12/06/25
Jerwood Opera Designers Award
£40,000 grant awarded to Mahogany Opera
In a new partnership announced on 12th June 2025, Jerwood Foundation has awarded Mahogany Opera a total grant of £40,000 over two years to support their Jerwood Opera Designers Award.
Jerwood Foundation funding will enable us to support three exceptional design teams in creating the sets, costumes, lighting, video, and projections for three opera commissions. The Award will enable us to collaborate with these teams in a bold, boundary-pushing environment, helping them develop their practice while advancing our own distinct design aesthetic.
The three productions will be: Nwando Ebizie’s Ordo Virtutum, In the Belly of the Beast based on cantatas by Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Errollyn Wallen’s A Christmas Miracle.
For each production a lead designer will be appointed and an emerging designer recruited by open call in Autumn 2025.
“The Jerwood Opera Designers Award will have a huge long-term impact on Mahogany Opera. It will enable us to commit fully to our aims of creating new opera that is truly inclusive, sustainable and diverse. It will introduce us to exciting talent and allow us to develop the careers of promising designers. It will support us to make an extraordinary visual impact with our work (complementing the music from three such distinct and special composers) and lead to transformative experiences for participants and audiences alike.”
Frederic Wake-Walker, Artistic Director Mahogany Opera
“I am delighted that Jerwood Foundation will be funding the Jerwood Opera Designers Award and enabling Mahogany Opera to develop the practice of three teams of multi-disciplinary designers. This two-year support for early career stage designers underlines Jerwood’s ongoing commitment to emerging talent in the arts in the UK.”
Lara Wardle, Executive Director and Trustee Jerwood Foundation
Further information on the exciting opportunities this support has helped to create will be released later in the year - sign up to our newsletter below to be kept up to date about our future open calls.
