Funding Opportunity

theatre works! School Theatre Trip Grant

What our grants support
Our grants support access to theatre for children and young people. We pay for theatre tickets, transport, and related educational activities such as post-show Q&A sessions and backstage tours to enable schools to experience live performance. This can be for a school trip to a theatre or a touring company visiting a venue or school.

We do not expect to pay more than £15 per theatre ticket and request applicants request education rate tickets.

Eligible productions

We support applications for professional productions only. These can be musicals, plays and pantomimes. We do not offer grants towards, dance, choir or opera productions.

If the production is curriculum-related, we will only fund places for the students in receipt of Pupil Premium/Free School Meals.

Seeing different types of productions

We like to support projects that reach a large number of children. Touring companies can be an excellent way to expose a larger audience to the theatre especially if they visit schools or regional venues.

We want children and young people to be exposed to a broad spectrum of plays. When you apply for grants over time, we encourage you to look at a range of plays. For example, if you apply for a musical one year, the next time you might apply for a different performance type. Note, we have limited funds for pantomimes.

Requirements

Schools must not have received a grant from theatre works! in the previous calendar year and must:
1. Have 40% + Pupil Premium/Free School Meals and/or 25% + SEND
We support children and young people aged 7-16. Schools with a minimum of 40% PP/FSM and/or minimum 25% SEND are eligible to apply for funding.

Theatre/Touring Company applicants must also select schools that meet the minimum criteria of 40% PP/FSM or 25% SEND.

We check applications against the latest available published government figures of PP/FSM or equivalent regional measure (eg.SIMD) and SEND for each school.

2. Be located outside of the M25
In England, we support schools based outside of the M25, we also support schools in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

If you are a London-based theatre you can apply for funding, as long as the children you support come from schools outside the M25.

If you are a professional touring company without a fixed venue and your production will visit eligible schools outside of London (meeting our PP/SEND criteria), you can apply for funding.

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