HighTide awarded £78,000 as part of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund

/
HighTide awarded £78,000 as part of the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund

Posted on October 17th, 2020

HighTide has been awarded £78,000 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) to help face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and to ensure they have a sustainable future, the Culture Secretary has announced today. 

HighTide is one of 588 cultural and creative organisations across the country receiving urgently needed support – with £76 million of investment announced today. This follows £257 million awarded earlier in the week to 1,385 organisations, also from the Culture Recovery Fund grants programme being administered by Arts Council England on behalf of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Further rounds of funding in the cultural and heritage sector are due to be announced over the coming weeks.

HighTide is a theatre company and charity based in East Anglia that has an unparalleled twelve-year history of successfully launching the careers of emerging British playwrights with alumni including Ella Hickson, Theresa Ikoko and Jack Thorne.

They discover new talent, provide creative development opportunities for playwrights and other creatives, and stage high quality theatre productions both in their region of the East of England and nationally through their festivals and touring. They enable new and underrepresented playwrights to express their visions of contemporary politics and society, demonstrate their creative potential and therein showcase the future of theatre. 

This grant allows HighTide to deliver the next phase of its COVID-19 response, building on the huge success of its Lighthouse Programme launched during the first week of lockdown, making HighTide the first National Portfolio Organisation to offer a comprehensive package of support for emerging and established playwrights and young people in the East of England. More details on HighTide’s new initiatives and partnerships, under the banner “Inventing The Future” will follow in the next few weeks.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said:

“This is more vital funding to protect cultural gems across the country, save jobs and prepare the arts to bounce back. Through Arts Council England we are delivering the biggest ever investment in the arts in record time. Hundreds of millions of pounds are already making their way to thousands of organisations.

“These awards build on our commitment to be here for culture in every part of the country.”

Chair, Arts Council England, Sir Nicholas Serota, said:

“Culture is an essential part of life across the country, helping to support people’s wellbeing through creativity and self-expression, bringing communities together, and fuelling our world class creative industries.  

“This latest set of awards from the Culture Recovery Fund builds on those announced recently and will help hundreds of organisations to survive the next few months, ensuring that the cultural sector can bounce back after the crisis.  We will continue doing everything we can to support artists and cultural and creative organisations, with further funding to be announced in the coming weeks.”

Suba Das, Artistic Director and CEO said: 

‘’We’re pleased to receive this additional award from DCMS and Arts Council England, acknowledging the unprecedented, ongoing disruption faced by the country’s vital cultural sector. This funding helps off-set income we have lost over the past seven months, during which time we have provided an entirely free online offer through our Lighthouse Programme, with a specific focus on our communities in the East of England. The Lighthouse Programme has supported 307 artists, employed 37 freelancers and brought new theatre writing to over 4,000 audience members and school children.

With the greater certainty now provided by the Cultural Recovery Fund, we can now move forwards with our mission to enrich the diversity and quality of the UK’s new writing ecology and ensure we build back better and stronger. In the next few weeks we will launch our “School Of HighTide” to help prepare writers for the challenges ahead; alongside a range of new partnerships and projects that will enable communities across the East of England to continue to encounter new writing and creativity. The country faces a long road to recovery and we’re dedicated to playing the largest role we can in this.”