Keisha Thompson, a Manchester-based maths educator, writer, performer and producer is the fifth winner of the annual DARE Art Prize.

DARE, a collaboration between Opera North and the University of Leeds, is the first partnership of its kind in the UK, and aims to build collaborations between the arts and higher education. By fusing the respective academic and artistic prowess of the University and Opera North, DARE aims to inspire and stimulate new ways of thinking and working by offering learning programmes, fellowships, scholarships and more.

Thompson’s winning project, DeCipher, aims to make the subject of mathematics more accessible to everyone, calling on her enjoyable formative experiences of the subject in puzzles and games to do so. She is looking to create an interactive performance piece which explores the power dynamics attached to mathematics as content, history, pedagogy, and culture. Her work also acknowledges that the history of mathematics needs to be questioned, citing that Asian and African voices having effectively been forgotten in the classroom. 


This is Keisha Thompson’s second time working with Opera North, having previously been awarded a residency in 2021 to develop a play called The Bell Curve, which explored the ethics of DNA hacking technology. Since then, she has been CEO and Artistic Director of Contact in Manchester, Chair of radical arts funding body, Future’s Venture Foundation, and a Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. She first began working on DeCipher last year, as an Artist Researcher with Singapore-based Esplanade Theatre.

Thompson will be working with scientists and mathematicians from the University of Leeds and said, ‘It was such a joy to find a commission like the DARE Art Prize with partners that understand my passion for creative mathematical pedagogy … I know that the process will push me to take my ideas to the next level.’