Today we’re thrilled to announce an exciting new partnership that helps us share our Young Audiences programs with disadvantaged youth, families from Melbourne’s outer suburbs, regional communities, and Indigenous students.
As part of a new $200 million philanthropic fund to assist arts programs, Crown Resorts Foundation will provide MTC with $2.5 million over five years to provide disadvantaged youth with subsidised high quality live theatre experiences, and allows us to give families in the outer suburbs access to family shows, to tour education productions to regional Victorian students and to provide Indigenous scholarships.
‘This is an extraordinary act by Crown Resorts Foundation,’ says MTC Executive Director Virginia Lovett. ‘It builds on Crown’s $18 million contribution to the construction of MTC’s home – the Southbank Theatre – with a new transformational project for the Victorian community.’
The partnership allows us to introduce four exciting initiatives:
- Crown Resorts’ Student Theatre Pass: providing up to 10,000 disadvantaged students each year with subsidised $5 tickets to attend MTC shows, as well as covering travel costs for outlying schools, the creation of teacher’s notes and digital student resources.
- Crown Resorts’ Family Theatre Pass: providing families and children in outer Melbourne suburban areas with subsidised $5 tickets to MTC’s family shows.
- MTC Education on Tour: allowing MTC to tour one educational production to regional Victoria each year, after the success of Yellow Moon (pictured above), this year’s inaugural in-school tour.
- MTC and VCA Indigenous Scholarship Program: a new program in partnership with the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development at the Victorian College of the Arts to help create career pathways for Indigenous students.
We’re thrilled about the partnership and a new era of education and access to MTC.
‘We will at last be able to step out into the community and share what we do with a far wider range of Victorians over a sustained period of time,’ says Virginia. ‘The two main hurdles to attending theatre are cost and access: now, for the price of a large bag of lollies, top quality theatre will be in reach of many more Victorians.’
Pictured: Luke Ryan and Naomi Rukavina in Yellow Moon (MTC Education 2014). Photo by Jeff Busby.
Published on 22 July 2014