Past programmes

This page includes information on recent, but completed, programmes, and related grantholders.

Care Leavers

This initiative supported organisations and projects aimed at helping young people leaving the care system to transition successfully to adulthood. Over the life of the initiative, we committed more than £1.5 million.

Grantholders included:

young black make in red top stood outside in the sun against a wall

Become

£530,000 (2020-2025):
Pilot training programme for Personal Advisors working with Care Leavers. Following the pilot, Become received an additional grant in 2024 to expand this training more widely across individual Local Authorities and at a system level.

blurry rushed image with students and backpacks walking

Bright Lights

£400,000 (2019-2022):
Catch22 and The Children's Society worked in partnership to develop and implement a bespoke apprenticeship scheme tailored to the needs of young people leaving care.

Lighthouse Pedagogy Trust

£346,000 (2019-2023):
Established a new not-for-profit care home model based on a proven approach, aiming to improve educational and personal outcomes for young people in care.

young group of adults sat on orange sofa laughing and smiling

Drive Forward Foundation

£151,000 (2019-2022):
Delivered a three-year intervention project supporting young people aged 14-16 in the transition to adulthood, and into further or higher education.

"This funding has unreservedly succeeded in supporting these charities, while enabling them to learn valuable lessons along the way. It is to The Clothworkers' credit that it funded this work and this sector, when many other funders haven't."

nfpResearch Report (2022)

"The Dramatic Arts Initiative has made a difference to how talent is cultivated and developed by providing new opportunities for a wider range of disadvantaged people. [It] has supported people who are held back in their progress through coming from working class backgrounds, being of different ethnicities or having disabilities."

S Bedell & P Jarvis Report (2019)

Dramatic Arts

In 2014, we launched the Dramatic Arts Programme with a commitment of £1.25 million. Committing an additional £1 million to the programme in 2020, we focused on bursaries for talented students from low-income backgrounds.

Grantholders included:

Backstage with LAMDA; several students are in a dressing room preparing for a show. Photo from the LAMDA website, bursaries and scholarships.

LAMDA

£225,000 over five years for annual bursaries of £15,000 to students from low-income backgrounds for the entirety of their two-year undergraduate technical or three-year acting courses at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA).

Six students are on stage, gathered around a Fish and Chips stall. NYT production. Photography by Helen Murray.

National Youth Theatre

£490,000 — including £400,000 to plan, implement and evaluate a revised model for young people’s participation; £60,000 for bursaries over five years; and £30,000 towards ‘NYT on Tour’.

Seven students on stage, performing Into the Woods. Photo from RADA.

RADA

£225,000 over five years for annual bursaries of £15,000 to students from low-income backgrounds for the entirety of their two-year undergraduate technical or three-year acting courses at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

group of student teens looking at an item

Society of London Theatre

£50,000 to fund the annual £10,000 Laurence Olivier Clothworkers’ Bursaries over five years, awarded to talented final-year acting students from low-income and/or disadvantaged backgrounds.