Who Cares Promo ©The Other Richard
The 2019 SIT-UP Award has been awarded to LUNG and The Lowry in partnership with Gaddum for its production Who Cares currently moving audiences at Summerhall as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Who Cares is a gripping verbatim theatre production based on a year of interviews that offers a rare insight into the lives of young carers from Salford. The play aims to help
identify ‘hidden’ young carers in society and signpost them to support available through local young carers services.
 
Helen Monks Co-Artistic Director of LUNG said‘We are delighted to have received the Sit-Up Award for Who Cares. In the UK, 1 in 12 young people care for someone. The youngest registered young carer in Salford at the moment is 4. But the local support for these young people across England varies drastically and can sometimes be almost non-existent. We believe they deserve more ‘
 
Matt Woodhead-Co-Artistic Director of LUNG added: ‘None of this would have been possible without the 4 young carers and their families who so bravely shared their stories for this verbatim play, supported by Salford Young Carers Service (Gaddum). Thanks to The Sit Up Award, their message can now be spread far and wide: if you are a young carer, you are not on your own.’
 
The SIT-UP Awards were set up to encourage productions which had a social message to engage further with their audiences whether that be to change their attitudes and
behaviours, to support related charities and initiatives or because they were directly affected by the issue presented.
 
The £5,000 Award will be used to further the petition started by the company to improve the rights of young carers and to extend the reach of the message into schools. The SIT-UP Awards felt that Who Cares had made a concerted effort before and during their run to extend the impact of their message beyond the final curtain and had developed coherent and realistic plans of how to take it forward after the run.

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