Arts Foundation Reveals Winners Of £115,000 Awards

The Arts Foundation has revealed the five recipients of The Arts Foundation Futures Awards at an Awards Ceremony on Monday 2 February at Kings Place, London.

The annual Arts Foundation Futures Awards support the UK's most promising artists and creatives at a pivotal moment in their career, providing £115,000 in unconditional grant funding, awarding five transformative £20,000 fellowships, with all shortlisted artists receiving £1,000 towards the development of their practice.⁠

The five recipients of the £20,000 fellowships are:

Theatre: Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu

Music: William Marsey

Visual Art: Zein Majali

Film: Dorothy Allen-Pickard

Literature: Fahad Al-Amoudi

The five winning fellows received their prizes from the judges at an awards ceremony, featuring a welcome address from renowned poet and novelist Ben Okri and a live performance from Festival Voices, conducted by Gregory Batsleer, the Arts Foundation's Choral Conductor Fellow of 2015.

The Arts Foundation doubled its grant-giving in 2025 to ensure its work continues to have the same life-changing impact and responds to inflation, the ongoing cost of living crisis and low artist income precarity experienced across the contemporary arts in the UK. The increase in the fellowship award saw the foundation become one of the UK's largest unconditional funders of individual artists, unique in its support across art forms - from Dance, Design, Film, Literature, Music, and Theatre to Visual Art.

Theatre Fellow: Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu

• Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu directs the UK premiere of Chadwick Boseman's Deep Azure at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe (7 February - 11 April 2026)

Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu is a British-Ghanaian theatremaker whose work stretches the imagination of his audiences with his unique brand of storytelling. He was nominated for an Olivier in 2022 for his work on For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When The Hue Gets Too Heavy by Ryan Calais Cameron. Tristan's awards include: 2019 JMK Young Director Award, 2022 Black British Theatre Award for Best Director, and 2025 UK Theatre Award for Best Children's Show. In 2026, Tristan will direct the UK premiere of Deep Azure by late Academy Award and BAFTA-nominated actor and writer Chadwick Boseman, opening 7 February - 11 April at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe.

The Theatre Award champions visionary theatre directors developing extraordinary theatrical productions across any genre.⁠ Jury member, theatre and film director, Rufus Norris, said:

Music Fellow: William Marsey

• William Marsey's Man with Limp Wrist receives its US premiere by the LA Phil conducted by Thomas Adès at the Walt Disney Concert Hall (6-8 February 2026)

William Marsey is a UK-based composer. His music has been described as vivid, unsettling, distinctive and strangely touching. William's music has been commissioned and performed internationally, including by the LA Phil and BBC Arts, with performances by Royal Northern Sinfonia, The Hallé, and Thomas Adès. William was born in Hartlepool and studied composition at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Music, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He was nominated for a British Composer Award in 2018 and an Ivor Novello Composers Award in 2023. He is currently showing a unique, generative soundtrack, which changes week to week as part of Cicadian Bloom at Seoul Museum of Art, South Korea, open until 22 March 2026. William will present the US premiere of Man with Limp Wrist at LA Phil on 6-8 February 2026, followed by a presentation in Oslo, with Norwegian Radio Orchestra, cond. Finnegan Downie-Dear on 9 September 2026. He will also share a full concert of his piano works at 1901 Arts Club, with Joseph Havlat on 9 June 2026, and a concert of his songs with Shadwell Opera in Summer 2026.

This year's Music Award support exceptional composers scoring contemporary classical works of any genre.⁠ Jury member, writer, journalist and broadcaster, Tom Service, said:

Visual Art Fellow: Zein Majali

• Zein Majali will participate in the 2026 edition of the Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement in Tunis (14 October - 15 November 2026)

Zein Majali is a Jordanian-Palestinian sound and visual artist whose work explores the collision of technology with a rapidly evolving political landscape, with an interest in a post-colonial and globalised Middle East. Her work examines sense-making in the wake of narrative collapse, brought on by the disorienting effects of digital life. Her practice spans audiovisual performance, moving image, sound, sculpture, and computational processes. She works with found material, synthetic imagery, and live sound, often developing projects as modular systems that shift between installation, performance, and online circulation. Her work has been presented at institutions including the V&A, Somerset House Studios, Showroom, Ibraaz, and the ICA. Majali completed an MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art in 2022 and holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Tufts University. Formerly an engineer, she turned to artistic practice out of an urgency to archive and examine accelerated cultural and political shifts in the Arab world.

The Visual Art Award supports groundbreaking artists working across a broad range of visual arts and interdisciplinary art form practices, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and artist moving image. Jury member and Director, Frieze London, Eva Langret, said:

Film Fellow: Dorothy Allen-Pickard

• Dorothy Allen-Pickard is currently developing her debut feature, supported by Doc Society, due for release in Summer 2026.

Dorothy Allen-Pickard works across narrative, documentary and theatrical modes of filmmaking, and her collaborative approach is often inspired by her protagonists' lived experiences. Currently, her projects focus on state systems of control and the possibilities of collective resistance. She tackles complex subjects head-on, with an intimacy, warmth and an unflinching gaze. She has a particular interest in blurring the line between performance and reality, and is a founding member of Breach Theatre, and an associate artist of Kestrel Theatre, who run theatre and film workshops in prisons. Dorothy's work has screened at festivals including London Film Festival, Hot Docs, Clermont Ferrand, Palm Springs, Doc NYC, and Sheffield DocFest, and on news and broadcast channels including PBS, Guardian Documentaries and BBC iPlayer. She has been awarded Best UK Short at Open City Doc Festival and 16 Days 16 Films, a Special Mention at Oberhausen, Grand Prix at Arts Convergence, shortlisted for a Grierson, and received many Vimeo Staff Picks.

The Film Award supports exceptional early-stage career filmmakers, and this year, we are highlighting emotive and inventive storytellers working in non-fiction. Jury member and director, writer, and producer, Asif Kapadia, said:

Literature Fellow: Fahad Al-Amoudi

Fahad Al-Amoudi is a writer and editor. His work is published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Wasafiri, The London Magazine, and Mizna. He is the winner of the White Review Poet's Prize 2022 and has been shortlisted for the Brunel International African Poets Prize 2022. Fahad is an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation and a graduate of the Writing Squad. His debut pamphlet, when the flies come (ignitionpress, 2023), was selected as a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice 2023 and was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award.

The Literature Award supports inventive independent writers who are pushing the boundaries of the medium of poetry.⁠ Jury member and poet, Imtiaz Dharker, said:

The awards mark over 30 years of the Arts Foundation's support for independent artists in the UK since it was founded in 1993, and whose alumni include eminent artistic practitioners, such as Wayne McGregor, Ali Smith, Asif Kapadia, Rufus Norris, Alice Oswald, Carol Morley and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

The Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2026 Shortlisted Artists included:

Film: Myrid Carten, Jessi Gutch, and Alice Russell

Literature: Yanita Georgieva, Lucy Mercer, and Camille Ralphs

Music: Nneka Cummins, Cassie Kinoshi, and Sasha Scott

Theatre: Annie Kershaw, Craig McCorquodale, and Hannah Noone

Visual Art: Mark Corfield-Moore, Jesse Pollock, and Shaqúelle Whyte