News

For Our Mothers is the latest celebration of lyrical tribute writing for Mulberry Schools Trust, following the success of 2024's Letters To Our Daughters. Registration is now open for schools in the UK and abroad to sign up and make use of the free online resources, as they work towards the first draft deadline of Fri 25 April. 

Our artistic director Fin Kennedy has a long track record of writing new plays for teenagers. His latest has just been published by Nick Hern Books and is available to order, with the amateur rights also available for groups wishing to stage their own production. Life Raft originally premiered with Bristol Old Vic's Young Company, an adaptation of a 1945 Georg Kaiser play about 13 children adrift at sea on a lifeboat after their liner was torpedoed - inspired by a terrifying true story.

Letters to Our Daughters, our international lyrical letter writing competition for girls aged 11-18 was launched at Mulberry Schools Trust's Global Girl Leading conference in central London in October. Speakers included Tina Tchen of the Obama Foundation and the Mexican ambassador to the UK.

Listen now to audio recordings of all seven finalists, and download the free volume of young women's poetry.

Being and Not Being, our audio drama double bill for The National Archives (TNA), is featured in the latest episode of On The Record, TNA's popular in-house podcast series, featuring deep dives into different aspects of their collections. 

Our London, Our Spaces is a new, six-part podcast series exploring the art and places that make up the capital, as told by the people who call it home. 

It features all the projects funded by the Mayor's Diversity in the Public Realm initiative, of which we were proud togf be a part, with our project unpacking the legacy of colonial statues, New Histories.

Catch our artistic director Fin Kennedy speaking about the project in episode 6, released 14 August.

Eight mini audio dramas, each inspired by a photo, a new permanent talking portrait gallery for Glamorgan Archives, Cardiff.

This heartwarming celebration of Cardiff families past and present enjoyed a flurry of local TV coverage from BBC Wales and ITV Wales.

If you're not in Cardiff to pop in, all eight can now be streamed free online.

 This major new double bill for The National Archives launched last month at SOAS, University of London, with both plays now available online in full. 

Commissioned to mark the forthcoming 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two in 2025, these 2 x 25-minute audio dramas are inspired by some fascinating multi-lingual military records which the Archives holds, in Hindustani and Swahili. 

Applied Stories is proud to be delivering this international lyrical letter writing competition for Mulberry Schools Trust.

We've commissioned a series of instructional videos by professional female writers, to support participating students craft the best letters they can to daughters real, imagined, metaphorical or even one's former self....

Read all about it and follow our progress at www.letterstoourdaughters.world 

Our flagship project Museum of Stories: Bury Park is now live in app stores!

Join us for a timed walk with others 11-16 Sep 2023 during Heritage Open Days week, or download the app and do the walk for yourself at a time of your choosing.

Read all about it and follow our progress at www.museumofstories.co.uk

We're delighted to share that Museum of Stories: Bury Park, our community-led audio walk in Luton, has received funding from Arts Council England.

Work has commenced immediately, with the Museum of Stories phone line now open for submissions, and a free launch event at Allders Opticians on Dunstable Road on Sunday 26 March 2023 3-4pm for local businesses and residents thinking of taking part.

Read all about it and follow our progress at www.museumofstories.co.uk

An audio drama podcast series co-produced by our Artistic Director Fin Kennedy has won an Off West End award!

The Waves is 5 x 25-minute original audio dramas about the contemporary legacy of British colonialism, originally broadcast on a network of community radio stations around the UK, and now available free online.

It was one of the last projects Fin produced in his previous role as Artistic Director of Tamasha.

An in-gallery audio installation about migration and identity in the ancient world

A major Applied Stories production for the British Museum, accompanying Four Lives, a new display which invites visitors to meet four individuals who lived in the interconnected world of the ancient Mediterranean over two thousand years ago.

Eternal Telephone imagines a hotline to the past in which long-dead characters can call visitors’ smartphones and leave them a voicemail. These ten mini-monologues are accessed for free via a QR code in the gallery, though can be experienced from anywhere.

Double bill of new audio dramas now available free online

Our double bill of two 40-minute audio dramas for The National Archives, about the Irish War of Independence 1920-21, is now available for free online.

The Bulletin by Barbara Bergin and Persons Unknown by Fin Kennedy are both inspired by declassified records, and examine the power of propaganda to turn the tide of war. Both plays can now be experienced from the the comfort of your own home.

They are presented alongside blogs from The National Archives team, and a recorded Q&A from the live online premiere last month.

Free online premiere Thurs 24 Nov 2022 at 7pm

This month sees the launch of a major new Applied Stories double bill for The National Archives - two new audio dramas about the Irish War of Independence 1920-21. 

The Bulletin by Barbara Bergin and Persons Unknown by Fin Kennedy are both inspired by declassified records, and examine the power of propaganda to turn the tide of war.

Book your free ticket now to the online premiere on Thursday 24 Nov at 7pm, which can be experienced from the comfort of your own home, and includes a live post-listening panel discussion with records experts and the creative teams.

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We've just sent our first newsletter! 

It featured all the projects from our first year, and an invitation to some live events...

Coming up we have a listening party in a haunted optician's in Luton, a series of mini world premieres around a colonial-era statue in Bow, and a joyously nuts primary school detective story in Sheppey, now available in full online.

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Our Artistic Director Fin Kennedy has teamed up once again with longtime collaborators Mulberry School for Girls, to co-create a new play for the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe. 

Running With Ghosts is set during the Covid-19 lockdown, and tells the story of an all-female running group who get more than they bargained for when they start to have spooky encounters with figures from London's past as they jog along the Thames path at dusk...

The show runs from 5-13 August and tickets are now on sale!

Applied Stories has been working with Worldmaking Beyond SOAS and Phakama to design a community workshop unpacking the history of statues from Britain's colonial past. The results have informed a series of 5-min audio installations, professionally scripted, performed by community casts. For the 2022 pilot we used the statue of William Gladstone outside Bow Church as our inspiration. Read more about New Histories, and hear the results for yourself at a listening party on Tues 20 Sept 2022 at 5pm, at the foot of the statue itself. Save the date! Booking details to be announced soon...

Since April 2022 Applied Stories has been working with Icon Theatre in Kent, to develop a new audio drama with local young people aged 7-14. Creative workshops in two primary schools and a youth theatre produced the wildly imaginative ideas for Sheppey Shadows, an original audio drama about a mysterious infestation of shadows plaguing Sheppey.  The 55-minute play features local young people performing alongside professional actors, and was written, recorded and produced by our Artistic Director, Fin Kennedy. The play was premiered at a listening party on Sheerness Beach, it can be listened to in full for free, here.

Applied Stories' Artistic Director Fin Kennedy co-produced this new independent podcast series with Holy Mountain, about the legacy of British colonialism today. Created by a nationwide team from Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester and Bristol, these super cool new dramas showcase some of the most exciting new writers, actors and directors from Tamasha theatre company's Developing Artists network. All five 25-minute dramas are now online for free!

We are delighted to announce a new partnership with Revoluton Arts and Shemiza Rashid, to trial a new Applied Stories format Museum of Stories in the Bury Park district of Luton. Between now and 31 December 2021 anyone can submit a story about anything, in any form or language via the Museum of Stories email, voicemail, Typeform or social media. Applied Stories and Shemiza Rashid will work one of them up into a short place-based audio story, with a sharing in February. We hope this will be the first of many, on a new walking tour of the area we are developing for 2022. Listen to the results of the pilot here.

Watch a panel discussion hosted by LSE Ideas featuring Applied Stories' Artistic Director Fin Kennedy in conversation with writers and academic from the Balkans, about ways in which audio drama can contribute to the rebuilding of post-conflict societies - part of our new podcast series Out Of The Woods: New Play From The Balkans.

Check out our founder Fin Kennedy's interview with New York's The Writer Experience podcast, How Stories Can Change The World. 

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