Invest in the Gateway Writing Festival 2026!

Aim

Providing new writers the community and resources they need to develop their skills and break into the theatre industry.

Providing the next step for Scotland's early career creatives. Each year Gateway brings together the most exciting new theatre makers to stage gripping, boundary pushing and exceptional new plays in partnership with Capital Theatres and Queen Margret University. We connect exciting new writers with directors, actors, stage managers and a production team. We also source rehearsal spaces, technical support, marketing and a venue to showcase their plays, completely free of charge to our artists.

Our fourth writing festival will display six brand new plays made possible through the incredible hard work of 60 early career theatre makers. Our support model is focused on giving upcoming creatives a space to develop their skills within a professional atmosphere and helping them break into the industry with opportunities beyond the festival such as scratch nights, networking and connecting our creatives to that next opportunity by introducing them to talent agents, producers and other writing opportunities. 

However, all of this support comes at a cost while we are incredibly lucky to have support from Queen Margaret University and the Santander Enterprise Fund Gateway is currently a volunteer led company with a very small amount of funding as we continue to develop and professionalise. We need your support to ensure we can provide the best possible experience for our incredible artists and audience. Your support will mean we can do as much as possible  to alleviate financial barriers for our artists in our current financial position. 

We need your assistance to continue this vision and allow gateway to continue to support such a large number of plays with so many resources. It will help with those needing to fill that gap, for example, the festival acted as an essential development pad for Mary: A Gig Theatre Show, which transitioned from our early pipelines into a critically acclaimed, sell-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. By taking calculated risks on raw talent and equipping them with full-cycle support, we are fundamentally altering how early-career creatives navigate the industry, moving them from isolated self-production to sustainable, high-profile career paths.

Your support will allow us to:

• Support the writers and creative teams involved in the 2026 festival financially.
• Set and props budget
• Professional intimacy coordinator 
• Van hire
• Provide a small wage for our core team of producers, technical team, stage management, marketing and development team.
• It will give us the freedom to continue the companies expansion 

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 1st November 2026 at 12:00pm