The Norman Beaton Fellowship (NBF) is a flagship initiative run by Radio Drama as a key part of the department's (((soundstart))) actor talent events. Its aim is to broaden the range of actors available to Radio Drama producers across the UK by encouraging applicants from non-traditional training backgrounds. To that end, it complements the Carleton Hobbs Bursary Award scheme that we've been running with the accredited UK-wide Drama Colleges for more than fifty years. Two NBF winners each receive fixed-term bursary contracts with the Radio Drama Company, and up to four runners-up receive single freelance engagements in Radio Drama productions.
The 2003 NBF event was launched with open auditions held across England and attended by over 600 actors, a large proportion of whom came from Black and other ethnic communities. All finalists' auditions were recorded and circulated, for casting purposes, among the Radio Drama production teams. Some finalists went on to play parts in Radio Drama's soaps WESTWAY (for World Service Drama which folded in 2005), THE ARCHERS (for Radio 4) and SILVER STREET (for the Asian Network). In 2004, we extended our workshops to Scotland and Wales, and fed the best actors from those sessions - together with outstanding candidates from the previous year's Final heats - into semi-Finals held in Manchester and London. From these twelve finalists were invited to the key London event in early May. In 2005, the NBF was run as a collaboration with a network of theatre companies across Britain who helped our search for talent new to radio. This partnership has continued in recent years and will be followed again for NBF 2010.
NBF 2010 will be managed from our Birmingham Radio Drama Unit under the chair of Peter Leslie Wild. Semi-Finals will take place in the BBC's studio at the Mailbox in Birmingham in early March 2010, and the Finals will run in Bush House, London on Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd March 2010.
The names of those theatres participating in the 2010 event will be posted on this website in December 2009.