Wandsworth is London Borough of Culture 2025, and Wandsworth Arts Fringe is calling out for Wandsworth’s young creatives to get ahead of the action and join their cohort of WAF Young Producers, Reviewers and Reporters this year!
Applications are now open for Wandsworth Arts Fringe’s free creative industry projects for young people aged 14 – 19, who live or study in Wandsworth. This year they have expanded their offering for young people by running WAF Young Producers, a chance to learn the skills of how to produce your own event, alongside the WAF Young Reporters and Reviewers projects. The projects are a chance for budding producers, journalists, radio DJs or culture critics to gain work experience with creative professionals, get a feel for what it’s like working in the arts, and see festival gigs, comedy, theatre and more – all for free!
At last year’s Wandsworth Arts Fringe (WAF) launch Wandsworth’s bid to become London Borough of Culture 2025 was announced, and on Monday 11 March Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, announced Wandsworth had been successful in its bid. Wandsworth’s London Borough of Culture year will build on the power of culture to change lives, connect people, and improve wellbeing.
WAF’s new Young Producers scheme offers the opportunity for young people to get into the heart of the action of WAF by learning the skills and tools to design their own event. In this project, they will learn what it takes to produce a great event and gain hands-on work experience in running a live performance by working with the WAF team. This project will give young people a chance to stretch their creativity, develop practical skills in event producing, and be inspired by the festival.
The WAF Young Reviewers project is returning for its fourth edition. Since 2020, Wandsworth’s Kalungi Ssebandeke, actor, writer, director, and critic has had a key role mentoring the WAF Young Reviewers and supporting them to write their reviews. This year, Kalungi is returning to the project fresh from winning the 2023 JMK Award and staging his full-scale professional show, Meetings by Mustapha Matura, at Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre. The WAF Young Reviewer project will begin with a workshop session with Kalungi where the young people will explore how to write their own reviews. This will be followed by a chance to see The Great Privation: How to flip ten cents into a dollar at Theatre503, a profound play directed by Kalungi exploring Grave Robbing during the early 1800’s. Participants will then choose which events from this year’s WAF lineup they’d like to attend for free and review. This year, the Young Reviewers will have creative freedom with the format of their review, they could write it, or record it as a video or podcast, or come up with a completely new format. Once complete, the WAF Young Reviewers will have their reviews published to the WAF website.
