We are delighted to have been awarded £600,000 following a successful application to Garfield Weston Foundation’s highly competitive Weston Culture Fund. The grant will be used primarily to finance the capture of our new full-length ballet Merlin, and a brand-new children’s ballet, both set to première this autumn. It will also significantly increase our digital output so that we may continue to reach audiences until we are able to return to normal touring activities.
The Weston Culture Fund received more than £128m worth of applications for the total £25m one-off fund. The Fund was opened to applications from arts organisations to help restart important work, refresh activities and develop plans to rebuild audiences in the devastating wake of Covid-19 cancellations and closures in the sector.
Northern Ballet is at the forefront of creating and distributing ground-breaking digital dance films and we are now reaching over 3.4m people a year via cinema, TV and online distribution channels. This work has been incredibly successful in reaching and engaging audiences during the pandemic whilst most touring activity was cancelled. The award of this grant is pivotal in enabling us to continue in this direction which would otherwise not have been possible due to the impact of Covid-19 on tour.
Our Chief Executive, Mark Skipper DL, said: “We are incredibly grateful to the Weston Culture Fund for awarding us this game-changing grant and for their continued confidence in the excellence of our performances on stage and screen. We have firm plans to return to touring this spring and autumn, and this grant will complement this activity and enable us to reach significantly more audiences so that we may continue to break down barriers to dance and ensure ballet is accessible to everyone, everywhere.”
Photo by Guy Farrow.
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