Kirsty Taylor announced as 2024 Kay Mellor Fellow

We are delighted to announce Kirsty Taylor as the recipient of the 2024 Kay Mellor Fellowship.

The Fellowship was created in partnership with the award-winning Leeds writer Kay Mellor in 2019 and was first awarded to Bradford writer Kat Rose Martin in 2020. It continues in memory of Kay, who passed away in 2022, with a new three year investment from BBC North, Leeds City Council, Rollem Productions and Leeds Playhouse. 

Through her poetry and spoken word, Kirsty has always been a champion of her home city of Bradford, showcasing and giving voice to its unheard stories. Her work champions those traditionally underrepresented on stage and screen through humour, drama and exploring non-traditional form. She was part of the team who helped Bradford  win the coveted  Year of Culture for 2025. Her debut play Cashy C’s: The Musical was performed in a non-traditional theatre space – a former frozen food store in Bradford city centre – and was set in a recreated cash convertors, exploring the multiple lives of those who passed through the shop.

During her Fellowship, Kirsty will explore stories of adoption and severance from the perspective of birth families, working with local birth mother groups to research and develop both a play and TV pitch which tells the stories of how and why children get taken into care, with authenticity, intricacy and integrity.

In addition to the Fellowship, Leeds Playhouse launched The Kay Mellor Fund in 2023, to raise money to nurture local writers – something that was always very close to Kay’s heart – through its industry-leading Furnace Artist Development programme. This fund will support locally rooted writers through bespoke investment, mentoring and training opportunities.