‘No embarrassment’: the NT responds to its cut to primary school touring

The National Theatre’s schools programme will this year reach a record number of young people in a huge variety of ways, including student conferences, specialist teacher training, youth theatre programmes, training opportunities and digital learning, of which schools touring is one part.

Each year we reflect and review the National Theatre’s offering to ensure that we best support the needs of schools and reach the widest audience possible. In 2024, one focus is our schools tour of a brand-new production, The LeftBehinds, taking over a different school hall every day for 10 weeks across England, reaching 10,000 pupils. Simultaneously, we are working with our touring partners throughout the nationwide tour of War Horse to engage with schools, offering ticket subsidies and leading workshops, talks and teacher CPD sessions. We currently have young technicians training across the UK, apprentices embedded backstage and are welcoming students on T Level placements this month, broadening pathways into the industry.

We are working in partnership with the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education on a primary schools project, Power of Play, to explore building creativity across the curriculum. In the new year more than 1,000 children from priority primary schools will visit the Olivier theatre for our production of Ballet Shoes, accompanied by associated in-school workshops.

Above all, the National Theatre is committed to enabling every young person in the UK to experience the NT before they leave school. 89% of secondary schools are signed up for free access to the National Theatre Collection reaching 1.3 million students across the UK; and we’ve invested in a new primary module – now reaching 2,500 primary schools in partnership with the Unicorn Theatre and specifically designed to introduce primary students to theatre. And it is worth noting that the impact of the 2023 touring production of Hamlet was fantastic and ambitious, reaching more than 7,700 pupils in 100 schools across the country.

We’d like to run all our programmes simultaneously but due to funding constraints across our organisation and the drop in Arts Council England funding, we have to make choices each year. However, at all times we pledge to give a rounded and exciting offer to schools, and work with dedication to secure ever-more funding to develop our programmes further and support the next generation of theatremakers as a priority.

I fail to see anything embarrassing about that.
Kate Varah
Co-chief executive of the National Theatre
Email address supplied

Dear National Theatre, please reconsider. It’s a foolish choice to stop touring to schools. Where do you think the audiences of the future will be coming from? And if the National Theatre can’t commit to this, who can?

Theatre is not only a vital part of this culture, but can play a pivotal role in a child’s development. Come on. This is nonsense.
Bonnie MacBird
Via thestage.co.uk

As I have commented before, in this time of shrinking funding and budgets, those of us who can invest in the future of our audiences and arts practitioners must do so even at the cost of other work elsewhere.

The NT can and should prioritise this work. I noted that Michael Grandage still maintains that his favourite play was an RSC touring production in a sports centre in Camborne and Rufus Norris himself frequently references the youth theatre experiences that brought him into the industry.

Where will we find the leaders of the future if we don’t maintain these opportunities. These first experiences of theatre for young people (and the younger the better) are the things that will shape our society and the landscape of the arts for generations to come.
John Brolly
Via thestage.co.uk