The Stage

Ideas Tap opens applications for 2011 Edinburgh festival fund

Published Tuesday 26 October 2010 at 12:25 by Thom Dibdin

IdeasTap, the independent arts charity for young people, has opened applications for its 2011, £20,000 “Ideas Fund Edinburgh”.

Two theatre companies will will each get £10,000 towards the cost of taking a brand new production to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe next August.

The main criteria for the fund is that the lead applicant must live in the UK and be aged between 16 and 25 on the closing day of applications - November 29. Ambitious projects with more than three people on stage will be considered by the panel, which is “looking for innovative, creative ideas – anything from mime to opera”.

This is the second year of Ideas Fund Edinburgh, which last year received 180 applications for £30,00 of funds. £20,000 was awarded to Edinburgh-based children’s theatre company Tortoise in a Nutshell towards staging The Last Miner. Suffolk-based company HighTide received £10,000 towards Lidless, which went on to win a Fringe First and a nomination for Penny Layden in the best actress section of the Stage Awards for Acting Excellence.

IdeasTap also runs the Ideas Fund Innovators, a rolling series of ten £1,000 awards every quarter for “creative projects that could do with a cash injection”. Once again, the lead applicant must be a UK resident aged between 16 and 25.

Last year the innovators fund gave money to the group behind Theatre Ninjas iPhone app, which allowed theatre companies in Edinburgh to share free tickets for shows. The turnaround for the innovators fund is shorter and applications for the quarter covering August will not open until January.

Full details of both the Ideas Fund Edinburgh and the Ideas Fund Innovators are available on the IdeasTap website: www.ideastap.com