We’re now over halfway through the process for our Open Call 2022 opportunity and we wanted to give everyone who submitted a script a bit of background on the opportunity and an update on how things are going.
成人论坛 Writersroom has been through a lot of changes in the last year, including having a new boss (Jess Loveland) at the helm. The COVID-19 pandemic has also been a catalyst for us in finding and devising new ways of working with our writing groups across the UK. One of these changes has been to re-envision our main open submission window (previously known as the Script Room) which is now called Open Call.
In its previous incarnation the outcome would be that between 14 and 20 writers were selected from the thousands of submissions to take part in our Drama Room development group. Now our Open Call is used not just to find the Drama Room writers; it has expanded its remit to also identify promising, talented writers who would be suitable to join our Voices development groups across the UK (in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England). This expanded remit means that, from now on, almost 100 emerging writers will be offered development opportunities from the Open Call talent search.
Submissions opened on 9th December 2021 and we had just under 5000 (4718) writers submit a script by the closing date of 13th January 2022. During the open window we held a public webinar and ran drop-in sessions on zoom which were open to any writer who was interested in applying; they could come along, meet the 成人论坛 Writersroom team and ask any questions about the opportunity. Thank you to everyone who dropped in! It was such a joy to meet so many writers, help them with their queries and chat about the process.
Since then, it’s been a busy time to look at such a huge amount of submissions. We love to find a writer whose voice stands out and see them progress through to the next stage.
The bulk of our reading in the initial stages is carried out by our dedicated team of around fifteen highly-experienced and diverse freelance readers who are based all across the UK. Some readers have been reading on 成人论坛 Writersroom opportunities for many years and some have come to the process new this year. Every reader was fully briefed on the exciting new way the Open Call works and all readers complete 成人论坛 Mandatory training, including unconscious bias, which is applicable to their role.
We hold reader meetings after each stage of the process – 10 page read, 30 page read, full read and producer read – to discuss the submissions, the quality and strength of the writing and the sorts of stories and themes coming through. We don’t know who the writer is, as scripts are anonymised until the final stage of the process, and it is as exciting for us as it is for the writers when they are revealed and invited to interview.
The readers are currently at the 3rd stage of the process, the full read stage, and any writer who has successfully progressed as far as this advanced stage will receive a written feedback report on their script; we believe this is useful for a writer’s development, regardless of the final outcome.
After the full read stage is completed, we will move onto the producer reads when all the 成人论坛 Writersroom staff get involved with reading the shortlisted scripts. At this point each script will be read and considered by at least two or three producers. It’s a really exciting but tough task at the producer read stage and there will be lots of conversations amongst the team to make decisions on which writers reach the interview selections.
The Drama Room programme will commence in September 2022 for a year and the next Voices groups will kick off in January 2023 for 6 months. So, if you have an application in, please bear with us a little longer, we know it is a long wait but it’s a huge process; it’s one we do diligently because every single submission deserves full and thorough consideration and we’re proud that we are set up and have the resources to do that. We hope to have an update for everyone by mid/end June.