Royal Shakespeare Company and Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures are to partner with arts charity IdeasTap to deliver a free national training programme for young people.
Bob Jenkin via Creative Commons (cc by-nc-sa 2.0)
A new programme is aiming to provide comprehensive support for career development to benefit 5,000 talented young people aged 18-30. The scheme, ‘IdeasTap Inspires’, will use a £250k Arts Council England Exceptional Award to develop workshops, master classes, training events and online resources which will be delivered across England, with a view to generating alternative entry routes into creative careers. IdeasTap, an arts charity that supports creative people through opportunities, funding, jobs and career development, is partnering with arts organisations to deliver the programme and will be taking world-class practitioners to locations around the country to share their expertise. Organisations involved include the charitable-arm of Matthew Bourne’s New Adventures, ‘Re:Bourne’ and Magnum Photos, with the disciplines covering theatre, dance, photography and writing. Sir Peter Bazalgette, Chair of ACE, said: “…what stood out for us was the way in which IdeasTap was able to bring together so many organisations, including several in our National portfolio, to create something bigger than the sum of their parts, using digital and multi-platform distribution to reach out in a way that is particularly relevant to the 21st century.”
ACE announced its Exceptional Awards programme in July 2013, and has since made two awards. The first award was given to an intergenerational dance project in Milton Keynes.