By Sid Akbar
I’m not writing this from a place of polish. I’m writing it from the shelf – where yet another piece of work, another application, another vital story has been quietly filed away as “unsuccessful”.
Recently, my project Besharam [shame-LESS] was turned down for a Manchester commission. The feedback? It was “solid and strong, but others were stronger”. It’s a line many of us hear all too often, and each time it lands with the same quiet finality. What does it even mean? How do I, as a neurodivergent, queer, British Pakistani artist, take that and turn it into something actionable? Something that helps me grow?
The answer is: I don’t know. And I’m tired of pretending I do.
Being a theatre maker in Manchester – especially one with intersecting marginalisations – means living in a state of constant uncertainty. We spend days and weeks crafting applications, refining our language, cutting down our ideas to fit into strict word counts and rigid formats. We send them off, often having poured ourselves into them, only to sit in limbo, waiting for a reply we’ve already braced ourselves to receive.
And the replies, when they finally come, tend to be variations on the same theme. Good effort, good idea, just not quite good enough – not right now, anyway. It’s disheartening. It chips away at your confidence. You start writing applications knowing full well the odds are stacked against you, knowing the organisation might be swamped, that the process might take longer, that others might have more support, or just be easier to understand on paper.
As someone with ADHD, the application process itself can be exhausting. My thoughts don’t arrive in straight lines. They come in images, instinct, emotion. Trying to distil all of that into neat, fundable language is not just difficult – it feels like a kind of distortion. It’s hard not to internalise the silence or rejection, even though deep down I know it’s more about systems than ability.
And that’s what makes this so painful. I believe in Besharam. I believe in its urgency, its truth, its necessity. It’s a story that speaks to shame, to cultural silence, to the raw and necessary act of living unashamed. I invested everything in it – emotionally, spiritually, financially – and now it just sits there. Not because it’s not good enough, but because there wasn’t enough space. Or time. Or understanding. Or something else vague and just out of reach.
Manchester is a brilliant city for many things. But for independent artists, particularly those of us outside the mainstream – marginalised, working class, neurodivergent, queer, or racialised – it often feels like we’re circling the same doors, knocking endlessly with no answer. Meanwhile, the costs – emotional, financial, mental – keep adding up.
What makes this moment even harder is that Besharam wasn’t unfunded. In 2023, it received support from Bradford Producing Hub, Bradford Council, Theatre in the Mill, Kala Sangam and Arts Council England. It had momentum. It had life. What I’m asking for now isn’t to start again – it’s for the space, time and resources to refine the work. To scale it for touring. To rework parts of the script so it can move, travel, and reach the communities that need it most.
That stage of development – the messy, middle phase – often gets overlooked. We celebrate new commissions and final productions, but rarely talk about what it takes to sustain a project between those points. To revisit it. To reshape it. To make it last.
Right now, I have more proposals waiting in the wings. More ideas I care deeply about. But after this latest rejection, it’s hard to believe they’ll land any differently. Not because the work isn’t strong – this one was strong – but because I’m up against a system that simply doesn’t have enough space, and often doesn’t recognise how much we’ve already done.
So I’m putting this blog out there not just to vent, but to ask: how do we support artists in the continuation of their journeys? How do we make space for refining, returning, reshaping – not just starting from scratch?
I don’t have a neat ending here. I’m still tired. Still hurt. Still working it out. But I know I’m not giving up on Besharam. I know I’m not giving up on the work still waiting inside me. And I know I’m not the only one.
If you’ve felt this too – let’s talk. Let’s share resources. Let’s push for new models. Let’s not let our work gather dust because the structure couldn’t bend to hold us.
We’re still here. We’re still strong.
And we’re not done.
Dhamaka Arts 