Each year, selected artists will receive a yearlong creative attachment to Landmark Theatres and the majority of the work will be based and delivered at the Key Theatre, Peterborough.
Each year, we offer selected artists:
- A seed commission between £1000 and £2000 to go towards the development/production budget of the proposed piece
- Free rehearsal space at the Key Theatre
- Mentoring and producing support
- Access Support
- Dramaturgical and developmental support for your idea
- Work in progress programming at the Key Theatre
- Support with inviting industry professionals to see your work
Register your interest
We are not currently open to applicants for 2026, however if you would like to register your interest or would like more info about the programme please contact the team.
Register your interestOur 2024/25 Key Seeds cohort has now been announced! You can find out more about the artists below.
Alan Seiglow
Alan is an emerging artist; this is his first solo show and work for theatre. During the 2020 lockdown he joined The Outsiders, an online writing group that gives voice to the unheard, and first performed his words with them at the Bournemouth Emerging Arts Festival in 2021. Since then, he’s joined the Troop Network, shared words at Scratch nights at the Cambridge Junction & Key Theatre. In 2022 he won the Stobbs New Ideas Award. Alan is supported by Peterborough Key Theatre, Metal Culture (Peterborough, Liverpool, Southend) & Cambridge Junction. He is very excited to be part of the Seed Commissions with Landmark Theatres.
PROJECT: THE RESURRECTION OF JOY
The Resurrection of Joy is the story of a working-class son’s journey to find the best way to celebrate his mum. It’s an exploration of memory, navigating challenges and survival through the darkest of times, of searching through the past to understand the present. It’s also a big old celebration of family do’s, knocking back a babycham, dancing with your aunties, of bingo at Butlins and bowls of scouse and and the power of finding joy in life again.
Charley Genever
Charley Genever is an LGBTQIA+ poet and creative producer based in Peterborough. Known for her ‘raw, visceral, and unapologetic’ performances, she is a self-described lava lamp head and flesh gallery.
PROJECT: MIND, RUN WILD
Mind, Run Wild is a one-person spoken word show about imagination, rule breaking, and belief. Disillusioned by democracy, and carrying the weight of injustice in her hair follicles, Charley attempts to find the answer to the question: what happens if we actually let our minds run wild?
Emma-Louise Howell
Emma is an award-winning writer from Spalding. Described as ‘one of the undoubted stars of the future’ (Broadway Baby), her work has been performed at Pleasance, Soho Theatre, Mercury Theatre, Leicester Curve and featured on BBC Introducing. She’s also been recognised by various writing prizes, winning the Michael Ross Award, a Boundless Accelerator Award and shortlisted for prizes such as The Stage Innovation Award, Women in Theatre Lab, the International Playwriting Prize and The Stagey Place Edinburgh Award. ‘Bold, unflinching and impossible to ignore’, she’s interested in using theatre to break audience expectations and ask daring, theatrical questions about every day encounters.
PROJECT:
“You are asking me to describe a gap. Something that has become an empty space”
A woman goes missing and the world looks for her.
They look at every single detail of her.
A new play interrogating the unstoppable rise of media sleuths and our obsession with True Crime, this play tackles the dangerous phenomenon of Missing White Woman syndrome and what happens when crime against women becomes a genre of entertainment.
Blending theatre, audio drama and podcast culture, this is a new way to experience true crime podcasts and unravel the darker side of the stories we can’t seem to stop ourselves listening to.
Jenna Unwin
Jenna is a performance artist from rural Cambridgeshire, based in Peterborough. She has trained and worked as a dancer with companies such as Jasmin Vardimon 2 & Anatomical. As a dyspraxic dancer, Jenna now advocates for movement as pleasure and embodied storytelling. Her extensive dance training, intrinsic ‘clumsiness’ & empathetic nature synthesise to make her eclectic choreographic style. This virtuosic, expressive & responsive style lends itself to metamorphic character work, which Jenna has played with using verbatim and comedy. Recently, she has been experimenting with interdisciplinary storytelling in an attempt to answer the question; “What’s the best way to tell this story?”.
PROJECT:
“…And Then John Farted and Everybody Died” is a Cabaret-style anthology show combining dance, text, music and drag into a raucous comedy about the uniquely human experience of embarrassing ourselves. This one-woman show is eclectic, funny & unapologetically weird as Jenna takes storytelling to a whole new level. Inspired by her dad Funky Steve – who believes his best friend John’s farts are so bad, we may all die from the smell – Jenna is on a mission to embarrass us all. With the threat of John farting any minute, we need your true stories of the mortifying moments of your lives, don’t hold back!
Jude Simpson
Jude Simpson is a Spoken Word artist. She combines poetry, wordplay and song to deliver a warm, witty and uplifting act with wide appeal and a strong feel-good factor. She has completed three solo runs at the Edinburgh Festival, and won three national poetry slams. Jude began writing for families since having her own children. She has had children’s poems published in anthologies, and a school musical published by Kevin Mayhew Lrd. She is Poet in Residence at her local Homestart branch – the family support charity – and is based near Cambridge. “A Noise Annoys” is her first family show.
PROJECT: A NOISE ANNOYS
“A Noise Annoys” is a poetry show for all the senses! It features rhymes, noises, songs, surprises and lots of audience interaction. Bursting with joyful humour and witty wordplay, Jude takes the audience on a mind-bending journey through the sounds of language and the language of sounds. There is lots of joy, a healthy dose of nonsense, and a few heartfelt moments of beautiful hush. “A Noise Annoys” started its development at Cambridge Junction Theatre, where audiences described it as “witty, engaging, fun, imaginatively clever.” Jude looks forward to developing the show to its full potential, ready for touring from Spring 2025.
Sam Turton
Sam is a Neurodiverse theatre maker, with a focus on Directing and Writing. He has worked extensively thought out the east of England and is Artistic Director of Novus Theatre. He has been making work with the company for Over 10 years, but has only started developing his own practice as a writer since 2022.
He is currently a member of the current Tour the Writer intake for Paines Plough and has just received his first commission, working with The Place Theatre in Bedford.
Sam has also worked extensively as a producer with organisations such as Bedford Creative Arts, The Culture Trust and Revoluton Arts.
PROJECT: WHAT WOULD THE NEIGHBOURS THINK
What Would The Neighbours Think attempts to look at the current conflicts within the country around the reaction to the Refugee Crisis. It follows the story of a community in the East of England and their reaction to their local restaurant and hotel being turned into a migrant hotel. How does a community deal with drastic change and what will be the effect of the new residents. We also focus on the story of a young boy living in the hotel and the journey of his family to that place so far away from the home they loved.
What Would The Neighbours Think Was conceived in early 2024 in the build up to the summer election. With the rise of reform and the summer of mass unrest, The work attempts to examine the countries relationship with Migration, Refugees and how welcoming we really are as a nation.
Lydia Idakula
Lydia Idakula is an award winning producer, writer and arts manager who has produced several theatre productions, film, TV shows, festivals and arts events. Notably, she was the Artistic Director of Lagos Theatre Festival, the largest multi arts festival in West Africa and is the founder of the Cambridge African Festival of Arts. Lydia is passionate about telling African/migrant stories, global collaborations and creating opportunities for underrepresented migrant artistes. She lives and works in the UK as a Producer where she is currently working on her first musical.
Queen Idia the Musical is being developed through a collaborative R&D process with UK and Nigerian creatives. This production is a celebration of resilience, leadership, and cultural heritage and promises a captivating, modern retelling of an African legend.