We hope you are well!

Please forgive us for the late newsletter this week, there were some technical difficulties at MENA Arts UK HQ.

Thank you for all the great responses to the question on Joseph & The Technicolour Dreamcoat. If you have any more thoughts to share on it please get in touch!

Sharing Conversations and Opportunities 

• A call for Writer submissions from The Other Side of Hope: Journeys in Refugee and Immigrant Literature - a new a new, UK-based print and online literary magazine, edited by immigrants and refugees. More info, including how to support their work, can be found below.

Call for submissions
We are now ready to receive submissions. We welcome fiction, poetry, non-fiction, reviews, and author interviews.

To help promote and showcase writing from refugee and immigrant communities, fiction and poetry are open to refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants only.

We welcome non-fiction, reviews and author interviews by anyone as long as the subject matter sheds light on the refugee and immigrant life.

We pay £100 per published author for the print issue, and £50 for the online issue.
Please see submission details on our website: 

https://othersideofhope.com/submissions.html

Our purpose is to serve and celebrate the refugee and immigrant communities worldwide. This is our website: othersideofhope.com

Please, and please again, spread the word, so that this message travels all the way from our side to each and every side of hope.  

Twitter: OtherSideofHope
Instagram: othersideofhope_journeys
Facebook: TheothersideJourney

• Applications for the next three Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme (RTYDS) 18-month residencies are open.

"We are excited to announce that we are now accepting applications from directors / theatremakers for the next three RTYDS 18-Month Residencies.  This is a paid opportunity to work as a resident assistant director at Curve in Leicester, Derby Theatre or in Newcastle where Live and Northern Stage are joining up to provide a residency. You'll have the opportunity to develop your creative skills, learn how a theatre runs and make work.

Residencies will begin from Autumn 2021 and will come with an annual salary of £25,000.

We are working in partnership with Ramps on the Moon and at least one of the four RTYDS 18-Month Residencies we are offering in 2021 will be awarded to a Deaf or disabled director/ theatre maker."

Information on how to apply can be found here

The deadline for expressions of interest is

• Cooperative Agency Rogues & Vagabonds has contacted us looking for MENA+ performers for their books. Please find the message below.

"We are a successful coop agency and we would really like to find some strong, ethnically diverse talent to add to our team.

We are currently open to people of all ages.

If you might be interested please email joinrogues@gmail.com 

There is a lot more information about us on our website: www.vagabondsmanagement.com "

If you've never heard of cooperative agencies before, here's a great resource from The Actor's Guild explaining how they work.

• The Nottingham Playhouse has put out an open call for a Writer for their upcoming production of Little Red Riding Hood

"We are looking for a professional writer who either currently resides in, or originates from, the East Midlands.

We define professional as having had at least one play professionally produced. This is a minimum week long run with professional actors (paid or unpaid).

The successful writer will be expected to deliver to deadlines, collaborate with the director and creative team, attend key rehearsal dates and make amendments to the script as necessary.

Deadline for submissions is Thursday 10 June 2021 at midday."

More information can be found here
 

• A training & performance opportunity from sensory theatre company Frozen Light.

"Frozen Light makes multi-sensory theatre for audiences with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD).

This summer, we are hosting a week long sensory theatre training for performers, culminating in the opportunity to perform in Frozen Light's new Outdoor Show ‘Night Out in Nature’. ‘Night Out in Nature’ is a sensory outdoor installation for audiences with PMLD. 

This is a paid training opportunity and we're really excited to share our practice with artists who are passionate about accessible theatre. 

We especially welcome applications from artists who self-identify as neurodivergent, D/deaf, disabled and ethnically diverse, Black and Asian as all of these communities are underrepresented in our current team."

For more info on how to apply visit:  https://www.frozenlighttheatre.com/workwithus

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 

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