Thanks to National Lottery players, National Youth Theatre has received £2.3 million over three years from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest community funder in the UK. The funding will be used to support the professional and personal development of D/deaf, disabled, learning disabled and neurodivergent young people, expanding their skills through training and creative placements with theatres and arts centres across the UK.
This comes from The UK Fund, one of The National Lottery Community Fund’s significant commitments as part of its 2023-2030 strategy, ‘It starts with community’, funding projects that help children and young people thrive – one of the funder’s four key missions.
This landmark grant will support National Youth Theatre to work with leading venue partners Chapter Arts Centre; Exeter Northcott Theatre; Lowry; Mayflower, Southampton and Sheffield Theatres to deliver its flagship inclusion programme Assemble in a landmark grant to support inclusive engagement, progression and recruitment in the sector.
Co-designed with its beneficiaries, Assemble aims to create systemic change in how the creative sector recruits, supports and retains D/deaf, disabled, learning disabled, and neurodivergent talent through building awareness of creative opportunities at colleges, a network of inclusive cultural venues and leading to new sustainable career paths across the creative industries for young disabled people.
This is the first time the UK Fund is supporting a children and youth voice project that engages disabled and neurodivergent young people in arts and culture. The £2,365,914 grant over 3 years also represents the largest grant in the history of the National Youth Theatre and provides a welcome impact boost ahead of its 70th anniversary in 2026.
95% of participants in the pilot scheme were unaware of creative career paths before taking part, with 90% keen to pursue a creative career after engaging with the programme. Half of disabled people in the UK do not have a paid job, more than double the rate of the rest of the working-age population (ONS 2024). This disabled-led, youth-led and locally led programme will provide inclusive practice training for cultural employers and unlock cultural visits, work experience and new creative employment progression opportunities in mainstream cultural spaces.
Assemble’s approach will establish long-term cross-sector partnerships between 18 educational providers, 18 cultural venues and creative employers, and community organisations, foregrounding disabled young voices in challenging entrenched inequality and discrimination. Assemble aims to build on the creative sector’s potential as an employment sector for D/deaf, disabled, learning disabled and neurodivergent young people and tackle barriers around opaque career routes and the lack of connectivity between cultural venues, disabled young people and non-mainstream colleges.
Building on existing work in Greater Manchester, South Wales and London, Assemble will expand into Exeter, Sheffield, and Southampton to work with seven times more young people and five times more volunteers thanks to the fund. The expanded programme will be delivered with six flagship cultural venue partners around the UK: Chapter Arts Centre; Exeter Northcott Theatre; Lowry; Mayflower, Southampton; National Youth Theatre and Sheffield Theatres. NYT will collaborate with inclusion and disabled-led companies across the UK to support and evaluate the programme to ensure it complements existing work across the sector.
The project will lay the groundwork for many more disabled and neurodivergent young people to access sustainable creative careers in future as indirect beneficiaries by introducing new, inclusive and scalable creative career pipelines with and for learning disabled and neurodivergent young people that can be replicated nationally.
Jenny Riding Director of Learning & Engagement at Lowry said:
‘We’re absolutely thrilled to be partnering with the National Youth Theatre on the NYT Assemble project over the next three years. At Lowry, we’re deeply committed to supporting neurodiverse young people and those with learning disabilities to explore pathways into the creative industries. This programme will help to build their confidence, expand their knowledge and skills, and support their progression into fulfilling careers. It also supports practitioners and volunteers through high-quality CPD, enabling more people to gain experience and thrive through the arts.’
