The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting: why supporting the arts supports all missions

The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting competition

The Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting competition began in 2005, conceived by philanthropists Jean Oglesby and her late husband Michael, and the soon-to-be Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre, Sarah Frankcom. It presents an opportunity for writers of any background and experience to submit unperformed plays, to be judged by a panel of industry experts for a chance to win part of a prize fund totalling £40,000. Anyone and everyone can enter the Prize – it is entirely anonymous – and the winners of the current round will be chosen in July 2025, the competition’s 20th anniversary year.

The Bruntwood Prize is a partnership between the Royal Exchange Theatre and Bruntwood, with funding support from the Oglesby Charitable Trust (OCT). In recent years, ‘the Prize’ was championed passionately by the late Kate Vokes, in her roles as Chair of the OCT, deputy Chair of the theatre, non-Exec Director at Bruntwood, and as a natural, committed advocate for arts and culture for all, in the north of England.

As the current submission cycle gets underway, and the 2022 winner, Nathan Queeley-Dennis’ ‘Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz’ tours to sell-out audiences across the UK, we reflect on the role of funders and philanthropy in the arts – and the extent to which there is such a thing as ‘arts funding’ anyway.

Funding for the arts (vs everything else)

The OCT tends to be best known for its support of the cultural sector and during the last 10 years around 21% (c. £5.73m) of funds has been distributed here. However, a similar figure was committed to work focused on improving health, and the largest proportion (33% – just over £9m) was spent on action on social inequalities. Helpful though these categories can be, increasingly they feel like slightly clunky shorthand for much more nuanced goals.

As a generalist funder, we always have to try to understand where modest funds can leverage the most value. This can be complex, in difficult times: if we try to weigh up work in the arts against that in the social, environmental or health sectors, we could be tempted to consider the arts only once the heavy lifting of social work, climate mitigation and health inequalities are done. 

But the stated goal of arts and culture funding at the OCT is to “support cultural vibrancy and the arts to enrich all communities and people” and within this, that “a wider range of people engage with arts and culture, as learners, performers, artists and audiences”. We believe that the cultural sector is vitally relevant to the wellbeing of society in its most general sense – and the Bruntwood Prize, with its back catalogue of 15,000+ scripts submitted to date, by writers and non-writers alike, is, we believe, an example of both enrichment and engagement at scale.

The OCT has been supporting the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting competition for over 10 years and during this time we have contributed to support for the writers themselves, the coordination of the competition, the production of plays, wellbeing support for play audiences, and always, amplifying connections between the competition and community, in its broadest sense.

For us, the interconnectedness of the competition with such a broad range of themes and benefits evidences its considerable value beyond the remit of conventional ‘arts funding’ and sits much more happily within our generalist portfolio.

Art beyond arts philanthropy

Philanthropy in the arts, when done well, can help create the conditions that result in impact beyond audience numbers, column inches and brand awareness, important though these metrics are. In working alongside the Bruntwood Prize team, our discussions have focused on representation, on- and off-stage; how lived experience can inform production; the trauma of telling your story; who is not in the room, and therefore, whose stories get to be told. Together, we’ve explored and challenged the notion of ‘typical’ playwrights and ‘typical’ stories, and reflected the community in the competition’s judging panel. 

Philanthropy offers an opportunity to the arts and vice versa. As funders, we have a role to play in supporting a thriving cultural ecosystem – one that has a positive impact on pressing local concerns affecting the whole community: loneliness, wellbeing, skills shortages, employability, and cultural cohesion. 

With our focus on impact, voluntary funders have the freedom to support artistic approaches to nurturing social change as well as delivering programmes. Beyond playwriting, the B!RTH festival of theatre back in 2016 saw seven international female playwrights commissioned by the Royal Exchange Theatre to create new plays exploring their country’s approach to childbirth and the cultural pressures that surround it. This global theatrical project was supported by the Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health at LSTM and sought to raise awareness and provoke debate around the vast inequality in maternal and newborn health across the world. Featured plays and materials have been added to curricula and are still being studied by arts and clinical students and professionals alike.

Arts organisations offer funders and philanthropists incredible opportunities to contribute to a tangible and lasting impact across an almost infinite range of causes and concerns, intersecting as the arts do with communities, places, policies, people, ideas and dreams. 

Back in 2019, Kate Vokes wrote:

“When it comes to the Bruntwood Prize, we know the prize stands for nothing if playwrights are not encouraged to engage in political and social discourse. Through the Prize, we encounter genuinely new ideas and have access to new stories and new voices that are quietly revolutionary. In a world that seems increasingly fractured and insular, we need the communal experience of theatre and the clamorous voices of playwrights now more than ever…For arts and culture to thrive in the UK, there must be a mixed funding model. As there is less public funding on offer, income from other sources is key, be it philanthropic or corporate.”

By demonstrating the whole cross-sector value of the work, art and culture programmes – and exemplary beacons within it, such as the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting – make arts philanthropy everyone’s business.