unAwards Recipients 2024

When we became a grant-giving organisation, we committed to giving £25,000 directly to artists.

We had over 50 applications for our 3 different awards, which meant that figuring out our recipients was no mean feat. We had a creative council of artists, producers and arts leaders who read the applications and ultimately determined who we were going to fund. So, without further ado, here are our 2024 unAwards recipients!

Starting Out (grants up to £2,500)

  Part of the Main champion emerging artists & create new writing that is political, provocative, and accessible. They were a Pleasance London Associate Company 20222024, a Drayton Arms Resident Company 20182019, and winners of VAULT Festivals Excellence in Accessibility Award 2023. Their work has been nominated for Off West End Awards three times, shortlisted for the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence, & finalist for the LET Award.

Part of the Main are using their Starting Out fund to purchase their own audio description equipment to further the accessibility for their work for blind and visually impaired audiences.

 

 

Hidden Keileon  is a multidisciplinary artistled collective. As part of the community of migrant and queer people, they work with their community to imagine futures with justice and freedom for all, by dreaming up and leading multidisciplinary, lifeaffirming cultural projects.

Hidden Keileon are using their funding to buy technical equipment to develop their creative practice and make themselves more financially sustainable.

unLab (grants up to £5,000)

Mad Friday Productions is a vibrant arts collective born in the heart of Doncaster. Founded in 2021 by coartistic directors Danielle Phillips & Lauren Townsend, childhood friends united by a passion for championing Yorkshirebased artists and narratives.

Polite Rebellion (formally The Grief Series) is a disabledled 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 peoples voices. They see creating beautiful spaces as being an emotional accessibility ramp into difficult conversations that bear witness to peoples 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 (Grant up to £10,000)

Ransack Theatre are an awardwinning, Manchesterbased company formed in 2014 by friends who graduated together. They make theatre that is storyled, physically dynamic, and curious about space. They work in close collaboration with a rotating team of creative professionals to originate artistically bold and technically inventive theatre, treading the line between art and entertainment. Our core team has always involved company founders Ali Michael (performer/producer), Piers Black (director/writer) and, since 2017, ChiSan Howard (movement director and Resident Associate Artist).
They started life by making siteresponsive work in abandoned buildings in Manchester. Nearly ten years later, Ransack has devised, written, reworked, and dramaturged numerous projects, and while they have left the abandoned buildings behind, some of that immersive spirit lives on in their desire to put the audience at the centre of an experience, and a continued commitment to bring nontraditional theatre audiences to their work.
Much inspires them, including the state of the nation, live music, our families and cinema the last being a form we find ourselves frequently referencing in rehearsal and production. Theyre motivated by the power of theatres collective live experience, but are also interested in cinematic language and genre tropes, which have the ability to engage nontraditional audiences in contemporary theatre in a familiar way.