Blackfriars Theatre and Arts Centre are excited to confirm that they have been successful in their bid to get National Portfolio status from Arts Council England. 

This morning Arts Council England have revealed details of their new national portfolio of funded organisations from 2023-26.  In total, 990 organisations will receive a share of £446 million (each year) ensuring that more prople in more places can find fantastic, fulfulling art and culture on their doorsteps. 

Here at Blackfriars we have secured £390,000 over 3 years for a new project which will start from April 2023 - more details will be released about the programme in the coming weeks but for now we just wanted to share the fabulous news.  

Blackfriars Chairman Robert Barclay said  "This is a huge step forwards for Blackfriars and will help us to deliver culture to more people in our local community than ever before. We are very excited about this announcement and grateful to the Arts Council for supporting our ideas and plans for the future."

Peter Knott, Area Director for Arts Council England said: "Blackfriars Arts Centre is a community space, theatre and art gallery and a hive of creative activity and we're delighted to be welcoming them to the portfolio. It'll be great to see them continue to deliver their stage productions, as well as engage with local people through their amateur dramatic and operatic groups."

Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. They have set out their strategic vision in Let’s Create that by 2030 they want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences. They invest public money from Government and The National Lottery to help support the sector and to deliver this vision. www.artscouncil.org.uk.

Blackfriars has been very fortunate to have received much needed funding and support from them over the past 2 years and we are excited to be joining them as an NPO from next April.