this I think people access us at different points and see us [CPWM] as different entities depending on their experience. Because of this, the organisation has a range of audiences each bringing with it a different community, which is really lovely.

Give a shoutout to an LGBTQIA+ creative or organisation that makes a difference in the world. 

There are so many brilliant LGBTQIA+ professionals that we work with who spring to mind. John Shoretell who is the EDI Manager at the Musicians Union does some amazing work. We work with a brilliant trans activist called Saskia Menendez; she’s done some wonderful stuff as a musician and is constantly shouting about trans rights. We’ve worked with so many other talented, trans musicians too, such as Aries Houlihan and Asher Hoang. I think organisationally, one that springs to mind is HE.SHE.THEY. who organise queer club nights. They deliver work globally and create those spaces for the LGBTQIA+ community all around the world, so I think they’re quite an exciting one.

The official theme for Pride 2024 is ‘Reflect. Empower. Unite.’ What does this evoke for you? 

I really like these three words. In terms of reflecting, we talked a little bit before about reflecting resonant stories back to people in the communities that we stand with and support. Unite – there’s the obvious thing of uniting within our [LGBTQIA+] community. I truly dislike some people’s desire to pull away LGB communities from the trans community. I think we all need to be working together, and uniting together, to create the change we want. And empower – I’m a big believer that when you get power, you should give it away. We have a programme called Come Platform Me and through this, we strive to give voice to those who might not usually receive it. The programme trains promoters, sound engineers, and in the future will be accommodating songwriters too, and we give the ‘stage’ to people who don’t always get it, and we say, ‘You take it, this is your space’.

How does being part of the Creative UK network benefit you? 

I think in the arts, we all tend to sit in silos a bit. I feel like I know what’s good practice in music, and I know what’s going on across the UK [in music]. But what I love about Creative UK is the ability you give me to collaborate with other creative industries. I’ve had some really energising conversations with people who exist and work in different art forms. A good example of this is the mentor I’ve just been paired with, Cath Ellington, who’s in the world of radio; we’ve had some brilliant conversations so far and she’s taught me a lot about radio production, helping me to understand the good stuff that’s happening in the industry and how I can take advantage of that with CPWM.

What we’re trying to do at our organisation is quite challenging and it saddens me a bit to think that if there’s good work being done in radio or theatre or film and TV, why are we not talking to each other?

What has been your experience so far on the West Yorkshire Create Growth Programme?

I’ve only been to a couple of sessions [on the programme] so far, but it’s been really positive. We went along to the Climb24 conference last month with the West Yorkshire team which was exciting. I’m trying to understand more about social impact investing for the benefit of CPWM, so it was a great opportunity to absorb some more knowledge and of course chat to lots of other creatives and investors. I’m looking forward to seeing what else the West Yorkshire Create Growth Programme has in store for us.

What’s your favourite project or campaign that you’ve worked on at Come Play With Me?

That’s really hard. It’s like choosing your favourite child, isn’t it? We did a couple of things in lockdown which I was really moved by. One of them was an online event with Mykki Blanco and various others, and the title was deliberately provocative: Should I market myself as a queer artist… or keep it quiet? Of course, we know the answer, but it generated a really good conversation. Off the back of that, we got Amy Lamé (London’s Night Czar) to interview John Grant, and that was a really, wonderful, open conversation to listen in on.

It’s 2040. What do you think the Creative Industries look like in the UK? 

I’m not naive enough to think that this is going to happen but looking into my crystal ball for 2040, it’d be wonderful if we didn’t need to talk about EDI practices, and instead, they were just a given. I also think it would be really wonderful if musicians we work with are able to tour freely around Europe like they used to be able to do several years ago; I’m hoping that’s something on the new Government’s agenda. There needs to be more appreciation of grassroots music in the future as well. In other countries it is much more valued however I think here [in the UK] there’s a lot more attention given to the big names – who I know we are lucky to have – but it saddens me to know some people don’t bat an eyelid paying £120+ for an established artist, yet balk at paying a fiver to see an emerging artist. So, I’d like to see a bit more of a level playing field for all. There’s a way of empowering the creatives that are lower down to develop their careers and that is often misunderstood. I’ve got a lot of faith in Lisa Nandy (Labour’s new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport) so let’s see what she can do.

What does the word ‘creativity’ mean to you?  

To me it means fun. Innovation. Creativity is often a way of coming up with solutions to solve or tackle some of the systemic problems that we know exist.

What’s one creative idea/product/production that has impacted your life? 

When I first read this question, I was thinking of practical things like my oat milk maker, but it’s a creative individual who has impacted me most. I’ve always been the biggest Prince fan, and I remember 12-year-old me listening to Prince and hearing things in his lyrics like ‘Am I black or white?’ and ‘Am I straight or gay?’ and I found that so inspiring. That through art you can create those conversations to explore identity. Prince went on to do lots of gender-fluid stuff with his work; he recorded an album as a female alter ego as one example. So yeah, Prince is the answer to that one for me.

You’re having dinner with one creative icon of your choice – who are you inviting?  

It’s got to be Prince, hasn’t it? My team laugh at me because I always shoe-horn Prince into the conversation somehow. I’ve seen him 20 times in my lifetime, and I’ve been lucky enough to go along to some really little gigs like at Café de Paris London and Bagleys Warehouse [Kings Cross]. He was an unbelievable performer. I feel like the world dimmed a little bit when he died. I’ve worked with some amazing musicians, and of course, there are lots of amazing musicians left, but I don’t think there’s anyone quite like Prince.

There is this one show [of his] that really sticks in my mind. He did 21 nights at the O2 Arena in London, and he did a little after show which you paid a tenner for. His band would play, and Prince would play if he was up for it. It was one o’clock in the morning and we were standing around at the after-show waiting to see what would happen. Then a woman walked out on stage. It was Amy Winehouse. Then someone else walked out with a guitar and it was Prince, and Amy sang ‘Love Is A Losing Game’ with Prince playing backing guitar. I remember thinking in that moment ‘Right this is it. It doesn’t get any better than this’.

Come Play With Me is currently accepting applications for Intro to Live Sound Engineering Round 5, via their Come Platform Me programme. Apply here