As part of Heritage Open Weekend 2024, we took the opportunity to showcase the work of our Northern Female Voices project.

This project was a partnership with the Royal Exchange Theatre, funded by the Bruntwood Playwrighting Prize and inspired by the revival of Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey. The project saw eight women from Bury and neighbouring boroughs come together over the course of eight weeks to develop their ideas and voices as writers, creating work spanning poetry, drama and stand-up comedy.

The programme was facilitated by Lizzie Milton and also featured guest workshops from Natalie Diddams, Anjum Malik and Ella Watt.

Six of the writers shared their work on Saturday 7 September to an audience of almost forty in The Stanley Bar, supported by actors Isobel Cunliffe, Mark Rosenthal and Madeleine Solazzo.

We are hoping to bring the work of the writers together into a short monograph to share their work even more widely and we can’t wait to see what they do next.