Submissions are now open for the Arch 468 Hope prize, which offers a £10,000 commission for a new play offering a vision of hope.

Hope is the fuel that drives every innovation, every attempt to  advance the sum of human knowledge, every revolution and every leap of faith. Arch 468 are  working to ensure that hope is not allowed to fade from public discourse. 

The past few years have felt pretty challenging: from economic crisis, political polarisation and  rampaging climate change to the global pandemic that has changed life as we know it. Many  people have been struggling in the dark; it’s been hard to imagine a future bright with promise.  But hope is important. It keeps people going, it helps imagine a better way of being and creates  the curiosity needed to find ways to get there. Hope is what prompts us to make friends and fall  in love, to make art, to have children, to protest, to vote, to learn. It is the lifeblood of life itself.  

The commission is for a full rehearsal draft of a new mid-scale play, which Arch 468 will produce in a fully-staged professional production. They will also offer dramaturgical support and creative friendship, supported by R&D resources as needed. 

Artistic Director of Arch 468,Rebecca Atkinson, said: “We want to be surprised and inspired by a work that gives us a  new vision of what our world might look like. That doesn’t mean some naïve Panglossian  fairytale; we want to be truly convinced that the future can be bright and we want to share that  hopeful surety with our audiences in a way that sticks. We want authentic feeling stories in dialogue with the world we live in now. We believe in the power of brilliant leaps of writerly  imagination.”

To apply, you must submit the following in word or PDF format to elodie@arch468.com with the subject line “Arch 468 Hope Prize 2021 by Monday 29 March: a one page (500 words) outline of the play you want to write, a first rough draft of the first ten pages of that play to give a sense of your voice as a  writer, your CV (including details of two referees who have a sense of your work) and a completed Equal Opportunities monitoring form. 

Arch 468 will also host a Zoom Q&A for writers interested in applying at 6pm on 17 March. To book your place, please click here.