We hope you are well! We are busy working and planning away at MENA Arts UK, and can't wait to share more on what we're up to! If you haven't already, please check out our open letter in response to the recently announced productions of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. We are in talks with the producer, and we will keep you updated with any outcomes.
Sharing Conversations and Opportunities
- Playful Productions and The RSC are recruiting numerous backstage roles for Mirror and the Light at the Gielgud Theatre.
Deadline: 28th June. More info: https://playfuluk.com/recruitment
- Shubbak Festival of contemporary Arab culture has a couple of events running this summer:
Black women writers from South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) discuss their work from a subaltern perspective. Programmed by Dardishi, Mainstreaming Subaltern Writing: https://www.shubbak.co.uk/mainstreaming-subaltern-writing/
Creating While Black in the SWANA region and its diaspora is a discussion about anti-Blackness in the region and its impact on Black creatives working in the arts. https://www.shubbak.co.uk/creating-while-black/
- For early career producers, Ian Mckellen and ATG Tickets are offering one-off grants of up to £25k to produce a new play or revival. The grant is intended to form part of the capitalisation and also cover running costs for actors wages. Deadline: 31st August.
Details: https://www.ianonstage.co.uk/grants
- Stellar Quines are looking for Creative Practitioners to lead and co-design creative hubs and youth theatre activity for young women aged 14-21.
Deadline: 6th July.
Details: https://www.stellarquines.com/2021/06/15/vacancies-creative-practitioners-and-emerging-creative-practitioners/
- A callout from RTYDS and Freedom Studios for an Assistant Director Placement:
“Freedom Studios is offering a paid opportunity for a new director to do an 8-week Placement with us as Assistant Director on Kamal Kaan’s new play ‘Aaliyah (After Antigone)’ working with Co-Artistic Director, Alex Chisholm. This will be a digital/live hybrid show, made here in Bradford. Aaliyah is a version of Antigone by Sophocles set in contemporary Bradford. We encourage anyone with a strong interest in theatre and/or screen work to apply. As a Bradford based theatre company we welcome applications from directors based in Bradford or with a strong connection to the city.”
Deadline: 2nd July. To apply: https://www.freedomstudios.co.uk/opportunities/rtyds/
- Arts Canteen are looking for a freelance Digital Communications Officer to provide specialist marketing support.
Deadline: 2nd July. To apply: https://artscanteen.com/media_detail.php?m=we-are-hiring&mc_cid=9f0979e012&mc_eid=c39af55516
Directory Shoutouts!
Part of our Directory and have a show/project coming up? Let us know so we can shout about it in the next mailout! In the meantime, check out the following shows featuring our wonderful Directory members:
- Catch Sophia Eleni in her one-woman play ‘On Arriving’ at Jermyn St Theatre from 13th-22nd July. The play draws from experience of the refugee crisis and her family’s story.
Tickets: https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/on-arriving/
- Podcast Fans! Catch Ayad Andrews docu/drama podcast series “The Fight of the Century- Ali V Frazier' for BBC Sounds and BBC 5 Live.
Listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p098l4b4/episodes/player
- Directory member Ali Al-Jamri is guest Editing Arab Lit Winter 2021 Edition, and wants to amplify the voices of Arabic and marginalised communities.
To submit work: https://arablit.submittable.com/submit/196451/arablit-quarterly-winter-2021-issue-folk
The deadline for expressions of interest
And that’s everything! For the new members, mailout is usually sent on a fortnightly basis. Please keep sharing and sending me any of your wonderful work or opportunities you want included in the next mailout to this email. Now more than ever lets keep circulating our brilliant stories; whether its past work, articles, videos, or something you think the membership may find interesting, please do drop me an email! Please continue to sign up to our directory, and share our community with your friends in the industry!
Have a great week,
Jessie x
MENA ARTS UK
If you can, please considering support us on our journey. No amount is too small, and please help us by sharing with your networks! Link to donate: https://www.gofundme.com/f/mena-arts-uk?utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet
Our position on endorsement.
Our main areas of work is to help connect the creative industries with UK MENA+ talent, so we will always share castings, job opportunities, or marketing information. We will track these projects in the hope that they are a great example of how MENA+ talent is used. But by sharing this information, it should not be seen as an endorsement of the project.
We will call out work that is appropriating a MENA+ narrative and does not have MENA+ talent at the heart of the creative process; and we will always champion, front and centre, work that is made for and by MENA+ talent.
MENA ARTS UK
