The TippingPoint Commissions are a new initiative for professional artists who wish to create new performance work in the context of climate change.
DEADLINE: Monday 4th May at 5pm

The theme of climate change is intended to provide a stimulus and a springboard for the commissions. Artists are invited to submit projects that stimulate audiences towards the radical and imaginative thinking necessary to comprehend a world dominated by climate change. We are not looking for a didactic exposition of the subject. Rather, we are seeking proposals that offer creative reflections on a world that is rapidly changing and on humanity’s role and responsibilities within it.

We cannot respond successfully to a challenge of this magnitude by asking merely what we should do. At this unique moment we must ask ourselves who we are... [We need] to build the mirror that will show us our fellows and our world in our own reflection.
John Ashton, UK Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change

Proposals can be made by practitioners of any performance discipline, as individuals or groups, by artists on their own or together with partners or producers.

Artists of every kind have one overriding moral duty, which is to do their work as well as possible. But since that work partly consists of responding to what the world itself is up to, it would be strange if the best work being produced didn’t take some account, in some way, of what’s happening to our climate. Art is not only about beauty: sometimes it has to warn.
Philip Pullman, Patron, the TippingPoint Commissions

This first year we will be able to sponsor around 4 commissions. The maximum award will be for £30k although we anticipate that most awards will be for less. Applicants may wish to commission a composer, a writer, a choreographer or work with a range of collaborators as part of a devising process. We recognize that you are likely to undertake additional fundraising from other sources to take the initial commission to production. The TippingPoint Commissions are underway through a generous award from Major Road. The company was an influential force in British theatre for 20 years and created national productions up until the mid 1990’s.

Proposals must be submitted by Monday 4th May at 5pm. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to develop ideas a little further and attend an interview. They will be considered by a selection panel which will include:

Graham Devlin – Chairman, Tipping Point (Chairman of Selection Panel)
John Ashton – UK Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change
Nick Starr – Executive Director, National Theatre
Maresa von Stockert – Director, Tilted Productions
Cecilia Wee – Writer, Broadcaster and Curator

Recipients of the awards will be announced in late June by Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.


You can download the criteria and an application form at:
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This is an open invitation. Please forward this information to anyone you think may be interested in making a submission.