Programme Notes

Built backstage, for everyone out front.

Limelight is a small UK studio building the app it always wanted, for the kind of shows it grew up backstage on. School halls, village hall amateurs, Edinburgh transfers, end-of-term showcases. The bit that brings everyone home alive.

Act I · The origin

Six WhatsApp groups, three lost scripts and one stage manager in tears.

Limelight started, as most apps secretly do, with a complaint. The founder's partner was running a school musical and lost three full Sundays to comms admin: chasing cast on WhatsApp, re-sending the call sheet to the people who'd missed the WhatsApp, printing it again for the ones who didn't check it, fielding the questions that came in via every other channel.

By the second Sunday, the question stopped being "how is this still the best we can do" and started being "why hasn't anyone built the alternative". By the third Sunday, the alternative had a name.

We knew theatre because we did theatre. We knew the app could exist because nobody had built it yet. The bet was that doing it properly - safeguarding-first, organisation-aware, designed for British schools and societies instead of US frats - would beat the obvious shortcuts. Limelight is what came out the other end.

Act II · What we believe

Three principles, printed on the bag.

Safeguarding is the floor, not the ceiling.

If it doesn't pass the DSL's first question, the rest doesn't matter. We start there and build everything else on top.

Volunteers deserve professional tools.

The director of a school musical does more comms in a month than most middle managers. The tools should match.

Every show is worth doing well.

Year 7 Bugsy Malone, am-dram Iolanthe, fringe Spring Awakening. We treat them all like the West End, because to the cast they are.
Act III · The decision

Not a startup. A small studio with a plan.

Limelight Labs is not chasing a Series A. We are a small UK-registered studio building one product properly. Pricing per company, not per cast member. Charity discounts for societies. Annual invoicing for school finance teams. No VC clock telling us to optimise the wrong things.

That means we are slower than a venture-backed competitor would be, and we are okay with that. It also means the people you email get a reply from one of the people who built the thing.

The cast

Who you'll actually be talking to.

A short company. Most of us wear several hats, which is a thing we have in common with the schools and societies we build for.

Founder Dom Conte Builds the app, answers the support emails, occasionally goes back on stage when somebody is short an ensemble member. Based in London. Email: dom@limelightlabs.co.uk.
Safeguarding adviser Ada Stanton-Reed Former DSL at a UK independent senior school. Reviews our safeguarding policy quarterly and stress-tests the audit log against real incident scenarios.
Theatre adviser Iain McAlister Twenty years directing am-dram and youth theatre across the north of England. Tells us when our product instincts are wrong - which is often.
Open call - - - We add advisers and team members as the show grows. If you teach drama, lead a society, or build software for under-served verticals and want to help, come say hello.
P.S. If you've ever spent a Sunday rebuilding a school production's call sheet, you'd probably make a good Limelight adviser. Drop us a line.
Where

Built in the UK, for British productions.

Limelight Labs is a UK-registered company based in London. British English throughout the product. School holidays understood, half-term in the calendar, GCSE season treated with the gravity it deserves.

Curtain

Ready to raise the curtain?

Bring a question to dom@limelightlabs.co.uk - or just download the app and have a poke.

Download on the App Store Get it on Google Play