2025 PLACE BASED FUNDING - SPOTLIGHT ON BIRMINGHAM

We are thrilled to announce a new programme of arts, heritage and culture place-based funding for 2025-27, specifically targeted to support arts projects in the city of Birmingham and the West Midlands.

This new programme will commit over £500,000 to the West Midlands area across 11 key projects. The programme works in close partnership with the recipient organisations to raise awareness, widen access and encourage participation in talent development initiatives for young people across the area.

This is a new venture for the Foundation which, since 2010, has donated over £25million in grants, and nearly 400 performing arts scholarships to talented students in financial need. This includes the Music in Secondary Schools Trust (MiSST), established with funding from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation. In academic year September 2025 - 2026, 14,885 children will receive free musical tuition and instruments as part of MiSST's Andrew Lloyd Webber Programme. The Foundation also continues to fund Get Into Theatre, a platform seeking to break down barriers and broaden access to careers in theatre.

Simon Thurley, Chair, Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, said: “For decades, Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation has sought to give money in impactful ways, reaching into the heart of communities up and down the country. As the public funding situation in cities like Birmingham becomes increasingly difficult, we felt compelled to support critically important, and now endangered, arts organisations and projects in the city. Strong arts organisations bring unquantifiable benefit to the wider community and we hope this programme will see our grants make a larger collective impact on a very local level in Birmingham. However, we are offering just a small part of the solution to a much larger problem. We very much hope that others may see the impact of this programme and be inspired to join us in Birmingham and other great UK cities in the coming years.”