Trans artist’s search for a sperm donor given £64,000 of taxpayer cash
A transgender artist’s show about searching worldwide for a sperm donor has been funded with £64,000 of public money, The Telegraph can reveal.
Krishna Istha’s show First Trimester took place in November last year at London venue Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), which it was commissioned by, as well as Roundhouse and Marlborough Productions.
An Arts Council England (ACE) document shows it provided £64,000 of funding through its National Lottery Project Grant. ACE also separately funds BAC, Roundhouse and Marlborough Productions.
A teaser for First Trimester, now finished at BAC, reads: “This groundbreaking performance offers a rare opportunity to contribute to and witness queer family-making. Embark on a journey with performance artist Krishna Istha as they search for the ‘perfect’ sperm donor.”
Audiences were invited to “to witness live interviews between Krishna and 100s of participants over two weeks, in a quest to find them and their partner a sperm donor”. Istha, a filmmaker and writer for the show Sex Education, also received £30,000 from Netflix to make a documentary about First Trimester.
As of March, Istha appeared not to have found a sperm donor, having gone to New Zealand and Denmark, and spoken to 166 potential donors across 48 hours, with 42 men offering to donate sperm to Istha and the trangender artist’s partner.
Denise Fahmy, co-director of Freedom in the Arts, who won an employment tribunal claim of harassment over her gender-critical beliefs, said: “The Arts Council is now under review by government appointee, Dame Mary Archer. When you see projects like this, paid for by National Lottery players with our hard-earned cash, you’ve got to ask yourself, does this really constitute a good cause?”
‘Undermining natural family’
Lucy Marsh, of the Family Education Trust, said: “It’s horrifying that taxpayers’ money has been spent on a narcissistic individual who is trying to turn pregnancy and childbirth into a vanity project. While it’s a good thing that a child hasn’t been conceived in these circumstances, it highlights what a complete waste of money this theatre show has been.
“Babies are not accessories and they shouldn’t be commodified in this way. Children do best when raised by their biological mother and father within a loving and stable family. The Arts Council should not be using public funds to promote gender ideology and undermine the natural family.”
‘Commodification of children’
Lexi Ellingsworth, co-Founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK, said: “The Arts Council have trivialised the life of any child conceived and born through this by turning it into performance art for public consumption. Local councils have no business in an individual’s desire to become a parent and public money should be spent benefiting the community by improving or maintaining shared services.
“We see continued overreach with authorities sanctioning controversial ‘family building’ methods such as surrogacy and the further commercialisation of these children with their lives documented by their legal parents on social media. We can all watch these children’s lives begin at conception on a TV show and their parents may benefit financially from this and resulting advertising opportunities.
“There is a general move towards the commodification of children, more now than ever, with the number of parental orders increasing annually and proposed reform seeking to liberalise surrogacy. We are concerned for the direction this is taking and what this means for women and children and society as a whole.”
An Arts Council England spokesman said: “First Trimester is an entertaining show that explores questions about what it means to create a family and was originally supported through our National Lottery Project Grants programme, which invests in a broad range of performance appealing to audiences across the country. We were glad to see that Krishna Istha’s show toured to New Zealand and Denmark, and that international audiences had the chance to experience it.”
Istha was approached for comment.
