The Marra Project celebrates its first anniversary

The Marra Project has been delivering community-focussed events for a year now, and we are taking the time to celebrate our achievements.

Since December 2024, The Marra Project has:

• Worked with 16 volunteers
• Reached over 700 attendees
• Co-created a local online community with over 100 queer people
• Contracted 22 freelancers
• Collaborated with 6 local organisations
• Delivered 33 events

Our first year included us beginning to support TransCraft, the release of Pride of Place: Queer Spaces of County Durham, and partnerships with BookWyrm and Palace Green Library. Now, we are proud to be delivering four regular events in Durham, alongside pop-ups such as our Trans Day of Visibility event in March 2025. Here’s a round-up of what’s happened this year:

Queer Life Drawing

Queer Life Drawing was the first event series that The Marra Project ran this year, with 13 sessions featuring exclusively queer models from around the world. Our sessions are focussed on queering the idea of life drawing, with many of our models bringing props, and celebrating their queerness unaplogetically. We have worked with six QTIBIPOC models as part of out commitment to being an anti-racist organisation, which we aim to increase into our second year. Our sessions have reached artists from 20 different countries, with a total of 187 attendees across all of our sessions.

TransCraft

TransCraft has grown massively since we started supporting the monthly craft night for trans, gender non-conforming, and queer people. We now regularly have 25 people attend every month. After listening to our community, we have moved to a larger venue to accommodate this growth.

“TransCraft for me has been an excellent way to build community and make friends and has a had a definite positive effect on my mental health and sense of wellbeing.” – TransCraft attendee

Life Drawing at Palace Green

Our monthly in-person life drawing class has had over 100 attendees across 10 sessions this year. It has been wonderful to start this partnership with Palace Green Library and to have their support to run this event. Our Director also enjoyed the opportunity to model for a class in November 2025.

Transoup

Partnering with Action for Trans Health Durham, and supporting Transoup has been the highlight of the year at The Marra Project. We have really enjoyed supporting this event, which has thus far run 3 times, reaching 59 attendees.

Trans Day of Visibility March 2025

We have also run some one-off events, including our Trans Day of Visibility at One Strawberry Lane, which saw The Marra Project work with One Strawberry Lane, BookWyrm, and Newcastle Queer Art Club to produce a one-day event to celebrate trans identities.

Going the Extra Miles July 2025

We raised £700 for Miles Nelson’s gender affirming care by running an art auction in July 2025. We had 33 lots donated by artists from across the UK, all to raise funds to support Miles accessing HRT. We are delighted that his goal has been met, after lots of support from the community!

One year from founding, we are delighted to be reaching so many people across County Durham. We look forward to what the next year will bring, and hope to sustain our current practice, whilst looking for avenues of potential growth.