Briefing slides

Updated January 2013

Strategic touring

programme

Monkey: Journey to the West

performed at the Royal Opera House

Photo: Robert Piwko

An introduction to

the Arts Council’s development

areas for touring 2012-15

Achieving great art for everyone

• Touring is one of the 13 priorities within Achieving great art for

everyone, and features in the Arts Council Plan 2011-15

• In order to explain how we will meet this priority, we have

published our development areas for touring 2012-15 on our

website

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/our-priorities-2011-

15/touring/

• These areas cover all of our investment, development and

advocacy work

Definitions

Touring: where the same artistic programme or event is taking

place in two or more venues. Could involve live performers

and/or exhibition artworks; it would 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.

Venue: any space into which work that tours can be

programmed or booked.

Promoter: the individual responsible for booking or

programming work into a venue or circuit of venues. In most

cases, this would be the person who takes the financial

responsibility for booking or programming the event on behalf of

their organisation.

Improving local access to high quality art

We will:

• strengthen access to high quality work for people in places that rely on touring for much of their arts provision

• develop arts opportunities for people and places with the least engagement, by enabling more quality work to reach people in these areas

Partnership working

We will:

• work in partnership with those on the demand (promoters,

curators, audiences) and supply (artists, producers) side of

touring

• encourage stronger collaborative working among all of our

partners

• support and develop the community, schools and outdoor

infrastructure so that quality work can have the widest

possible reach

• support and develop networks and consortia, to help widen

the reach and diversity of work that tours

National portfolio organisations

We will:

• work more strategically with the Arts Council National portfolio

and other key organisations which tour, with equal importance

given to how and where they tour and the work they produce

• work in partnership with National portfolio organisations and

the wider sector to ensure the best return for our investment

in large scale work that tours, in terms of quality and range of

work, geographic reach and audience numbers

Content development

We will:

• support more high quality work for children and young people

to tour across a wider network, including schools

• ensure that artists and companies from diverse backgrounds

have the skills and opportunities to tour their work, so that

people across England are able to experience work by the

widest range of artists

The aims of the strategic touring

programme

Strategic touring programme - aims

• 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

Strategic touring programme - aims

• Stronger relationships forged between those involved in

artistic, audience and programme development on both the

supply and demand 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

Strategic touring programme – what we want to encourage

• all of those involved in touring to play an active role in

ensuring that high quality work successfully reaches more

people and places across England

• a positive step-change in collaborative behaviour between all

of those involved in creating and programming high quality

work which tours

• more effective touring, programming and audience

development of high quality work on tour, including in

particular work by and for children and young people, and

work by and for people from diverse backgrounds

Strategic touring programme – what we will do

• Actively encourage the development of partnerships,

networks and consortia that help to strengthen the reach of

high quality work on tour

• Ensure that those working within National portfolio

organisations that wish to engage in the programme do so in

a way that spreads the benefit beyond themselves, for

example by contributing actively as partners, catalysts,

mentors and sharing good practice

Explaining the application

process for the strategic touring

programme

Strategic touring programme deadlines 2013

Deadline for submissions: Date you will hear outcome:

Friday 15 February Monday 15 April

Friday 19 April Monday 10 June

Friday 14 June Monday 5 August

Friday 9 August Monday 30 September

Friday 4 October Monday 25 November

Friday 29 November Monday 27 January 2014

What we will fund

• the programme is for awards over £15,000

• the activity must be time-limited and take place over a

maximum of three years

• The kinds of activity we will support include:

o artistic activity including the creation of work to be toured,

commissioning, re-production of work that has already

been presented to the public

o audience development activity

o skills development activity

o proportionate management and administrative costs

Who can apply

• Open to any individual or organisation, including museums

and libraries, for the touring of projects which are explicitly

linked with arts activity

Partnerships, networks and consortia can also apply:

• partners can include: promoters, producers, artists, agencies,

or any other kind of organisation or individual

• they must include at least one promoter as a partner

• they must include individuals or organisations with audience

development expertise, or else explain how they would

address this deficit within the project

National portfolio organisations

• National portfolio organisations wishing to apply to the

strategic programme, either as lead organisations or partners

within an application, will be asked to demonstrate within the

application how the proposed activity they will benefit from is

additional to their National portfolio-funded activity

• Grants will not be awarded for extending currently funded,

existing or planned tours by NPOs

Activity outside England

• We have a cross border touring agreement with the other UK

Arts bodies (Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), which

applies to this programme. This covers all our funded activity

• International incoming tours which benefit people in England

and the UK can be supported

• We will be limited in our ability to support outgoing

international touring work through this Lottery-funded

programme. Projects which include international partners can

be eligible if they can demonstrate the benefit of these

partnerships to the public in England

Writing your application

We ask for your proposal to cover these four areas:

• Proposed activity

• Audience development

• Finance

• Managing the project

Throughout, your proposal should address the quality of

the activity proposed and the nature of collaboration

involved.

Writing your application

We will also ask you to tell us:

• How the project will help to develop touring in England, in line

with the programme’s aims

• How relationships will be sustained and developed through

and, if appropriate, beyond the life of the project

• How the project will be evaluated, and how what you learn

from the project will be shared across all partners as well as

more widely across the arts sector

The tour schedule

• You must complete the tour schedule in the application form

• The venue where the activity has been created/initiated can

be included as a venue in applications for touring. However,

in addition there should be at least two other venues within

the provisional tour schedule. This would be the minimum

length for any tour we would consider through the programme

• We do not expect you to have fully confirmed your tour by the

time you apply

• You may provide us with an update to the tour schedule after

you have submitted your application

Talking with us about your proposal: mandatory conversation

• Once you have read the guidance and started to think about

your application, you should speak with a member of staff in

one of our regional offices in more detail about your proposal.

Please contact our Enquiries team to find out more about this

• We will arrange a time to talk with you

• We will not be able to read or provide written comment on

draft applications

• Once you have spoken to us, you can submit your application

at any time. It is your responsibility to develop and write the

application, including what you feel to be all the relevant

information

What our conversation with you may cover

• Have you considered the programme aims, and can you

describe how your project will help to meet them?

• Is the ‘touring’ aspect of your project (as opposed to the

‘arts production’ aspect) strategic and well thought-

through?

• Can you explain what you are adding to the ‘artistic offer’ in

each venue you are touring to? What is the balance

between ‘breadth of provision’ (reaching more people and

places) and ‘depth of provision’ (offering more provision to

places which already have it)?

• How are you ‘stretching’ your reach to go beyond your

regular touring network?

What happens next

• This is a national programme; all applications are sent to one

national decision-making panel

• We will involve specialist staff across the country to inform our

assessment of applications

• We have a budget in 2013/14 of £15 million, which will cover

all six rounds of the programme

• We expect to receive more applications than we can fund,

and therefore not all projects that successfully meet the aims

and criteria for the programme will be funded

Touring and Grants for the arts

Grants for the arts remains open for touring applications from non-

NPOs:

• Who wish to apply for funding of less than £15,000

• Who wish to apply for funding for a range of activity which

includes a touring element

• Who wish to apply for touring activity where the main purpose

of that activity does not meet the aims or the criteria for the

strategic touring programme, for example artistic development

• Applicants wishing to apply to Grants for the arts for funding of

over £80,000 for touring activity should speak to us

Thank you

www.artscouncil.org.uk