Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, founded by the composer to support the arts, culture and heritage for the public benefit, announces a new programme of place-based funding,specifically targeted to support arts projects in the city of Birmingham and the surrounding area.
Over the coming years, this new programme will commit over £500,000 to the West Midlands area across 11 key projects. The programme works in close partnership with the recipient organisations to raise awareness, widen access and encourage participation in talent development initiatives for young people across the area.
This is a new venture for the Foundation which, since 2010, has donated over £25million in grants, and nearly 400 performing arts scholarships to talented students in financial need. This includes the Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST), established with funding from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation. In academic year September 2025 - 2026, 14,885 children will receive free musical tuition and instruments as part of MiSST's Andrew Lloyd Webber Programme. The Foundation also continues to fund Get Into Theatre, a platform seeking to break down barriers and broaden access to careers in theatre.
Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation’s Birmingham and West Midlands programme will fund:
· The Birmingham Rep to support backstage apprenticeships targeted at young people from diverse backgrounds traditionally under-represented in the theatre industry.
· The Birmingham Hippodrome to support youth theatre bursaries for four strands of a comprehensive youth theatre provision.
· B Music (Birmingham Town Hall and Symphony Hall) to drive talent development for young people from a range of musical and educational backgrounds, broadening access and opportunity.
· The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to provide Talent Development Bursaries for Youth Orchestra (ages 13-21) performing at the highest level.
· Birmingham Royal Ballet for Dance Track,free ballet training to young children in 40 – 50 state schools across deprived areas in Birmingham.
· Emma Rice Company to support a Midlands-based training programme in technical theatre, alongside the development and performance of a new work in the region.
· Stage One to support producer bursaries for emerging producers in the Midlands, offering support for emerging entrepreneurs plus hands-on training at professional workshops and within established producing companies or regional venues.
· NT Connections to support young people across the Midlands to participate in the annual nationwide youth theatre festival, including bursaries for young companies, and travel for participants to events such as the Directors’ Weekend and the NT Connections Festival. Venues include, Crewe Lyceum, Derby Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse.
· Royal Shakespeare Company to support ‘Next Generation’ Act, Backstage and Direct, a talent development programme empowering young people facing social challenges and disadvantages to explore theatre careers working alongside RSC practitioners.
In addition, a single donation will be made to The King’s Foundation to support The Live Build Project (2025-26) at Dumfries House, part of the Building Craft Programme.
In line with other on going scholarship funding, 2 new performing arts scholarships have been funded in Birmingham in the academic year 2025/26 with Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (1-year Postgraduate Master of Music course) and School of Theatre Excellence, Birmingham (Foundation in Dance and Musical Theatre 1 year course, validated by Rose Bruford College).
Simon Thurley, Chair, Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, said:
“For decades, Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation has sought to give money in impactful ways, reaching into the heart communities up and down the country. As the public funding situation in cities like Birmingham becomes increasingly difficult, we felt compelled to support critically important, and now endangered, arts organisations and projects in the city. Strong arts organisations bring unquantifiable benefit to the wider community and we hope this programme will see our grants make a larger collective impact on a very local level in Birmingham. However, we are offering just a small part of the solution to a much larger problem. We very much hope that others may see the impact of this programme and be inspired to join us in Birmingham and other great UK cities in the coming years.”
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