School tours, workshops and £10 tickets: National Theatre plan aims to reach 100,000 young people
A four-year partnership with 12 theatres in every English region would tour productions to 400 schools and offer thousands of subsidised tickets, backed by up to £15 million that still has to pass the National Lottery Community Fund's formal process.
The National Theatre is to take its work to more than 100,000 young people across England under a four-year partnership announced by the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, on Friday. The programme, called National Theatre Nationwide, joins the London company with 12 partner theatres spanning every English region, and wraps workshops, training and participation work around its touring productions in each place.
The offer has three practical parts. Thousands of subsidised tickets priced at £10 are intended to make partner performances affordable for young people. Productions designed for young audiences will tour to 400 schools around the country. Around those visits, young people will be able to try acting, directing and playwriting, and to learn backstage skills, with training aimed at routes into creative industry jobs both on stage and behind the scenes.
Two additions widen it beyond conventional touring. A new music theatre strand will create original community productions devised and performed by local young people in their own areas, and a Skills Roadshow will carry opportunities into places that have no theatre of their own. A Nationwide Youth Council will give participants a formal say in how the activities are designed and delivered.
Experiencing the joy of theatre shouldn’t be restricted to only those who can afford it or who were born in the right postcode.Lisa Nandy, Culture Secretary, in the Government release of 13 November 2026
The 12 partners are the Lowry in Salford, Newcastle Theatre Royal, Leeds Heritage Theatres, Sheffield Theatres, Nottingham Theatre Royal, the Curve in Leicester, Birmingham Hippodrome, the Belgrade in Coventry, Norwich Theatre, Theatre Royal Plymouth, Mayflower Theatre in Southampton and the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. Schools touring under the Nationwide banner is already running: the National Theatre's own listing shows its schools version of Bacchae, by Nima Taleghani and directed by Hannah Hauer-King, touring to partner venues this month, including Newcastle, Nottingham, Salford and Sheffield.
The money needs care in the telling. Up to £15 million from the Every Child Can programme would support the National Theatre to work with the National Lottery Community Fund and the regional partners, but ministers have asked the Fund to scrutinise and develop the theatre's plans through its formal solicitation process, and the Government states that whether the grant is made at all, and the shape of the programme that follows, depend entirely on how that process concludes. Alongside the theatre announcement, an additional £106 million from the Dormant Assets Scheme takes total Every Child Can funding to £238.5 million, with the remaining £173 million opening to organisations across England in 2027 and the Every Child Can Fund itself launching in spring 2027.
The theatre scheme sits inside a wider youth package the Government put at £688 million for access to sport, arts, outdoor activity and youth clubs beyond the school gates. Its £450 million Youth Matters Fund will support 60 of the most underserved areas in England, chosen on deprivation, weak local social and community infrastructure, how satisfied local young people say they are with activities and services, and the proportion of 16 and 17 year olds not in education, employment or training, and the Government is also funding work to recruit 1,000 new youth workers and trusted adults. The announcements come before this month's final report from Alan Milburn on youth unemployment, commissioned by ministers to understand why almost one million young people are neither earning nor learning.
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