Starcatchers announces recipients of Play Fund round two

Top row l-r: Niloo-Far Khan, Rachel Colles (credit Kelman Greig-Kicks), Sarmed Mirza.
Bottom row l-r: Fiona Ferrier (credit Kelman Greig-Kicks), Ben Winger, Lucy McGreal (credit Kelman Greig)

Starcatchers is delighted to announce the recipients of round two of their Play Fund, developed to seed new work for young audiences and ensure that artists are supported to develop their practice with space and time to create new work.

Lucy McGreal, a performer and trained Therapeutic Clown, will investigate the challenges that a family of multiples has when trying to access live artistic experiences. She will look at developing a model that enables a parent or caregiver to engage with more than one baby at a time and feel confident engaging in an interactive live artistic experience.

Rachel Colles and Fiona Ferrier are Artistic Directors of Dirliebane Theatre Company, creating clown theatre performances for children, young people and their families.
Through development of Stand, Sit and Lie Dirliebane will observe and explore what babies up to the age of one are doing in the moment of these three positions and look for common or playful experiences they have to create a piece of work about connection that can speak to a very young audience.

Ben Winger is a trained Clown Doctor and performer. Through the Play Fund, Ben will research and develop an interactive performance piece, The Kingfisher, for 3–5-year-olds, exploring the themes of ownership, isolation and loneliness, inspired by Oliver Jeffers’ The Fate of Fausto.

Niloo-Far Khan and Sarmed Mirza, theatre creators interested in making works for children and families, want to explore a new concept of making theatre from a baby’s perspective: looking up to the ceiling and using light and shadow to tell an engaging visual and musical story for young babies and parents. The Last Iceberg is a research and development work, which will explore themes of displacement and global warming. Niloo and Sarmed want to take the family on an emotional journey about the relationship between a human family and a family of polar bears that are displaced due to global warming.

Round 2 was opened in October last year as part of Starcatchers’ 15th Birthday campaign, #15Actions, a series of steps that Scotland’s arts and early years organisation is taking to highlight their advocacy work to ensure all Scotland’s youngest children can freely access the arts and cultural life.

Starcatchers’ Playspace programme is delivering the fund, among a range of other training and development opportunities for the artist community. Over the past 15 years Starcatchers has supported around 195 early years artists with paid opportunities.

The Play Fund is an award for artists or artist collectives to explore their practice and develop new works suitable for an early years audience and their grown-ups. The first round saw four artist teams awarded for a range of work including performances, community engagement projects and development time for exploring a new idea.

Starcatchers’ Head of Artist Development, Jennifer Phillips said:
“We’re delighted to be supporting this incredible group of artists and such a variety of new work and exploration. One of the aims of the Play Fund was to reach out to artists we haven’t worked with before and it’s exciting to see this breadth of talent in Scotland. We want to push the boundaries of what it means to create a work for an early years audience, and we are proud to be supporting Play Fund’s artists to help ensure that Scotland’s youngest children have access to a diversity of lived experience.”

Fiona Ferrier of Dirliebane Theatre Company said:
“As therapeutic clowns, we have spent a lot of time connecting with babies through playfulness, work that we are very passionate about, and the Play Fund will give us the space to explore these clown connections further alongside the physical movements of babies. We hope to add more creative layers to this with collaborators to create a new piece of work for babies.”

Niloo-Far Khan and Sarmed Mirza said:
“As a Play Fund recipient, we are very interested in developing our practice as artists in a form we have never used before and for an audience that is totally new to us. This opportunity would allow us to push the envelope of our own artist practice. With the right balance of humour and sincerity through this piece we would like to push the boundaries of our young audience by exploring themes of climate change, loss of habitat, our relationship to nature, family and displacement. By offering this to a young audience we hope to evoke a sense of wonder and compassion for nature and the future of our world.”

To keep up to date with these new works in development follow Starcatchers on social media @starcatchersuk.