The £45 million Strategic touring programme was launched in 2011 and is designed to encourage collaboration between organisations, so that more people across England experience and are inspired by the arts, particularly in places which rely on touring for much of their arts provision.
The Strategic touring programme has six funding rounds for applications between March 2012 and February 2013. You can submit your application at any time during this period.
Submit your online application
Applications for the first round are now closed and we announced the successful applicants on 9 May 2012.
View the touring briefing presentation on Slideshare
Our aims for the programme
- people across England having improved access to great art visiting their local area. This includes:
- better access to high quality work for people in places in England which rely on touring for much of their arts provision
- more high quality work to reach people and places with the least engagement
- more high quality work on tour connecting more effectively with people across a wide range of venues
- stronger relationships forged between those involved in artistic, audience and programme development on both the supply (eg artists, producers) and demand (eg promoters, audiences) side of touring
- a wide range of high quality work on tour including, in particular, more work by and for children and young people, and more work by and for people from diverse backgrounds
Grants for the arts
We will also continue to support touring through Grants for the arts. More information can be found here.
Advice and support
You must speak to a member of staff before applying to the programme. For more information on this, please read our Guidance.
Key definitions
Touring
Our definition of touring activity is where the same artistic programme or event is taking place in two or more venues. This covers all artforms, scales of work, and kinds of places, from outdoors to indoors, local to national. The artistic programme or event may involve live performers and/or exhibition artworks; it should be fundamentally the same event offered to all, but may involve some adaptation to suit the different spaces and contexts in which it was being presented.
Touring activity relates to artistic programmes or events which take place at a geographic location, with some live element in terms of being close to performers or artworks and/or experiencing something with a group of people. We recognise the growing inter-relationships between touring and digital distribution and anticipate that this may be reflected within some applications to the programme.
Venue
We define a venue as any space into which work which tours can be programmed or booked, including theatres, museums, concert halls, galleries, festivals, carnivals, as well as village halls, community centres, libraries, schools, outdoor spaces, 'found' spaces, prisons, shopping centres etc.
Promoter
We define the promoter as the individual responsible for booking or programming work into a venue or circuit of venues. This can be the director, artistic director, curator, programmer, manager, circuit coordinator, local authority employee, etc. In most cases, this would be the person who takes financial responsibility for booking or programming the event on behalf of their organisation.
Diversity
Our definition of diversity encompasses responding to issues around race, ethnicity, faith, disability, age, gender, sexuality, class and economic disadvantage and any social and institutional barriers which prevent people from participating in and enjoying the arts. We are turning our focus from remedying past imbalances towards celebrating diversity positively, with all the artistic and creative opportunities it offers.
Places of least engagement in the arts
Where you live is likely to have a profound impact on the likelihood of you attending or participating in the arts. There are considerable differences in engagement levels for regions, local authority areas and neighbourhoods across England and these differences go beyond merely people's choices about whether they attend and/or participate in the arts. Having considered options to help us prioritise where we target strategic funds, we believe that the Active People Survey offers reliable insight into relative levels of engagement nationally. This survey provides a snapshot of engagement levels for each local authority area in England.
For the Strategic touring programme we are interested in encouraging more activity in the local authority areas with relatively low levels of attendance and participation. These are the bottom third for levels of arts engagement in England, according to a two-year average from the Active People Survey. Find out more information about this.
People with least engagement in the arts
We want people to engage in the arts whatever their social or economic background. Evidence suggests that by understanding what makes people engage in the arts and addressing the barriers that stop them we can open up the arts to many more people. We have undertaken some arts-based segmentation research to help organisations better understand how different kinds of people engage in the arts.
For the Strategic touring programme we are interested in reaching more people in both the 'some engagement' and 'not currently engaged' segments. Find out more information about this.
