Selina Thompson To Receive The Second Forced Entertainment Award

Forced Entertainment have announced artist and performer Selina Thompson as the second recipient of the Forced Entertainment Award (in memory of Huw Chadbourn). Created in 2018, the award will recognise one artist (or company) a year until 2021 and comprises £10,000 closely linked to a substantial package of mentoring and subsidiary support tailored each time to the needs and situation of the selected artist or group. The recipient of the 2018 inaugural award was Glasgow-based artist Nic Green.

Financed by Forced Entertainment winning the International Ibsen Award in 2016, this scheme forms part of the company's efforts to feed back some of their own success into the field, and to offer support to artists who are reinventing theatre and performance in new ways and for new audiences. In particular, the award is aimed at artists for whom there aren't at present significant structures of support, recognition or development available.

The award is named after Huw Chadbourn, an artist and performer in his own right, an inspirational friend and one of the founder members of Forced Entertainment, who died in July 2017.

Selina Thompson is an artist and performer whose work has been shown and praised in the UK and internationally. She works with a strong sense of public engagement that leads to joyous, highly visual work that seeks to connect with those often marginalised by the arts. Her work is playful, participatory and intimate, focused on the politics of identity, and how this defines our bodies, lives and environments. She has made work for pubs, cafes, hairdressers, toilets, and sometimes even galleries and theatres, showing her work across the UK, as well as theatres in Ireland, Germany, Brazil, Canada, the US, and Australia. She was featured in The Stage's 100 Most Influential Leaders 2018 as well as being named in the 'Top 10 Black British Women Killing It in Their Field' by Buzzfeed.

Selina Thompson said: "I am so happy to receive this award, and to be able to spend some time with Forced Entertainment, doing the kind of artist development that you can only really do when there are no strings attached. I'm a Sheffield graduate, so their work has been a source of inspiration to me from the very inception of my practice. I feel incredibly grateful for the time and space this will allow, and hope to really do justice to this award, and everything that it embodies."

Nic Green, 2018 recipient said: "Questions about sustainability, collaboration, energy and balance have since come more brightly to light and through the award, I chose to address these in multiple ways. The award has also given a sense of support and confidence I needed to put things into action. Technically the term of this award will end soon but what I really feel is that it has opened up a sense of longevity."

The two step selection process involved Forced Entertainment inviting nominations from professionals from the theatre and performance sector, who this year were: Stefan Hilterhaus (Artistic Director, PACT Zollverein) Afreena Islam (Artist, Producer), Tarek Iskander (Artistic Director UP NEXT), Laura McDermott (Creative Director, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts), Kully Thiarai (Artistic Director, National Theatre of Wales), Dawn Walton (Artistic Director, Eclipse Theatre) and Aaron Wright (Artistic Director, Fierce Festival). The selection panel considering the nominations involved Matt Fenton (Artistic Director, Contact), Lois Keidan (Live Art Development Agency) and Tanuja Amarasuriya (Director/Producer).

Artistic Director, Tim Etchells comments on behalf of Forced Entertainment: "Following the inspiring Award year with Nic Green in 2018 we're over the moon to be connecting with Selina Thompson in 2019 and using this Award to help her develop and strengthen her practice. Selina is a powerful, talented artist whose challenging work deals with contemporary experience, especially in relation of race, identity and politics and which has grown and prospered by finding new ways to talk to audiences and to ask questions of the world. We're really happy to be working with Selina this coming year, helping and learning from her and in a dialogue around her work, exploring ways to sustain and grow what she is doing as an artist."

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