More than 200 theatre venues in England will be offering free tickets to people aged under 26 following Arts Council England’s (ACE) announcement of 99 successful applications to the pilot of its new Government-backed scheme. 618,000 free tickets will be made available across all the English regions. Two awards were made to consortia: a combined award of £300,000 to 12 London theatres, in collaboration with Audiences London, and the Venue Cornwall Consortium which received a ‘Premier Award’ of £50,000. Two multi-region awards were also made, to HQ Theatres and the Highlights Rural Touring Scheme. Shadow Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, criticised the Government for failing in its plan “to deliver one million free tickets”, while Liberal Democrat culture shadow, Don Foster, said that ministers “would be better off using this money to promote theatre through our schools”. There is wide variation between regions, with London receiving a total of £730,000 and the West Midlands £370,000, while the East receives only £40,000. Speaking to AP, Mark Hazell, Marketing Director of the Theatre Royal Norwich (TRN), said that the East has no audience development agency or network to support a consortium bid. He revealed that a number of regular visiting companies had asked TRN not to take part in the scheme, largely for reasons of potential loss of income. An ACE spokesperson told AP that “although the overview process helped to achieve a nationwide spread of venues, final numbers of participating venues per region were obviously affected by the number of applications”. The scheme will be launched in February.
