WIREDGOV

Seven organisations in the North have been successful in the latest round of the Arts Council's Strategic touring programme with funding totalling £679,243.

The Strategic touring programme aims to give people better access to quality work across a range of venues to more people across the country, targeting places with low levels of art engagement and those that rely on touring for arts and culture. Following on from the year two analysis of the Strategic touring programme, we are particularly encouraged to see an increase in applications in this round for literature based projects (including arts in libraries), free outdoor projects, and those that benefit diverse audiences.

The successful organisations in the North are:

Faceless - Outdoor Performance and Community Arts (£43,315) to deliver a programme of community inspired performances for audiences of all ages in six outdoor venues in the Dearne Valley of South. The tour will culminate in training for community event organisers and a symposium.

Leeds Studio - Theatre for Young People (£49,847) will deliver a tour of Nine Lives by Zodwa Nyoni, performed by Lladel Bryant, to small scale theatres and community venues. The tour is aimed at engaging refugee/asylum seekers and diverse audiences and raising the issue of LGBTQ asylum.

National Rural Touring Forum (£379,560) will work in partnership with The Place, China Plate and Take Art to deliver high quality rural dance performances across the country.

Pavilion (£30,000) will deliver An Opera for Sumburgh Lighthouse, a live sound transmission by Grace Schwindt that will take place over two nights at Sumburgh Lighthouse in Shetland in September 2015. The work will be transmitted live from this remote location to audiences at seven venues along the English coast including Barrow in Furness, Scarborough and Northumberland.

Royal Court Liverpool Trust (£30,000) will tour Terriers, a hard-hitting play written by Liverpool writer Maurice Bessman about difficulties young people face. The tour aims to engage young people and communities who are marginalised and exposed to gun and gang crime, and reach new audiences in Manchester, Hampshire and Croydon and new areas of Merseyside.

Royal Exchange Theatre (£46,669) will restage Gareth Farr's Britannia Waves the Rules as a studio production which will then tour community venues and theatre spaces across the North.

Z-arts (£99,852) will produce Snow Queen, using digital technology to attract hard to reach families into the theatre by initially engaging them in their own homes, making them feel they are part of the show.

Ramps on the Moon (£2.3million) is a project led by the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich which will bring together a network of seven National portfolio organisation theatres, including West Yorkshire Playhouse, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and Sheffield Theatres, in a touring project that signals a change in disability arts provision in the UK and will reframe the way theatre by and for disabled people is made and seen.

Thirteen organisations across England will receive a total of £4,875,553 through this round of the fund. Full details can be found here.