These scholarships are awarded to up to nine students every year, offered to students who demonstrate ability, passion and commitment to music, performing arts, creative writing and spoken word, or film and media.
Each scholarship winner will receive a £200 cash prize, as well as a tailored package of tuition or mentoring to develop their skills and knowledge further and opportunities to showcase their talents with performances at University events.
Tasha has always known she wanted to write to express herself, but it wasn’t until she started to read playscripts that she found a way to say what she wanted to say. During her Masters she wrote her first play for performance, and enjoyed combining forensic historic research with creativity to tell an audience about a ‘true’ story from the archive. As a historian, Tasha often has to read between the lines with archival sources. Writing creatively is a great way to take these imaginings further, and even toy with the fact that when a history is written it is never necessarily true: we can never really know what happened in the past.
Over the next year, Tasha will be working on a second play combining archival material and historical guess work. She is keen to encourage other researchers to think about their work in a different way, and with a bit of creative flair. Art is good for mental health and for challenging your own perception of your work, not to mention an easy way to get your research out to a wider public. Hopefully by creating a play that uses source material from her own work, Tasha can inspire others to think about creative outlets for their research.
We are also proud to announce that two other students from the School of Social Sciences and Humanities have been awarded this scholarship.
Steyn Hoogakker is completing a PhD in Human Geography and has received the scholarship on account of his Documentary Photography.
Oliver Strickland is completing a BSc in Politics and International Relations and has received the scholarship on account of his talent as a singer-songwriter and contemporary solo artist.
To find out more about LU Arts Scholarships, please follow this link.