As a new blue plaque pays tribute to Pinter's Hackney, and Barry Reckord is commemorated in Shepherd's Bush, there has never been a better time to invest in the next generation of writers

How do you celebrate a playwright's life and and work? Obviously by staging their stuff. But this weekend I'm involved in a couple of commemorations of the illustrious dead which suggest there are other tangible things one can do.

On Saturday, along with a number of Harold Pinter's relatives and friends, I'll be going to Hackney, London, for the unveiling of a blue plaque outside the house in Thistlewaite Road where he spent his early years. It promises to be quite a party, but also a reminder of the extent to which Hackney shaped Pinter's imagination. He lived through the blitz, learned to love literature and sport at Hackney Downs grammar school and, as a postwar teenager, knocked about the streets with his own self-consciously intellectual gang: it's a well-recorded fact that, since they were mostly Jewish, they were often harassed by itinerant fascist thugs and that Pinter, early on, learned that survival depended on skilled linguistic evasion-tactics.

The following night I'll be at the Bush theatre to take part in a different kind of celebration: one for the Jamaican playwright, Barry Reckord, who died last December. Pinter is a household name: Reckord's fame is more confined. But, arriving in England in 1950 and staying here until 1970, he was part of a wave of Caribbean writers who left their mark on drama, fiction and poetry. As Michael Buffong, who is directing Sunday's celebration for Talawa and the London Hub points out, Barry Reckord's contribution is "undeniable but sadly underrepresented".

Of the 14 plays Reckord wrote, one, in particular, stands out. Called Skyvers, it was first staged at the Royal Court in 1963 and offers an astonishingly rich picture of life in a London comprehensive. Its portrait of a group of school leavers facing dead-end jobs, but dreaming of life as rock stars or footballers is both true to its times and eerily prophetic. And, in its undercurrent of violence and portrait of a loner who tries to resist the mob mentality of his peers, Reckord's play uncannily prefigures Edward Bond's Saved. It is one of the key plays of the 1960s and, although written about a group of white kids, Buffong plans to show on Sunday how it could equally well be about black teenagers.

It's good to see Reckord at last being given his due. But one way to celebrate a playwright is to encourage his successors. So Sunday night's wingding, in which Don Warrington, Yvonne Brewster and Max Stafford-Clark will be taking part, will see the launch of the Barry Reckord Bursary. Open to black, Asian and minority ethnic artists, this is designed to encourage new playwrights, and the lucky recipient will get cash, a co-commission from Talawa and the Bush, and the possibility of being published by Oberon Books. I can't think of a better way to honour a playwright's memory, as also happens with the Harold Pinter award, than by investing in the future. So, if you want to give a young writer a bit of a boost, be at the Bush theatre at 7.30pm on Sunday, where all box-office takings will go to the bursary.