Arts opportunities

Arts opportunities

* Three £150 bursaries are available from the Bush Theatre for trans artists. No specific outcome is required for applications, which could be anything from an artistic piece, a community event, or paying for your own rest as a form of protest.

* Autograph is offering emerging creatives a paid opportunity to develop and deliver a live event at its London  gallery on the themes of collaboration, identity and belonging across generations. Apply by 26 May.

* Autograph also has two openings for a project bringing together local grassroots communities and artists from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds to explore issues of identity and belonging – challenging exclusion and inequality in the arts, and a freelance project evaluator (2 June).

* As Yet Unscene is a year-round programme initiative to find and develop scripts in early stages of development. It includes workshops, rehearsed readings and fully-rehearsed performances of longer extracts. Details here

* Poets — submissions are invited for the PEN Heaney Prize 2025. The deadline is 31 May for collections published between 1 January and 30 June this year; for collections published between 1 July and 31 December the submission window is 1 July–31 August 2025.

* Interested in taking a show to this year’s Camden Fringe?  Programming is underway. Apply here. 

* Southwark Playhouse invites actors aged 19-25 living in Southwark or Lambeth who have some performing experience but no significant training or professional employment to rehearse a new production  and perform onstage at the Playhouse.

* Tamasha Tales is a new series of commissioned short pieces that aims to celebrate global storytelling and cultural intersectionality through artist collaboration. Tamasha Theatre is looking for two artists from any Global Majority background with 5-10 years of experience) with an established body of work.

* The Royal Court Theatre has launched The Writers’ Card, part of its programme of helping playwrights. It offers mentoring, networking, funding opportunities, events, and use of resources in the building, subsidised meals and free script printing. For more information,  visit https://royalcourttheatre.com/playwriting 

* The Royal Court has also launched a London-wide playwrights award for 13-18-year-olds.

* Theatre in the Pound: The Cockpit Theatre’s monthly scratch night enables performers to try out 10-15 minutes of new work + a short Q&A. Also classes, workshops, readings, advice sessions, support & performance opportunities.

* Papatango hopes its new Playwrights’ Studio will be a home for playwrights of all levels of experience. It aims to be  a joined-up, sustained writing package with a variety of free advantages, including digital workshops, one-to-one,  and thousands of pounds in open-access funding.

* Riverside Studios is offering a regular drop-in playwriting group:  “Whether you’re working on a script and want creative inspiration, you're intrigued by the idea of writing a play, or simply want a creative outlet, these monthly meet-ups are informal, fun and open to everyone.” It has also launched songwriting sessions.

* London is to get a memorial to slave trade victims in Docklands. “It is vital that our public spaces reflect the heritage of our great city - in all its diversity and complexity,” said Mayor Sadiq Khan. Public consultation will be followed by a competition for the artist. Unveiling is scheduled for 2026.

* Citizens of the World, a choir that grew out of the Calais “Jungle” and has 50 members from 30 countries, welcomes newcomers. It rehearses on Wednesday evenings. Details on the website

Thanks to volunteer Daniel Nelson (editor of Eventslondon.org) for compiling this list.