Affordable housing for the storytellers of tomorrow

In this blog, Sofie Mason and Diana Jervis-Read, founders of Off West End Plays & Playwrights, highlight the challenges facing young underprivileged writers, along with the charity's plans to establish a network of 'Omnihosts' offering affordable rooms for writers to rent across London.

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Amid the enormity of the housing crisis, playwrights from underprivileged backgrounds are often overlooked, but many are talented writers who find themselves unjustly and disastrously priced out of their homes and careers.

As a charity supporting the next generation of writers, Off West End Plays & Playwrights (OWEPP) seeks to level the playing field for talented writers who need help breaking through the ‘class’ ceiling. We recognise the urgent need to ensure that aspiring storytellers do not come solely from one narrow, privileged path. That is why we are encouraging homeowners with a spare room to join our campaign and help these writers.

The hard facts

Last year, the Office for National Statistics reported that the proportion of workers in the creative industries from working-class backgrounds has shrunk by half to just 7.9% over the last 40 years. This is startlingly low, especially as the Social Mobility Barometer reports 48% of adults identify as working class.

In many cases, living in London is crucial to any playwright’s career, with 62% of jobs and opportunities in the arts based in London and the South East. Yet writers from low-income backgrounds are rapidly being priced out of the capital, with London rents rising by an average of 32% since 2019.

Doing more means finding homes

Central to OWEPP's work is the Adopt A Playwright Award – a £10K grant providing an underprivileged writer of talent with financial support to help advance their career. Since its establishment in 2008, this annual award has helped aspiring writers achieve significant success. Our recent winners include Ryan Calais Cameron, whose play Retrograde started in a fringe venue and transferred to the West End in 2025; Sarah Grochala, who went on to win the 2024 Women’s Prize for Playwrighting; and Olga Braga, whose play Donbas won the 2025 International Playwright Award and had a sell-out run at Theatre 503 this year.

In response to the escalating housing and cost-of-living crisis, it quickly became clear to us that supporting just one winner each year was not enough to change the demographics of our culture’s storytellers. As such, we explored additional ways to help, including expanding support to 6 runners-up every year, who can access a range of support (such as financial assistance for travel costs or writing courses, and introductions to agents and key industry figures).

Importantly, we also sought to find a way to make it affordable for our talented writers to live in London, enabling them to establish industry contacts, hone their skills and progress their careers in theatre, TV or film – before going back to live in a more affordable part of the UK. Thanks to a generous research grant from Commonweal, we conducted a feasibility study to explore ways to offer genuinely affordable rented properties for our writers.

Solutions – The Writers’ Block

OWEPP’S long-term goal is to secure fundraising to obtain a lease on a multi-occupancy building for a peppercorn rent. In the interim, we have partnered with the Omnibus Theatre Clapham to pilot our Writers’ Block scheme, offering writers daytime access to free writing hubs while we develop a cluster of hosts offering affordable accommodation.

We are working to establish a network of hosts across London to offer spare rooms at affordable rents of £500 a month or less for a period of 12 months or longer. The response has been delightful. Hesitant at first to share their home with a stranger, the homeowners we contacted through the Omnibus audience database (calling them Omnihosts), gradually embraced the idea of living with a quiet, hardworking and self-sufficient writer.

Affordable spare room offered by Omnihost.

“It's such a joy having playwrights come to stay with us and it's never a hassle at all. Most of the time, they just write, but when we cross over at meal times, many an interesting conversation takes place. We love it! I especially love my kids being exposed to such a range of creative people, often from outside their London bubble.” - Omnihost in Crouch End.

“All is going fabulously well with Emma, despite a very small 2-bedroom house. She is hardly ever here and is so hardworking and well-organised – she is the perfect flatmate!”  - Omnihost in Camberwell.

The Omnibus Theatre Clapham has generously allowed us to utilise their building as a daytime space for individuals to write, socialise and access opportunities in London. Additionally, OWEPP has built a 9m x 3m log cabin in the Omnibus garden, providing writers with an oasis of calm and quiet. This was made possible thanks to a consortium of well-known established writers such as Sally Wainwright and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who raised £40k to build and equip the writer’s cabin.

This one-year scheme will initially involve the 55 playwrights who have won or been runners-up of the Adopt A Playwright Award but OWEPP has plans to expand and accept applications from talented writers nationwide. Most important of all, we hope to encourage other theatres to replicate this model to support aspiring working-class writers. 

The testimony of our writers speaks for itself:

“As a young writer from the East Midlands, the fight to get established in this industry has felt relentless: years of unpaid work, closed doors and extortionate living costs in London have frequently priced me out of a career that I felt I hadn’t even had a chance to begin. The Writers’ Block scheme has been a genuine lifeline. At a crucial time in my career, this scheme has offered affordable accommodation, an undisturbed place to write, and an immensely supportive network that’s not only made me a better writer but given me the security, foundations and confidence to start building a viable, lasting career. I quite honestly don’t know where I would be without it.”

We hope this pilot will also further inform our decision on which building would best fit our aims and needs, as we continue to search for a multi-occupancy building to transform. Despite our best efforts, we have been repeatedly turned down, including our recent approach to Southwark Council regarding the possibility of repurposing one of the many primary schools they are in the process of closing. We are keen to have an imaginative approach to any building of 6 or more possible bedrooms.

Why this matters?

Investing in affordable housing options for young underprivileged storytellers is crucial not only for their future but for society as a whole. By creating a level playing field, we ensure that diverse voices can contribute to society's cultural landscape and to the richness of the stories we can hear.

I conclude with two reflective quotes:

"Theatre is a barometer of a country's greatness or its decline."

These words by Spanish poet and playwright, Federico Garcia Lorca, highlight the importance of inclusivity in the arts.

Theatre has long been regarded as vital to society, serving as a mirror that reflects culture, sparks empathy, and fosters connection through live storytelling. As English theatre director, Sir Peter Hall once wrote,

“Theatre is a community’s live debate with itself … trading in that dangerous chemistry of interaction, imagination and make-believe.”

If you’re interested in learning more about our work, offering a spare room, or becoming one of our ‘family’ of Angels who give anything between £100 and £1K a year, please email us at sofiemason@tiscali.co.uk.