Inn Crowd, the live theatre in pubs initiative started in 2016, has been awarded £525,000 funding from Arts Council England to cover the next four years up to August 2022.
Inn Crowd is a partnership project with Pub is The Hub from Applause Rural Touring, Creative Arts East and the National Centre for Writing and supports rural pubs throughout the South East and East of England to host exciting and inspiring spoken word, poetry and storytelling performances in their pubs, reaching and engaging with non-traditional arts audiences. Inn Crowd also provides support to some of the UK’s best spoken word artists to create, develop and tour their work to new areas.
The funding will enable 330 live national touring dates working with Applause Rural Touring in Kent and Sussex and Creative Arts East in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Over 40% of the dates will take place outside the South East region partnering up with:
- Carn to Cove for Devon and Cornwall
- Artsreach for Dorset
- Take Art for Somerset
- Live and Local for Warwickshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire
- Spot On for Lancashire
- Arts Alive for Shropshire and Herefordshire
Dawn Badland, Director of Applause Rural Touring said, “Arts Council England’s support to enable us to further develop Inn Crowd as a national model will be very welcome across the rural touring sector as a whole and shows their recognition of this ambitious and unique partnership programme.”
Hedley Swain, Area Director South East for Arts Council England, said: “Art takes place in a huge range of places ensuring everyone has the opportunity to experience something new and different. Inn Crowd is a great example of this, offering a wonderful opportunity for more people to experience brilliant performances, from the comfort of their local pub. I’m excited that we’re able to support this project to work with more pubs across the country and inspire a whole new audience for spoken word performance.”
For further information and details about ‘what’s on’ in pubs go to www.inncrowd.org.uk
