Announcing the 2026 The Hot House Cohort

We’re delighted to announce the cohort of The Hot House 2026 writers’ development lab, this year focusing on world building stories and regenerative storyworld design. 

Six new, original pitches will now be created, as the writers have entered an 8-week development phase to work on their long-form TV and feature films ideas. Each project will receive £2,000 from Climate Spring alongside tailored editorial and high-level industry support. As part of the process, each project has been paired with a production company - amongst them Happy Prince, Greenacre Films, and Firebird Pictures - to support the writers with their project development.

Launched in 2022, The Hot House is Climate Spring’s flagship development programme for nurturing fresh voices and climate stories in film and television. The programme aims to stimulate a pipeline of new, engaging and commercially viable climate stories for film and TV, whilst offering industry exposure and development support to screenwriting talent.

Selected from a competitive pool of submissions, the projects each explore different visions of a world beyond fossil fuel and extraction and span a variety of genres and formats reflecting the diverse ways humanity is thinking through and beyond the climate crisis:

‍Nexus by Martha Crow (TV): In a re-wilded London in 2041, a government cybersecurity intern, must throw away the stable life she’s built and work with the enemy to uncover a threat that could destroy the new political system and everything it stands for.

‍Shieling by Rory D. Bentley (Feature Film): A protopian survival story set approximately fifty years in the future, on the remote northern coast of Scotland.

‍The Cairnhaven Anchor by James Rushbrooke (TV): A climate mediator's mission to retrofit a Scottish town implodes when her son bonds with the last holdout, a terminally ill pub owner whose secret past is entangled with her husband's family.

‍The Fifth Flood by Rabina Khan (Feature Film): In 2042 Bangladesh, a visionary climate architect returns to the delta she helped rebuild to lead a rising youth resistance against a powerful tech empire drilling beneath sacred mangroves as a super-cyclone approaches.

‍The Reset by Ciarán Bartlett & Eamann Westland (TV): Spending 20 years in a survival bunker after being pranked into believing the world was going to end, Rob and his girlfriend Amy struggle with their personalities as they reintroduce themselves into a world that has changed, for all the right reasons.

‍The Wilding by francesca Nider (TV): In a post-fossil Britain rebuilt around rewilding, reciprocity, and communal ritual, a teenage girl vanishes during a winter ceremony - pulling an outsider detective into a rural community whose way of life is so beautiful it feels threatening, and whose future rests on a compromise no one wants exposed.

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About the writers

‍Ciarán Bartlett

Ciarán Bartlett is a writer, performer and producer with a wide range of credits across television, radio and live comedy. His screen work includes Late Licence, Live at the Sunflower, BBC Northern Ireland’s Tight Shorts, Soft Border Patrol, and the short-form series BackChat for Dave/UKTV. Alongside his screen work, he has sold out arenas and theatres across Ireland and the UK. He is the creator and executive producer of the upcoming greenlit BBC NI series Botanic Avenue, and has written, produced and starred in Comedians In Chippies Getting Fatter and Chancers, both produced by his company Fat Panda Media, which he runs with his wife Chloe. In 2025, he won the Celtic Media Best Comedy Award for The B-Team, and was nominated for both Best Comedy and Best Writer at the 2025 RTS NI Awards.

Rory D. Bentley

Rory D. Bentley is an award-winning writer-director of British-Punjabi heritage, from Leicester and Edinburgh. His feature Amrit, supported by the BFI and casting with Shaheen Baig (ADOLESCENCE), was selected for the BBC Films, BFI and Creative UK iFeatures programme. His series CUTH - Just A Little Bit Brown was selected for the Independent Film Trust x Sony Pictures UK-USA Creative Corridor. He is an alumnus of BBC Writersroom: Scottish Voices.

His 16mm short SURPRI-! premiered at BFI London Film Festival and won Best Super Short at the British Short Film Awards. His 8mm short Jamella, starring Jamie Demetriou, won first prize at Straight 8. His shorts have screened at BAFTA and Academy qualifying festivals including Edinburgh, Cork, Palm Springs and Flickerfest. He served as Second Unit Director on Raine Allen-Miller's RYE LANE (BFI, Searchlight).

Martha Crow

Martha Crow is a Welsh-born actor, writer and filmmaker from South East London. She trained on The John Burgess Playwriting Course and has written for both stage and screen. In 2024, she was selected as a filmmaking mentee through Film London’s Connect Scheme and her award-winning directorial debut short film, Badger, screened at BAFTA and BIFA-qualifying film festivals, partnering with New York-based anti-harassment charity Right To Be. Her work primarily focuses on romantic storytelling, often crossing genres and exploring imagined worlds.

Rabina Khan

Rabina is a writer working across creative nonfiction, narrative journalism and screenwriting. She is an NCTJ-qualified journalist whose work has appeared in outlets including the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Independent and Yahoo News, often focusing on climate, social justice and finance. She is the author of My Hair is Pink Under This Veil (Biteback, 2021) and has completed a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London with distinction, where she took the screenwriting module as part of the degree, developing a feature film treatment and a short film script.

‍francesca Nider

francesca Nider is an Italian-British screenwriter based in the North York Moors, where battles with inner demons and wild rabbits provide endless inspiration for stories that explore identity, belonging, and mental health across film and TV. A Raindance MA graduate and trained Meisner actress, she brings a performance-led approach to storytelling, grounding her work in psychological truth. She recently participated as a writing duo with her TV Concept about assisted dying in EU-funded scheme Bridging Generations (European Writers Club).

Her feature projects include folk-horror Rabbit Skin, currently in development with an all-female creative team, and The Sins of Our Mothers (Finalist, The Writers Lab UK & Ireland; ScreenCraft Drama Finalist). Her television work includes dark comedy Casa Nostra and eco-comedy Batshit (co-created in a writers’ room).

‍James Rushbrooke

James is a writer based in London, originally from the South West. His debut full length play ‘Tomcat’ won the 2015 Papatango Prize and his most recent ‘Before I’m Dead’ was recently announced as the VCA Award winner for 2026. His favoured writing style blends complex social concepts and explores them through interpersonal relationships. When not writing plays and screenplays, he delivers writing workshops for the Papatango ‘Go Write’ scheme, works at the sharp end of law in a secure mental health facility, and collects first edition books. You can find out more at jamesrushbrooke.co.uk.

‍Eamann Westland

Eamann is a writer known for his sharp, character-driven dialogue and a strong structural sensibility that allows his stories to build and pay off across multiple episodes. His work combines wit, emotional precision, and a keen eye for the rhythms of contemporary life, resulting in scripts that feel both grounded and highly engaging.

He is a co-creator and writer of the Irish-Canadian series Bleed, which is currently in development, and has script edited the greenlit BBC NI series Botanic Avenue. He also wrote a full series for RTÉ, The Lido, which is in development, further demonstrating his ability to sustain tone, character, and narrative momentum over long-form storytelling.