2026 Oram Awards Open Call Announcement

The Oram Awards returns in 2026 to celebrate the unusual, the unique, and the unfiltered creative worlds of women and gender-diverse artists experimenting with sound, music and technology.

This year we seek to award 5 artists with bursaries of £1,500 each, mentorship and on-going support from the Orams team and wider community.

Following on from the energy of our grassroots tour at the end of 2025 in celebration of Daphne Oram’s centenary, we hope to reach artists in previously unreached regional areas and encourage applicants from far and wide across the UK.

We will be awarding two artists based in England, plus an artist from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We make a commitment to ensure at least two of the selected artists identify as disabled. We are happy to be partnering with Drake Music to support disabled artists as best we can through our application process and beyond. We acknowledge that improving access and inclusivity is a continuous learning journey and welcome any feedback on this.

In the spirit of Daphne Oram, if you have a unique approach to sound making, if you experiment in an unusual way, if you are bravely unfiltered- we are looking for you!

We welcome artists from all kinds of backgrounds, pathways, experiences and existences to apply.

You don’t have to be a performer, you could be an engineer or producer.
You don’t have to be from academia.
You don’t need to have had a level of ‘success’- whatever that means!
We select purely on artistic merit and a clear drive to create more.

To apply you must:

Identify as woman/trans/non binary or gender diverse
Be aged 18+
Be based in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Applications are open from 09:00 on June 15th until 23:59 on 19th July (5 weeks).

Access support is available to those who require it. You can click the ‘Access’ tab on our website for some basic information on this, which will be updated when our application goes live.

Please contact palm@oramawards.com if you have any questions relating to access.

Applicants will be notified on Thursday 13th August

Application link (this will go live on this page on 15th June at 9am)

Join our mailing list or follow us on instagram @theoramawards for news and updates.

Read/download the full Press Release pdf

Oram Awards is a PRS Foundation Talent Development Network Partner supported by PPL.