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Case Study
  • Categories: Nurturing ideas and people

Stewart Laing

LAING Stewart
(Image: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan)

Total Breakthrough Fund support: £308,000

Director and designer Stewart Laing won Breakthrough Fund support in 2010 to take forward his Glasgow-based company Untitled Projects. Stewart formed Untitled in 1998 to produce his own projects, alongside his career as a designer collaborating with directors such as Richard Jones, and Untitled had produced three projects over that time. In 2010, the Breakthrough Fund’s core support allowed him to dedicate himself more fully to Untitled, with the support of producing colleagues – Lorna Duguid and Steve Slater until 2013, and then Louise Irwin who took over as Producer in summer 2013. Untitled has produced two major works conceived by Stewart in the three years of Breakthrough support: The Salon Project, a co-production with the Traverse Theatre since presented at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow and at The Spill Festival at the Barbican in London; and Paul Bright’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland and Tramway, presented in Glasgow and Edinburgh, with plans for further presentations in 2014 and 2015.

Alongside Stewart’s own productions, Untitled have established a clear role in the development and production of works by a younger generation of artists, such as Alan McKendrick’s Cain’s Book co-produced with The Arches as a work in progress in 2013 with a full production in 2014, a new work in development by artists Robbie Thomson and Jack Wrigley, and Untitled’s collaboration with the Citizens Theatre to offer the first Main Stage Directors Residency. Further new projects by Stewart and other commissioned artists are in development. Breakthrough Fund support has provided core funding for Stewart and producing colleagues to develop the company’s future and to realise its projects. Stewart’s grant concluded in 2014.

LAING Stewart2
Paul Bright’s ‘Confessions of a Justified Sinner’ reconstructed by Untitled Projects 2013 (Image: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan)

www.untitledprojects.co.uk