Ryan Mellish and Martin Malcolm (directors) set up Critical Moment CIC to help local communities tell their stories and to provide short paid commissions to the community of freelance theatre artists. In the past year, we have produced workshops and public readings of Open Door, a play dealing with a true story from the early years of LGBTQ+ liberation in the UK and the campaign to equalise our laws. We toured our readings to venues in South West England, to the towns and cities where our original story took place. We offered free tickets to audiences to coincide with Gay Pride events across the region. We have continued to consult with and work with The Peter Tatchell Foundation to deliver planned community benefits in relation to our readings. The PTF agreed to support our play Open Door with an after-show talk and with marketing assistance to help us reach our intended LGBTQ+ community audience. Community benefits: We worked with a broad range of community organisations to deliver our readings. As well as the PTF, we partnered with Exeter Northcott Theatre and The Brewhouse Theatre Taunton. We received grant support from The Peggy Ramsay Foundation, Exeter Northcott Theatre and Taunton Town Council. We took advice from 2BU, a local LGBTQ+ support group in Taunton and liaised with Exeter Pride, Taunton Pride and Wells Pride (we provided a free platform performance and workshop for Wells Pride in addition to our other readings). We also worked with a volunteer cancer support group LGBTQ+ Walnut, to include a reference to them and their branding (which we helped renew with a new logo design) in our play. We took feedback from all our audiences, curating stories of their own experiences and incorporating them into our play. We received widespread media coverage of our readings, including BBC and MSN news, each event was booked-out and we reached an estimated audience of around 1,000 LGBTQ+ individuals and their allies through our work. We received offers of further partnerships with venues for the play in the future. We have provided support to the community of freelance theatremakers we aim to serve by developing work that will benefit the LGBTQ+ community, specifically in LGBTQ+ History Month and at Pride events in coming years. We provided paid opportunities (at agreed industry rates) for actors, directors, producers, graphic artists, composers, musicians and photographers in our growing community of freelance theatremakers, helping them to tell vital community stories.

Stakeholders include The Peter Tatchell Foundation, which gave us advice and support on developing, delivering and marketing readings our play Open Door. This builds on work done in previous years with Open Door, when we held a live Zoom Q&A with our audience after an online sharing of the play with staff at NHS Somerset for feedback. We consulted with Wells Pride (June 2025), The Northcott Theatre, Exeter, to take place in July 2025 and with The Brewhouse Theatre Taunton (September 2025). We are continue to be in active consultation with the theatre's Artistic Director, Martin Berry, about ways to bring our play to the widest possible community audience in future years. Our target audience includes not just those with an interest in LGBTQ+ issues, but also those with an interest in the local history of the place they call home (our play tells a true story that begins in Exeter). The Northcott has agreed to be a significant stakeholder in this work. We consulted with gay prostate cancer support group LGBTQ+ Walnut to include a reference to their work in our play and we helped them to redesign and renew their branding, with a new logo we displayed in our performances. For our readings, we have worked closely in rehearsal and discussion with our stakeholders in the freelance theatre-making community. We talked and listened to writers, actors, musicians, directors, photographers, musicians, video editors and other theatre freelancers as they helped us revise, rework and develop the play we are preparing and the ident we recorded. These were ongoing in-the-room conversations on the process of theatre-making, for both live and digital presentation.

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration