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Beginning in 2017 we have partnered with several of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s festivals, creating opportunities for emerging writers across the UK to get their voices heard and their scripts produced.

1Xtra Live

Here at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom we’d been trying to find the right opportunity for a while to work together with ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 1Xtra because we share the same ethos of championing new talent. Our hope was to find a project where writing and music could combine to make something that felt uniquely 1Xtra and also created a development opportunity for emerging writing talent. 1Xtra Live Manchester presented that opportunity.

Following an open call for scripts on our website, supported by 1Xtra, twenty-seven writers were invited to a workshop from which nine were invited back for the second day. This led to seven short dramatic monologues being shot around Manchester and shared on 1Xtra and ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom social media.

Asian Network Live

Following on from the success of  we wanted to run a similar project again as it was such a great development opportunity and unique model - short films for social media that are written, produced and filmed in the space of 5 days!

Asian Network Live in Birmingham presented the perfect opportunity to tap into talent in the West Midlands and create some exciting short form content. Asian Network, like ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom, shares the same ethos of championing new talent, and with comedy doing so well with their audience across all platforms, it felt like that should be the focus of the project. The writers had to set their film in one of the six locations that we’d picked in advance: Rag Market, Digbeth, Brindleyplace, Victoria Square, Ladypool Road, Broad Street.

Following an open callout on our website and Asian Network social media, thirty writers were invited to the first workshop day. Ten writers were invited back for the second day and six comedy monologues were produced.

The Biggest Weekend

With The Biggest Weekend festival taking place across the four nations of the UK in 2018, we jumped into action in all four ´óÏó´«Ã½ Writersroom national hubs and put a call out to budding new comedy writers and performers to take part in the 60 second comedy monologue opportunity.

The Biggest Weekend festival also presented us with the opportunity to further extend our new talent reach and include a selection of the hottest new artists from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Music Introducing line up to score the films.

An open call for scripts on our website resulted in longlisted writers being invited to workshop their scripts with our teams in Belfast, Glasgow, Cardiff and Birmingham. Shortlisted writers were then invited back for a second day of script development and actor auditions with locally identified talent.

Eventually 4 films were produced, one for each of the Biggest Weekend locations (Perth, Swansea, Coventry and Belfast).

Two of the runner-up scripts from the Scotland callout were also made by ´óÏó´«Ã½ The Social