At Birmingham Hippodrome, the Origins Festival takes place this May as a rare kind of theatre programme that opens up the process of creation, as well as presenting finished work. Running until 16 May 2026, it marks the culmination of an 18-month development journey led by Sophia Griffin, Head of New Work & Artist Development at Birmingham Hippodrome and an in-house team focused on supporting new artists.
The final eight artists selected for the Origins Festival, left to right: Jaz Morrison, Nathan Sebastian, Lafayette, Elizabeth O’Connor, Zakariye Abdillahi, Tina Hofman, Louis Wharton, Amerah Saleh and Grace Barrington. Photo by Paul Stringer.
The ambition behind Origins is deliberately expansive. As Griffin explains, it is “a week of all things new work”, bringing together free workshops, industry sessions and a series of double-bill performances that sit at the centre of the programme.
Those performances showcase artists who have spent over a year and a half embedded in the Hippodrome’s development structure. They include writers, performers and makers working across disciplines, and in many cases stepping into entirely new forms.
“This is the first time we’ve shared work publicly,” Griffin says. “At times I’ve thought, have we gone too big? But this week the artists are here… and it’s incredibly exciting.”
Rather than beginning with production targets, the Origins programme was designed around artistic renewal. For its first six months, participants were not asked to produce finished work at all. Instead, they were encouraged to engage with culture more broadly and step away from output-driven pressure.
“We said we’re not making anything yet,” Griffin explains. “We’re going to soak in art, we’re going to refill the artistic well.”
That approach reflects a wider critique of traditional development models, which often prioritise output over creative sustainability. For Origins, the emphasis has been on allowing time for experimentation, especially for artists in transition between disciplines. These include poets moving into playwriting, dancers working with text, and novelists adapting to stage form.
The result is a cohort defined not by uniformity but by movement. “They’re all stepping outside their comfort zones,” Griffin says. “And in that discomfort… really beautiful things are starting to come up.”
From 140 applicants, just eight artists were selected. It was an intensely difficult process for a team embedded in the same local artistic community. “Saying no to anyone is always awful,” Griffin reflects. “What we were really conscious of was: how do we keep people in our artistic community?”
As a result, the programme has also extended beyond those selected. Additional commissions, mentoring and future development opportunities have been offered to candidates who did not make the next stage.
The festival itself is structured as both presentation and invitation. Alongside the headline performances, audiences can attend free workshops and informal events. Many shows operate on a pay-what-you-can basis.
Griffin is clear about the broader intention. Origins is not simply about showcasing work, but about embedding artists more deeply into the cultural life of Birmingham and the wider region. “It’s about the ripple effects,” she says. “What it does when you pour into artists, and how they expand that into their communities.”
That local grounding is central to the programme’s identity, but so too is its ambition. While rooted in Birmingham and the West Midlands, the work being developed is intended to resonate far beyond it. “These are really exciting artists,” Griffin says. “The themes resonate nationally, internationally.”
Crucially, Origins is not conceived as a one-off intervention. Plans are already in motion for a second iteration, with the possibility of connecting future cohorts to those currently taking part through mentoring, shared workshops and continued collaboration.
“We don’t want to do this once and say goodbye,” Griffin says. “We want it to come back around again and again.”
In that sense, Origins positions itself as a long-term investment in artistic infrastructure rather than a single festival moment. It is designed to challenge the cycle of project-based development and replace it with something more continuous, more relational and more embedded in place.
For Birmingham, that matters. Griffin is explicit about the city’s cultural identity, one that is rich in talent but often understated in how it presents itself.
Sophia Griffin, Head of New Work & Artist Development at Birmingham Hippodrome
“As a city, we have a bit of a downplay energy,” she says. “We should be shouting about the incredible work happening here.”
Origins, then, is as much about visibility as it is about development. It is a platform for early-stage work, but also a statement about what Birmingham already has: artists, ideas and creative communities that are still evolving but firmly rooted.
And for audiences, Griffin’s invitation is simple. “It’s exciting work,” she says. “You’re not just seeing the final stage, you’re part of its journey.”
