Late Windrush victim’s compensation to fund prize for British Caribbean playwrights

The first prize dedicated to discovering and developing British Caribbean playwrights has been launched using compensation awarded to a Windrush victim who died before receiving it. The Windrush Prize for British Caribbean Playwrights, believed to be the first major prize of its kind in 30 years, has been established by Shereener Browne, the founder and artistic director of Orísun Productions and a former barrister, in memory of her late father, Myron Brown. The prize will award £10,000 to a UK-based British Caribbean playwright over the age of 18. The winning play will receive a minimum three-week run at the Arcola theatre in 2027, co-produced by Arcola and Orísun Productions, and will be published by Methuen Drama. The prize is open to represented and unrepresented playwrights, with submissions required to be unpublished, full-length plays. The launch of the prize is one of a number of events taking place across the UK to mark Windrush Day, which commemorates the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in Essex in June 1948, bringing passengers from the Caribbean who helped rebuild postwar Britain. Browne’s father came to Britain from St Kitts and Nevis in the 1960s, and spent decades living and working in the UK before being told he was no longer a British citizen when he tried to renew his passport. He was one of thousands of mainly Black Britons who were wrongly classed as illegal migrants and stripped of citizenship rights over decades. …