The Grass Routes Prize has been created by Matriarch Productions and Birdie Pictures to help writers from disadvantaged backgrounds kickstart their careers.<\/p>\n
The winner of the Grass Routes writing competition will receive a prize of \u00a35,000 ($6,100), with a further amount paid by the studios to option the script. The writer will then develop their project with Matriarch and Birdie before pitching it to different buyers.<\/p>\n
As part of the initiative, Matriarch and Birdie will help the winning writer obtain an agent and arrange meetings with other leading industry writers, directors, producers, script executives and commissioners.<\/p>\n
The deadline for submissions is January 8, 2024.<\/p>\n
Matriarch’s Stephen Graham and Hannah Walters and Birdie’s Phil Temple said, \u201cWe are driven by a passion to reform the system which holds back many talented, working-class writers. This will be a scheme that hopes not just to raise awareness of the issues, but to help in a practical way to change it and to also challenge others in the industry to take steps themselves to address them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMatriarch and Birdie want to help provide fairer access to the TV industry, and whilst there have been great strides in reaching different underrepresented groups recently, we think that socio-economic background still remains a key barrier to entry, and that becoming a successful writer shouldn\u2019t be less achievable for those from lower income families.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have bemoaned the lack of working-class voices in TV for a long time, so now is a good time to do something about it with brilliant, like-minded people,\u201d said Temple. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to work with this team to find untapped talent. Many industries are unrepresentative of wider society in regard to socio-economic background. Nowhere is this truer than in creative professions, including television, where writers work on a freelance basis with no job security and no guarantee of income.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walters and Graham added, \u201cWhat an incredible opportunity to be able to give an undiscovered writer a platform to showcase their work. We feel this project is imperative to help move our industry forward and give voices a chance to truly be heard. So excited to see the wealth of talent that\u2019s out there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Grass Routes Prize has been created by Matriarch Productions and Birdie Pictures to help writers from disadvantaged backgrounds kickstart their careers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3087,"featured_media":19597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[8028,8029,6673],"class_list":["post-19596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-birdie-pictures","tag-grass-routes-prize","tag-matriarch-productions","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n