National Youth Arts Wales (NYAW) has been awarded an Art Scholarship grant of £171,990 by the Leverhulme Trust to support training opportunities for young people from lower-income backgrounds to access our advanced performance training in the arts.
Our vision is to build a creative, confident and generous future for Wales by empowering the next generation of musicians, actors, dancers and makers. As well as leading Wales’s five national youth ensembles (theatre, dance, orchestra, choir and brass band), we also have a strategic overview of the health of youth arts throughout Wales. Every year we engage with around 2,000 young people (aged 16-22), drawn from every county in Wales, through exceptional training and performance opportunities.
This new funding from the Leverhulme Trust will allow NYAW to grow its current programme of bursaries and development programmes, ensuring that household income should never be a barrier for the most talented young people to aspire to a career in the arts. As well as offering fee reductions of up to 100% for our summer residencies, those most in need will also receive a bursary grant to help cover travel costs and other expenses. NYAW will continue offering automatic fee waivers for young people coming from households receiving Universal Credit, Free School Meals or full Welsh Government Learning Grants, as well as young carers, those seeking asylum or care-experienced members.
Evan Dawson, NYAW’s CEO, commented on the announcement: “At National Youth Arts Wales, we are all delighted and humbled to receive this funding from the Leverhulme Trust. With their support, we will continue to ensure every young person in Wales can access advanced and joyfulperformance training in the arts, regardless of their financial circumstances.
Along with this grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the NYAW Bursary Fund is also supported annually by the Neil and Mary Ellen Webber Bursary Fund, and the Friends of National Youth Orchestra of Wales. We’re also grateful to all the individuals who give to our bursary fund by direct debit – you can join them by visiting https://www.nyaw.org.uk/support-us.
NYAW’s expanded bursary scheme is just one part of the ongoing effort to work towards a more equitable arts sector for young performers. NYAW is also expanding its range of development projects, designed to provide targeted tuition to young people from under-represented communities, such as those with a disability, or from communities who experience racism. These include the Strings Attached and Cor Skills programmes, and the Assemble project for non-mainstream schools.