unLock – Round 2
This award has now closed
up to £10,000
(a maximum of 1 award in Round 2)
Over the years, Unlimited made increasingly ambitious projects in collaboration with multiple partners across many sectors. As just one example…
…Future Bodies (2018) was a creative collaboration with RashDash that was co-produced by HOME and supported by the Wellcome Trust as well as Arts Council England. As well as a regular team of incredible stage, lighting and video designers (including Rhys Jarman, Joshua Pharo and Sarah Readman) we worked with deaf performers and creatives to incorporate BSL and ‘creative captioning’. Research partners included psychologist Professor Barbara Sahakian from the University of Cambridge, Dr Tim Constandinou from Imperial College London’s Next Generation Neural Interfaces Lab and Dr Anders Sandberg from Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford Unversity. Among MANY others.
One of the reasons we were able to make new work at this scale was because, as an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, we were able to bring a level of ‘in kind’ support and cash that unlocked support from other (often bigger) partners.
This award is for mid-career artists working within an arts producing organisation (that is not an NPO) to unLock further support and/or enhance an ambitious project that is ready for final production.
Please do not apply for support for projects that are in the early stages of a development process or do not have any other confirmed co-producing partners.
In honour of Unlimited’s long standing work in sci-art collaborations, we will be prioritising projects engaging in scientific themes with institutions or researchers as key partners.
“Unlimited have been pioneers in combining theatre and science, fearlessly going where few other companies have gone before in exploring the metaphysical and everyday impact of scientific advances on our lives” Lyn Gardner in The Guardian
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IMPORTANT NOTE:
– this award is to support ‘creation’ costs only i.e. production and rehearsal costs. Please do not include any touring costs in your submitted budget.
– the amount applied for from the unLock fund should not make up more than 25% of the total ‘creation’ costs of your project budget: if you are applying for the full £10,000 then the total project expenditure for rehearsals and initial production should be a minimum of £40,000.
Successful awards must be spent and accounted for by the end of December 2025.
Applications open on Monday 2 September. The deadline to submit an application is midnight Monday 30 September 2024.
Please read our Applicant Guidance before submitting your application. This includes our eligibility criteria and a copy of the application questions.
Download the guidance here: Applicant Guidance
Or listen to the audio version:
If you have a question, please check our FAQs (last updated 9 September 2024). If you’d still like to contact us, you’ll find details at the bottom of the document.
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Outcome
In Round 2, we awarded the unLock grant to Polite Rebellion.
Polite Rebellion (formally The Grief Series) is a disabled–led company based in Leeds, led by Artistic Director Ellie Harrison, Matt Rogers, Bethany Wells and Jen Watts along with a wider team of regular collaborators.
Polite Rebellion is radically gentle. Playfully subversive. In an age of relentless noise it dares to be boldly quiet. It needs to be both beautiful and useful.
They create spaces to listen to untold stories and amplify people’s voices. They see creating beautiful spaces as being an emotional accessibility ramp into difficult conversations that bear witness to people’s lived experiences. They push back against the hurry sickness of contemporary culture to go slow, notice the detail and recognise that rest can be an act of protest.
unLock helped support their new project Iconic Fatigue which opened at Sunny Bank Mills in December 2025. Find out more on their website: https://www.politerebellion.co.uk/currentprojects/iconicfatigue