Unity Theatre have announced their first ever Open Call Programme. Running from February – May 2021, Unity are looking for local creatives to submit work for programming as their reopening season, celebrating the resilience, talent and quality of Liverpool’s creative community.
The call-out is open to a wide range of people and practices including theatre companies, performers, community practitioners, musicians, devisers, comedians, puppeteers, digital artists and spoken word artists. If you have a performance or creative experience you’d love to share with audiences or participants, Unity are keen to hear from you.
Unity knows that as a consequence of Covid-19 some D/deaf, neurodivergent and disabled artists face unique and unprecedented additional challenges in maintaining their practice. For some this includes shielding. Therefore, they are also running an Open Call Commission of up to £3,000 to create a new piece of online work.
Round one of applications will open 3 December, where Unity will be seeking short expressions of interest for those interested in having their work staged in either their iconic venue in Liverpool, online or out in the city. Through a panel made up of Unity staff and partners, submissions will be shortlisted from Monday 4 January.
Those who are selected will then receive £150 to develop their application further in Round Two. Whether applicants are chosen or not at this stage, this fee will allow you paid time to create an application that could be used elsewhere. Following this, the final programme line-up will be decided and announced by the end of January 2021.
Unity normally offers a variety of deals for artists, quite often related to box office income. However, with a socially distanced reduced capacity, ticket income won’t amount to much. Therefore, for work presented as part of the Open Call programme Unity are offering a guaranteed fee of up to £1,250 for events, plus additional technical and producing support for polishing work.
Finally, all chosen applicants – whether work is performed in venue, offsite or online – will have the opportunity for their work to be professionally recorded and uploaded to Unity’s first-of-its-kind Programmers Portal, which will be distributed to venues and festivals across the UK for tour consideration.
Programmed applicants will also be provided the opportunity to have their work developed for live stream to ensure shielded audiences can still access performances.