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Case Study
  • Categories: Nurturing ideas and people

Tom Chivers, Sam Hawkins and Marie McPartlin

CHIVERS Tom HAWKINS Sam McPARTLIN Marie
L-R Marie McPartlin, Sam Hawkins, Tom Chivers

Total Breakthrough Fund support: £141,000

Tom, Sam and Marie won Breakthrough Fund support in March 2009, just after the second London Word Festival which they had created together as Co-Directors in 2008. The grant allowed them to pay themselves part time for the first time, and contributed to programme research, R&D and artists’ commissions. With Breakthrough Fund support, they worked together on a third and fourth festival in 2010 and 2011, growing audiences and extending the scope and ambition of the programme.

In 2011 after that year’s Festival, Tom decided to return to his life as poet, publisher and spoken word producer through his company Penned in the Margins, which had continued alongside the Festival throughout. Marie and Sam continued to collaborate while they explored new ideas for the London Word Festival, and then in 2012 decided also to return to working independently. The grant concluded in late 2012. Marie is now Artistic Director of the Kinsale Arts Festival in Ireland, and Sam is working in arts development and managing creative apprenticeships for young people in Brighton

CHIVERS Tom HAWKINS Sam McPARTLIN Marie2
London Word Festival 2011. (Image: Oliver King)