Arts opportunities

Arts opportunities

Autograph is offering £312 for successful pitches for 600-1,000 word texts about how the photography studio can be a space to explore expression and identity. Deadline: 6 January

* Autograph is also offering £1,000 to creative practitioners with less than three years experience to make their event happen at its London gallery. There’s a 6 January deadline for applications.

* The stage is yours: Symposium in east London is an open platform for creativity and for people to exchange creative culture and share work in progress or finished material; a place to be creatively inspired and a spot to do something.

* Training and development opportunity for “an individual passionate about theatre and costume, from a refugee or asylum-seeking background”. You’ll work with Good Chance on its new production, Kyoto, coming to London's West End in the new year. The costume trainee will work with the costume designer and the wardrobe team from rehearsals through to the opening. Details here

* Entries are open for the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting 2025 – submissions close at 6pm on 9 January.

* Springboard is a free part-time training programme that aims to find, shape, inspire, champion and sustain the next generation of performers from under-represented backgrounds in west London.

* New Diorama's open Artist Surgeries are back. Topics can be anything where a 20-minute chat with the theatre’s team might genuinely help or provide a useful sounding board. Next date is 6 December.

* The Bill Cashmore Award offers a paid opportunity for two new one-act plays to be professionally produced at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. Applications close on 22 December

Springboard is a free part-time training programme that aims to find, shape, inspire, champion and sustain the next generation of performers from under-represented backgrounds in west London.

* Entries are open for the 2025 Open City Documentary Festival in London on 6–11 May. The festival “seeks to nurture experimentation within the expanded field of non-fiction cinema, from artists’ moving image to documentary, the essay film, audio and cross-media works.” Deadline for entries is 13 December.

* The Royal Court Theatre has launched The Writers’ Card, part of its programme of helping playwrights at every stage of their career. It offers mentoring, networking, funding opportunities, events, and use of resources in the building, such as the library, subsidised meals and free script printing. For more information on the Card, full details of the writer support offer and how writers can sign up to the free membership, visit https://royalcourttheatre.com/playwriting/

* Theatre in the Pound: The Cockpit Theatre’s monthly scratch night enables performers to try out 10-15 minutes of new work, plus a short Q&A.

* The Arcola Theatre is recruiting participants to join its new community theatre group for adults who have experience of forced migration and being a refugee. No experience needed, just an interest to work with others in a creative way to explore performance, poetry and movement. Weekly free sessions every Monday evening. Facilitators speak in English, Arabic and French.

* The 15th Open City Documentary Festival in London next May invites entries: deadline: 13 December.

* Are you a writer, director, producer or theatre-maker with a piece of new writing that you’d like to put in front of an audience? This is the place.

* Papatango has launched a digital playwriting course, with tips and insights from a host of top artists.

* 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 meetups are informal, fun and open to everyone.”

* Artists’ alert: London is to get a memorial to slave trade victims, at West India Quay 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. City Hall will allocate £500,000 and other contributions will be sought. A 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 now has 50 members from 30 countries, says it welcomes new members (and bookings!). It rehearses in Blackheath in south-east London on Wednesday evenings. Details on the website

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