The Arts Foundation announce the four Shortlisted Artists of the Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2025 for Theatre.
The Theatre Award champions theatre designers developing innovative sets or production designs for theatrical presentation.Meet the Shortlist:
Peter Butler specialises in set and costume design, devised theatre making, site-specific performance and theatre design for new writing and classic stories.
Ethan Cheek is a performance designer working across theatre, film, and music. Their collaborative practice is rooted in the concept of total theatre.
TK is a technically inclined theatre designer producing work that simultaneously comforts and disturbs, and the primary impetus for his design work is sociopolitical.
Khadija Raza is a theatre designer based in London. Khadija’s practice is rooted in collaboration and a love for stories, for characters, connecting the forms of art, installations, and sculpture together.
With thanks to our independent Jury members: Anna Fleischle, Production Set and Costume Designer; Production & Technical Director, The National Theatre, Paul Handley; and CEO of Shakespeare’s Globe, Stella Kanu who said:
“It was a joy to be part of the Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2025 for Theatre. As a jury, we are acutely aware of the many challenges creatives face at this time. Awards like this are vital, not only to sustain promising practitioners – but enable them to flourish within the arts and cultural sector. Each of the shortlisted creatives has a unique and thoughtful approach to their work and crucially, a clear sense of their own trajectory. We are incredibly excited to see how all of their stunning work develops and respective careers progress.”
Paul Handley added:
“This year’s shortlist for the Arts Foundation Futures Awards for Theatre is exemplary. Each of the creatives’ practices holds a robust combination of the personal and political. I was taken by Peter Butler’s ability to convey astute social commentary with intellect without sacrificing art and Ethan Cheek’s extremely mature approach and body of work. TK Hay’s ambitious portfolio is both rigorous and generous, and Khadija Raza has navigated the industry with resilience, determination and artistic precision. All of the designers are generating inventive work under enormously difficult constraints, both from an industry and cost of living perspective. As a jury, we were all enormously impressed by their ingenuity and commitment to the art form.”
The Arts Foundation has a long history of supporting theatre and the performing arts, and Mary Jane Edwards, Director of The Arts Foundation says:
“With many theatre workers encountering barriers to career progression in the current climate, we are so pleased to support the four shortlisted artists whose work demonstrates such energetic originality. Each of the designers has pursued unique, sensitive and diverse approaches to set and production design, from conception through to production.”
The Theatre Award is generously supported in partnership with The David Collins Foundation, with development support from The Maria Björnson Memorial Fund.
Read more about this year’s awards.
The Arts Foundation is a registered charity that supports individual artists and creatives in the UK with unconditional financial Fellowships of £20,000 through the Arts Foundation Futures Awards. Since it was founded in 1993, the Arts Foundation has awarded over £2 million to the most promising artists in the UK at a pivotal moment in their careers to enable them to concentrate on their creative development, experiment, and realise their artistic potential.