ACE names recipients of £2m repayable grants for theatre touring

Dance and theatre producers have been awarded repayable grants from Arts Council England (ACE) as part of a £2m pilot scheme to incentivise touring to areas outside London.

The Incentivising Touring Scheme is ACE’s first repayable grant scheme and aims to reduce the financial risk involved in touring productions while giving boards and investors increased confidence and motivation to support tours, and helping attract further investment.

Recipients include The National Theatre’s football-based drama Dear England, which will tour 16 venues across England in a co-production with JAS Theatricals, as well as the classic musical Top Hat, originally staged at Chichester Festival Theatre and produced by Kenny Wax Productions and Jonathan Church Theatre Productions, which will head out on a UK tour.

Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s revival of Fiddler on the Roof has also received financing for a tour to 18 venues across the UK and Ireland, co-produced with Trafalgar Theatre Productions and Brian and Dayna Lee.

Producers receiving repayable grants for tours that have not yet been announced are Rambert, Eleanor Lloyd Productions, Wise Children, David Pugh Limited and Melting Pot.

Profitability ‘expected but not guaranteed’

Launched in November 2024, the pilot offers repayable grants of up to 25% of a production’s capitalisation costs, to a maximum of £500,000, with financing available across two rounds, with a total budget of £5m.

Applicants must be able to demonstrate that, with ACE investment, recoupment will be achieved at between 55% and 75% of box office receipts across the tour. 

Recipients repay the grant when a certain threshold of income is achieved, partially or fully, depending on how much of the capitalisation costs are recouped by income from the box office.

To qualify, successful applicants must visit at least four venues across England, outside of inner London. Beyond that, tours can also include dates in inner London, the rest of the UK, international venues and venues owned by the applicant organisation or its parent company.

ACE said that over 92% of people in England will be within a 60-minute drive of venues where a production backed by the fund will be presented, and plans to develop the scheme “in real time to meet the needs of the sector” with a second round launching in July and decisions due in October 2025.

The funding body is also due to publish findings from a study into the current touring landscape for theatre, dance, music, and combined arts activities in indoor venues later this year.

Hannah Lake, director of touring at ACE, said the Incentivising Touring fund is designed to reduce the risk for producers who wish to tour larger-scale work where “profitability is expected but not guaranteed”, adding: “We are already hearing how producers are using the scheme to evolve business models and build resilience for the future”.

Generating ‘soft power’ in town centres

At Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which does not receive regular funding from ACE, executive director James Pidgeon said that beyond Fiddler on the Roof, the financing will also “indirectly support” Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s future producing capacity as well as the resilience of its non-subsidised, not-for-profit business model.

Commercial producers Kenny Wax and Jonathan Church said that while the West End is enjoying “a halcyon period”, the regional touring market “hasn’t quite yet fully recovered from Covid”. They hope that their tour of Top Hat will help “encourage audiences back into town centres”, generating “soft power with restaurants, bars and transport systems all benefitting from packed theatres”.

Receiving houses have also welcomed the funding announcement with Marianne Locatori, CEO of Newcastle Theatre Royal, where Dear England will play, commenting: “As an independent, not-for-profit regional theatre that does not receive any regular public subsidy, ensuring large scale productions of the highest quality are able to tour to our venue and region is incredibly important.

“Not only so audiences have access to enjoy world-class productions on our stage, but also the resulting positive economic impact on our city’s retail, visitor and hospitality economy, alongside the public social benefit via the engagement and community work we are planning in partnership with the National Theatre”.