Mercury Musical Developments: Talent Development Fund 2020
Mercury Musical Developments (MMD) & Musical Theatre Network (MTN) are the UK’s only membership organisations dedicated to nurturing high quality, new British musical theatre writers and to developing the sector which allows their work to achieve its widest potential. As membership organisations, MMD & MTN support professional artists writing, developing and staging new musical theatre across the UK. Strengthening the sector and artform development through year-round talent and professional development opportunities, networking, showcasing and advocacy, we help new, excellent and diverse musical theatre achieve its potential. Currently the majority of our work with music creators is continuing online; we are working to expand diversity and inclusion within our memberships and the wider sector and encouraging innovation in the ways artists create and share their material in the pandemic and post pandemic landscapes.
2020 – 2021: BEAM Follow-Spot (BFS) is a UK wide professional development programme following on from BEAM, our national showcase of new work, designed to champion excellent musical theatre creators. BEAM2020 showcased online an unprecedented stylistic breadth of 41 new British musical theatre writing teams from throughout the UK. BFS continues this journey of professional and talent development. Music creators include those already well established in musical theatre, plus emerging talent, including writers of world, hip hop/rap, folk, jazz and electronica exploring musical theatre for the first time. BFS will be nationally focussed with two regional hubs in Scotland (Glasgow) and Northern England (Leeds), a development lab for writers from underrepresented cultural heritages and support for music creators making high quality digital pitches of their new musicals for future development and programming partners.
‘We are so grateful for the PRS Foundation’s support in adapting our BEAM Follow Spot programme to work on-line; we have had more writers engage than ever before from a wider geographical spread and are delighted at the peer learning and partnerships that are forming. During the lockdowns it has remained crucial for us to stay connected to our music creator members and the networks, knowledge and affinity of the TDPs.’