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Support The Storytellers of The Future
Since our founding by Sir Laurence Olivier in 1946, we, the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, have helped to train the best in UK theatrical talent: our spectacular list of alumni speaks for itself. In our 80th year, we need your help more than ever to continue to train and support the most passionate and able students, for the good of the south-west, and the UK’s invaluable creative industries.
We are a registered charity and do not receive any government subsidies or funds. Our students’ fees represent our main source of income, but they are not enough to allow us to provide the conservatoire-style training that we believe is best for our students, nor does it cover our widening participation and outreach work.
Conservatoire Training
Our School teaches using a conservatoire-style training model, which prioritises high contact hours, frequent performances, and intense preparatory and rehearsal routines that echo the industry standard. Research confirms that conservatoire training builds a robust, highly-adaptable skill set, fostering resilience, advanced communications, and creative problem-solving (Careers & Research Advisory Centre, 2020). However, the UK student fee cap is currently £9,790, for 2026/27, and it costs much more than that to teach our students in this way.
Widening Participation
We work with organisations such as South Bristol Youth to bring our world-class student shows into schools, run school performance buy-outs, and offer outreach and widening participation workshops and arts activities across the south-west.
In 2025/26, we:
➔ Performed to more than 9,000 people
➔ Engaged over 4,200 young people in our theatrical workshops and outreach activities, in 29 schools
➔ Welcomed over 1,300 people onto our non-degree short courses at the School
➔ Awarded over 20 internal bursaries and partnered scholarships across 15 courses to help to remove financial barriers to access arts education, and to help diversify our cohorts.
The School exists to enable talented individuals, no matter their background or age, to come together, to train with inspiring practitioners, and to become the storytellers, creators and makers of tomorrow. We have a driving vision to expand the diversity of our student body and are working hard to achieve this through better funding, access and support: we know how important it is to have a broad spectrum of creative voices represented in the creative sector, which is at risk of shrinking and reflecting elitism without widespread intervention and changes. This risk is only being exacerbated by the continued loss of arts teaching in schools.
If you would like to support us in a way not listed, or if you would like to discuss your support further, please contact us at [email protected].
Our Funders, Partners and Friends
We couldn’t do the work that we do without our esteemed funders, partners and friends:
Corporate Funders:
Stage Right Theatre Consultants
Trusts and Foundations:
The Patricia Routledge Foundation
The Nisbet Trust
The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation
The Stanley Picker Trust
The Society of Merchant Venturers
South Square Trust
Tanagra Foundation
The Spielman Charitable Trust
The Backstage Trust
The William and Katherine Longman Charitable Trust
Quartet Community Foundation
Sir John Gielgud Charitable Trust
Partners and Intermediaries:
UWE
South Bristol Youth
Creative England Filming in England Partnership
The Fundraising Regulator
We are proud to be a registered organisation of the Fundraising Regulator. Which means you can trust that when you’re donating to BOVTS we have committed to legal, open, honest and respectful fundraising.