Step-Up Commission

So, what is the Step-Up Commission?

The Step Up Commission gives wordsmiths an opportunity to step up to the next level in their career. We support them through mentorship and funding and the piece created will be showcased at House of The West Wind Festival, 6-8 September 2024  and Get A Word In Edgeways Festival, 11-13 October 2024. The Step Up Commission is funded by House of the West Wind College of Storytelling and Get a Word In Edgeways Festival.

The 2024 Commission PREMIER

Waiting at Elridge by with Tom Juniper

Tom Juniper (he/they) is a performance poet based in Sheffield. Tom’s work often focuses on the experience of being other, whether that’s talking about being autistic or being part of the queer community, or about the Other as in strange and mysterious creatures from folklore traditions.

Welcome to Eldridge, here we set our scene:
A lonely station platform, late at night.
A cancelled train. A group of passengers
(And travellers from somewhere else to here)
Find themselves stranded in this space between.
So, what is it they do to pass the time?
They tell each other stories.
Fill the silence with tales of monsters and of fairy folk.
But little do they know, they’re not alone
And those from otherwhere are listening
And they have stories of their own to tell.
But will the humans listen? Wait and see.
Tom S Juniper’s all new show interweaves poetry and storytelling: we may have forgotten the monsters in the shadows, but they haven’t forgotten us.

Waiting at Elridge currently exists as a book of poems published by Allographic.  Working with The Step Up Commission, he is going to grow these poems into a narrative of discovery and depth, epiphany and compassion and develop Monstrous into a fully realised vibrant live show. MORE…