Hay Festival has today unveiled the final selection for The Platform, an opportunity for creatives aged 21–28 to showcase new work at the world-famous event in Wales.
Free tickets to The Platform events are available now at hayfestival.org/hay-on-wye.
The six successful artists whose work will be featured this year are:
- Emma-Louise Howell — writer (East Anglia)
- Flo Cornall – writer, journalist and poet (Derbyshire)
- Beth Lewis – sound artist and creative technologist (Pembrokeshire)
- Hannah Hoebeke – sculptor (Ghent, Belgium)
- Vignesh Venkataramaiah – spoken word poet, writer and producer (Birmingham)
- Scott Wearing — composer (Ceredigion)
Full participant biographies and statements are available below.
These chosen artists will each share their work with audiences on Friday 29 May in the Festival’s Creative Hub, plus network with established artists over a three-day visit during Hay Festival, which takes place 21–31 May.
The Platform is a Hay Festival initiative to promote and develop young creative talent, supported with funding from the D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust and Garrick Charitable Trust Foundation.
Applications to The Platform were open to a range of art forms, including theatre, poetry, digital art, live arts, film, audio and literature, with a focus on bringing together a diverse and representative group of artists from across the UK.
This year’s work spans themes of identity, environment, community and connection, inviting audiences to engage in immersive soundscapes, intimate conversations and powerful spoken word.
Hay Festival CEO Julie Finch said:
“Hay Festival Global is a charity built on creative collaborations. The Platform is designed to support young artists in building connections, on stage and off, showcasing their work to our Festival audience while facilitating creative collaborations with established artists. These six young artists promise to offer a fresh perspective on how we relate to one another and the world around us, transforming the Festival site into a space for curiosity, reflection, and exchange.”
Flo Cornall said:
“It is rare to find opportunities like this designed to uplift emerging artists and showcase their voice, especially within such a renowned event in the literary calendar as the Hay Festival. I am amped to be around such talent, engage with incredible writers, and spark a few important conversations along the way.”
Hay Festival runs its 39th spring edition in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, with more than 600 events over 11 days, 21–31 May 2026.
Launching the best new fiction and non-fiction books, while sharing insights around global issues, the programme sees more than 600 artists, policymakers, pioneers and innovators take part from around the world.
A series of new initiatives and fresh programming strands feature across the programme:
• My Life in Books events see celebrities open their personal libraries
• Heard at Hay Festival panels spark thought-provoking debates
• America 250 conversations reflect on the changing face of a nation
• The Pleasure List campaign celebrates the joys of reading
• New genre days spotlight bestselling fiction
• Barrel of Laughs sessions spotlight funny people with new books
• Book to Screen events showcase adaptations in the MUBI Cinema
• Debut Discoveries series spotlights new writing talent
• The Platform elevates new creatives
• Matters of Taste demos take food from page to stage
• Creative Industry Insights sessions engage budding young creatives
• South to North Conversations explore international perspectives
Alongside the best new fiction and non-fiction, our changing world is drawn into focus with commentary from leading politicians, economists, historians and scientists, while journalists and commentators will reflect on the UK’s recent local elections.
Nights at the Festival are given over to great music, comedy and entertainment with a renewed focus on innovative, immersive event experiences, while a host of free pop-up activities and performances will delight audiences between sessions.
Free to enter, the Festival’s Dairy Meadows site in the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park will also offer a range of spaces for audiences to explore and enjoy between events, including the Bookshop, BBC Marquee, Wild Garden, Make & Take Hub, a host of exhibitors and market stalls, cafés, and the Family Garden.
Discover the full programme online at hayfestival.org/hay-on-wye. Tickets are on sale now at hayfestival.org/hay-on-wye.
The Platform 2026 participant bios, statements and their work:
EMMA-LOUISE HOWELL
Emma is a writer from East Anglia. Spanning Theatre, Screen and Poetry, she won the Michael Ross Award from RADA for the academy’s Best New Writer and has since been shortlisted for The Stage Innovation Award, Off-West End Playwrights Award, Women in Theatre Lab and International Playwriting Prize. Described as a ‘rattling, rollicking writer’ (The Scotsman) and ‘one of our undoubted stars of the future’ (Broadway Baby), her work has been performed internationally on platforms such as BBC Introducing, Soho Theatre, Pleasance Atmos Magazine and Zebra Festival and is currently in development for screen and stage.
Emma said: “I’ve always looked to Hay Festival as a place where the most exciting writers and thinkers gather and share ideas, so to be included in this year’s line-up feels incredibly surreal. It’s a genuine honour to share my work in such a vital and inspiring cultural hotspot.”
You Told Us To Talk About the Weather
In the past six hours, 90% of Brits have spoken about the weather.
In the past five years, 7000 Brits have been arrested for speaking out about the climate crisis. Emma is here to explore this paradox. Through poems, satire and interviews with climate activists across the UK, You Told Us To Talk About the Weatherunpacks our national obsession with small talk and asks how we can transform these conversations into a tool for meaningful change.
FLO CORNALL
Flo Cornall is a writer, journalist and poet from Derbyshire. Her British Filipino background has nurtured her interest in writing about diaspora and identity; her work often explores the idea of home, and what that can look or feel like. She was a Roundhouse Poetry Slam Finalist in 2025, an Associate Poet at Derby Poetry Festival 2024, and has performed across the UK. Her work as a BBC New Creatives saw the release of CAKEa short film based on a poem she wrote at 18. She’s currently writing her first novel, a satire on tabloid culture.
Flo said: “It is rare to find opportunities like this designed to uplift emerging artists and showcase their voice, especially within such a renowned event in the literary calendar as the Hay Festival. I am amped to be around such talent, engage with incredible writers, and spark a few important conversations along the way.”
Mabuhay Means Welcome
Flooding each other’s stomachs, to eat before a spoonful of speech / that is how we speak across the dining room table. / Try to savour that taste / what a filling conversation it is.
Mabuhay Means Welcome is a live poetry performance that attempts to untangle the knotty reality of hyphenated identity. It’s a love letter to the Philippines from a formerly culturally disconnected member of the diaspora. Blending nostalgic photography and storytelling, Flo Cornall guides audiences into the vibrant bustling streets of the Philippines to explore the ripples of colonialism, good food and family.
BETH LEWIS
Beth Lewis is a sound artist and creative technologist. She creates scores and sound design for live performance, screen and site-specific art and develops interactive installations in XR and other immersive technology. Her work is rooted in creating the opportunity for play and reflection, combining her love of music and the natural world into immersive, interactive playgrounds. She has collaborated with La Biennale di Venezia, Sky Arts and National Dance Company Wales and her work has been performed at Sadler's Wells main stage and Seoul Arts Centre and broadcast by Sky Arts and S4C. She is also a resident of the Pervasive Media Studio and a BAFTA Cymru Jury Member 2025.
Beth said: “I’m so excited to be sharing my coastal sound installation as part of The Platform at Hay Festival. It’s an incredible opportunity to present my work to a wider audience as part of a festival that truly celebrates curiosity and bold, adventurous ideas. I’m so grateful to be welcomed to Hay-on-Wye and I can’t wait for people to experience it!”
Ebb & Flow
Ebb & Flow is a sound installation inspired by rock pools and the act of deep listening. Discover a series of handcrafted cardboard sculptures embedded with speakers, breathing life into immersive coastal landscapes. Come to the rock pool to rest a while and explore the tidal pools, seals, coastal birds and seaweed formations. An invitation to slow down and listen to the seals singing, seabirds calling and lose yourself in a swelling coastal soundscape and ambient folk music as the tide comes in and out. Ebbing and flowing.
HANNAH HOEBEKE
Hannah Hoebeke is a sculptor from Ghent, Belgium, whose practice relocates the traditional studio encounter into social and community environments. Working directly from sitters, she uses the act of sculpting as a method of encounter — a way to slow down, occupy shared space, and open room for deeper conversation. Her projects have taken place in a queer hairdressing school in Argentina, a community centre in Belgium, and a public school in Nepal. In each context, clay becomes both a formal language and a tool for connection. Her work responds to growing social disconnection and increasingly carries an activist dimension. Hoebeke holds an MFA from KASK Ghent and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London (2025).
Hannah said: “I am thrilled to be bringing Tea Talk to Hay Festival, a place of storytellers and shared ideas. Tea Talk slows things down and invites encounter and dialogue, and I cannot think of a better setting for it.”
Tea Talk
Tea Talk is a one-day performance in which tea, conversation, and sculpture come together in a shared experience. Visitors are invited to sit with the artist, engage in conversation, and have their portraits sculpted in clay. Throughout the day, a single block of clay is continuously reshaped — each new face replacing the last, leaving only the final portrait as a trace of all the encounters that preceded it.
VIGNESH VENKATARAMAIAH
Vig, aka Vig’s Poetry, is a Birmingham-based multidisciplinary freelancer, slam-winning spoken word poet, script/screenwriter, host, facilitator and producer. He has featured at major festivals, art exhibitions and on BBC, mainly exploring identity, mental health and cultural narratives through his craft. He is Regional Producer of Poets Palace Brum, part of the Birmingham Poetry Network, Good Company Brum and BBC Asian Network Represents. He’s also on Punch Records’ and Young Minds Youth advisory boards, and a finalist for the IYA Arts and Culture Award, always championing marginalised voices.
Vig is a supporting act for Solfull Poetry in New York, published in The Zephaniah Forest, has internationally screened spoken word short films and audiovisual work in Birmingham Museum.
Vig said: “Being chosen to be one of The Platform’s artists for 2026 is a huge honour. Having applied last year too, it goes to show that you aren’t tossed into the ether if you are unsuccessful. I can’t wait to join the stellar list of names who have graced the stage at Hay Festival.”
In Between Tongues
In Between Tongues is a solo spoken word performance exploring belonging, identity, and the search for home through a neurodivergent, multicultural British lens. Blending personal storytelling with rhythmic wordplay, the set moves between heritage and environment, frankness and vulnerability, capturing the complexity of living between cultures.
Drawing on past work including Bangalore to Britain, It’s Just A Flag and Recipe for a Perfect Dad – it weaves chant, fragmentation, and performance into an immersive experience. Honest and emotionally resonant, In Between Tongues invites audiences to reflect on identity, challenge assumptions, and reconsider what it truly means to feel at home.
SCOTT WEARING
Scott’s research focuses on electronic and alternative forms of musical scores that reshape how performers interact –both with the score itself and with each other. By moving beyond traditional notation, his work explores new ways of guiding performance, often encouraging more dynamic, responsive, and collaborative relationships between performers.
Scott’s music has previously been featured at events such as the Oxford International Song Festival, Electroacoustic Wales, the Jacqueline du Pré’s New Music Weekend and the Michael Finnissy Festival. This June, Scott will present his latest research at the InMusic26 and TPMS conferences. Scott is a graduate of the University of Oxford, previously completing a BMus at Bangor University.
Scott said: “I’m very grateful to have been selected for The Platform. The team have been really helpful and supportive of my project.”
Sonic Networks
Sonic Networks is an immersive audio-visual installation that transforms live video input into dynamic electronic soundscapes. Using the provided phones, participants can explore their environment through the camera lens, discovering a sensory crossover where sight becomes sound.