Page 172 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book
P. 172
artists and audiences alike. The world needs art and artists desperately and the programme
of work HighTide are creating is vital to it.
As part of their Lighthouse Programme, HighTide invited six writers already under
commission - Sonia Jalaly, Dawn King, Debris Stevenson, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, Ben
Weatherill and Aisha Zia - to create their Love In The Time of Corona online monologues,
supported by Principal Corporate Sponsor Lansons. Today BAFTA nominee Dawn King's will
be presented by Shobna Gulati (Coronation Street, ITV). Creating an artistic document of
the lockdown, the series has had over 2,300 views already.
With HighTide alumni mentors, 12 of the UK's leading emerging writers including Travis
Alabanza, Sophie Ellerby and Martha Watson Allpress are now supported by the Playwright
Crisis Support Programme to explore and create the future of new writing.
HighTide have also supported deprived young people in their home region of the East of
England throughout the pandemic, creating home-schooling storytelling resources directed
by Emmy Award winning filmmaker Ruth Pickett, starring Diana Quick, Anna
Koval and Amanda Wilkin for primary schools across the region. One of 12 "Opportunity
Areas" in the country, this Government initiative seeks to increase educational attainment in
the least socially mobile districts in the country.
This is in addition to the digital youth theatre HighTide have created with Company3 and
4YP (the Health Service for vulnerable young people in Suffolk) led by leading local
theatremaker Kirsty Tallent; and the 60 emerging writers that participated in a free ten-week
playwriting course with HighTide Writer and BAFTA Nominee Dawn King.
40 new plays that were due to be produced across the country during quarantine, have been
included on HighTide's Cancellation Catalogue, with the company pledging to support the
production of as much "lost" work by emerging British voices at the next HighTide Festival.
More than 150 plays have been received in HighTide's two script-reading submission
windows. In an innovation to normal submission practices, playwrights are able to select the
HighTide Associate Artist reader for their plays to help demystify the script reading process
and remove invisible barriers. Writers who have participated in HighTide's programmes
during lockdown have also been invited to join their new Playwright's Network. This has
connected writers with industry leaders through regular Q&As.
HighTide were the first NPO to launch comprehensive support for the sector through their
Lighthouse Programme, with support from their sponsor Lansons. Offering a range of
programmes to help artists, its strands reflect the values that sit at the heart of HighTide: to
introduce audiences to new work that speaks to the times we live in by the most exciting and
diverse writers in the UK; to support emerging writers on their journey; and to engage
communities in their home region in Suffolk.