Talawa is the UK’s oldest Black theatre company, founded in 1986 by four pioneering women to increase the visibility of Black artists and their stories on British stages. Its touring history has shaped our understanding of why touring matters.
While touring is often discussed and approached as a logistical or financial issue, it is fundamentally about cultural access and democratic participation.
Some principles:
- Performing Arts should not be something available only to those living near major producing centres. Regional theatres sit within the heart of the community as an important civic space – one of the few still publicly funded spaces – where communities can meet, interact and experience social events in the same space.
- During the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns our sector streamed productions free online, reaching 9 million households across 173 countries, illustrating how theatre played an important role in maintaining public access to culture despite venue closures.
- Talawa’s experience of touring reflects a wider understanding: representation only becomes truly meaningful when it reaches audiences across the country. Touring plays a vital role in ensuring people can access high-quality theatre wherever they live, strengthening connections between producing companies, presenting venues and local communities.
Each area of the UK has its own identity and history; theatre spaces reflect those cultural nuances. Touring brings in other stories from outside, and allows locally created stories to visit other spaces, allowing us to view each other holistically. The only way we will ever understand each other is to see each other and empathise. We live in a time of crisis, I watched recently an illuminating film called A People’s Stocktake is a documentary film directed by Leonardo Menezes and Eduardo Carvalho that follows global grassroots mobilisations and climate crisis discussions (which I would recommend watching), one of the contributors said, “all these crises come from a crisis of empathy”.
I can’t remember who said it, but it struck me deep in my gut, yes that feels true. I feel and think that theatre and arts, culture is the answer, touring is the delivery mechanism. In today’s increasingly complex social landscape, marked by rising misogyny, racism, ableism, transphobia and authoritarianism, what does Performing Arts give us? It helps us to explore complexity, subtlety and empathy, which feels sadly missing right now in the national and global discourse.
Lest we forget shown in research theatre encourages social cohesion.
Regional touring is about much more than extending the life of a production; it creates opportunities for dialogue, empathy and shared cultural experiences. Talawa productions such as The Tide, a collaboration between Jade Hackett and Ryan Calais Cameron, and Black Victorians, a powerful dance performance by Jeanefer Jean-Charles, have enabled Black stories to reach audiences in towns and cities where they may not otherwise encounter this work. The success of Punch by James Graham, which developed at regional venue Nottingham Playhouse before transferring to the Young Vic in London, touring again, and then eventually coming to the West End, demonstrates how touring can build audiences and artistic momentum. Other productions including Minefields by Lola Arias show that audiences across the UK are eager to engage with bold, thought-provoking theatre when it is brought to where they live.
Fragments of Us by Fubunation and Sonia Hughes brings new work to audiences beyond London, creating space for reflection and conversation.
For me, these examples reinforce a longstanding belief: touring is not simply about moving productions around the country—it is about ensuring that powerful stories are experienced by diverse audiences, wherever they are.
As conversations around devolution, local identity and regional investment gather pace- from Greater Manchester to Croydon—the question becomes: who gets to experience theatre, and whose stories are being told?
Touring As Cultural Infrastructure
Touring is an essential part of the UK’s theatre ecology. We must treat it the same way we think of buildings: as key infrastructure.
A strong touring ecology depends on the relationships between producing theatres, presenting venues, local authorities and community organisations. These civic spaces are far more than performance venues; they are places where communities gather, learn, debate and connect, making them essential cultural infrastructure. As devolution reshapes how decisions are made at a local level, regional theatres should sit at the heart of conversations about place, identity and investment, rather than being treated as an optional enhancement or a “nice to have”. Too often, culture is expected to demonstrate its value after the fact, when, in reality, creativity is essential to healthier, more connected and resilient communities.
At the same time, touring itself is demanding work. It requires navigating complex logistics, maintaining artistic quality across multiple venues, and building audiences in places with vastly different levels of cultural infrastructure, transport links and local engagement. There is no level playing field: the challenges of touring vary significantly depending on where a venue is located and the resources available to support it. Recognising both the civic value of regional theatres and the reality of touring is essential if we want a more equitable cultural landscape.
Roads enable people to travel from one place to another; touring enables ideas, stories and perspectives to make the same journey. It ensures that culture is not concentrated in a handful of metropolitan centres but circulates across the country, connecting communities through shared experiences and exposing audiences to voices beyond their own. In that sense, touring is as vital to the nation’s cultural infrastructure as roads are to its physical infrastructure. It also plays a crucial role in making theatre more accessible and affordable.
For many people, travelling to London to see a production is simply not an option once the cost of transport, accommodation and higher ticket prices are considered. By bringing high-quality work directly to regional venues, touring removes these barriers, allowing audiences to experience world-class theatre closer to home and at a price that is often more attainable, alongside the economy that happens around these spaces. Access to culture should not depend on proximity to the capital or the ability to afford a day, or weekend trip to London; touring helps ensure that exceptional theatre can be experienced wherever people live.
Access depends on where you live
Access to theatre is shaped as much by geography as by artistic ambition. Arts Council England has consistently recognised touring as a vital means of ensuring that high-quality cultural experiences reach communities beyond major producing centres, particularly in places where permanent theatre provision is limited. Yet where you live still has a profound impact on what you can see. For many people, attending a performance is determined not only by whether there is a local venue, but also by the availability of public transport, the cost of travel, the frequency of touring programmes and the level of local cultural investment.
Government data has repeatedly highlighted regional disparities in cultural engagement and visitor patterns, underlining the concentration of cultural assets and audiences in London and the slower recovery of cultural participation outside the capital since the pandemic. In areas where theatre infrastructure has declined, communities can become cultural deserts, with limited opportunities to experience live performance without travelling considerable distances. While it may appear that audiences increasingly expect culture to come to them, this is often less a shift in behaviour than a response to practical barriers: rising transport costs, reduced public transport, limited leisure time and the expense of travelling to major cities make theatre less accessible for many people. Touring helps address these inequalities by bringing high-quality work directly into communities, ensuring that access to culture is shaped less by postcode than by opportunity.
Touring different stories to different communities
The artistic value of touring extends far beyond audience numbers or geographic reach. Touring enables people to encounter stories, histories and perspectives beyond their own lived experience, while also allowing locally rooted narratives to become part of a wider national conversation. This exchange is essential in a diverse society, creating opportunities for audiences to engage with experiences they may not actively seek out but which can challenge assumptions, broaden understanding and deepen empathy.
By bringing different stories to different communities, touring helps ensure that representation is not confined to specific regions or demographic groups but shared more widely across the country. Performing Arts has a unique ability to bring people together around complex ideas and human experiences, creating common reference points that contribute to social cohesion and a stronger sense of collective understanding. In doing so, touring helps build a cultural landscape in which more people can see themselves reflected on stage while also gaining insight into the lives and experiences of others.
Devolution and local cultural identity
As devolution reshapes how decisions are made across England, it presents an opportunity to rethink the role of culture in local life and recognise theatre as a vital civic asset rather than a discretionary service. Regional theatres are uniquely placed to create spaces where communities can engage with complex issues collectively, offering structured environments in which difficult topics can be explored through performance, post-show discussions, learning programmes and community engagement. At its best, theatre is a place to ask questions rather than provide easy answers, to challenge assumptions rather than reinforce existing views, and to encourage critical thinking through shared experiences. This civic role should be central to conversations about place-based investment and cultural democracy.
As areas such as Greater Manchester continue to shape their own cultural priorities and debates around places like Croydon highlight the importance of local cultural infrastructure, there is a growing case for devolved decision-making to play a greater role in supporting touring and ensuring communities have a stronger voice in the work that reaches their stages. Local cultural leadership should reflect the distinct identities, ambitions and needs of the communities it serves, while recognising that touring is essential to connecting those local stories to the wider national conversation.
Learning from existing touring networks
The good news is that the foundations for a stronger touring ecology already exist. Organisations including the Urban Touring Network, the Producing and Touring companies and London Theatre Touring Alliance (LTTA), the group have long championed the importance of bringing high-quality theatre closer to where people live, while advocating for the producers, venues and artists who make touring possible. Together, they support collaborations between producing companies, presenting venues and local partners to reach audiences who might otherwise have limited access to live performance. These partnerships demonstrate that successful touring is built on relationships, local knowledge and sustained investment rather than simply moving productions from one venue to the next.
Across industry panels, conferences and sector discussions, there is growing consensus that the challenges facing touring—from funding and infrastructure to audience development, logistics and regional equity—are well understood. The conversation has shifted from identifying the problems to asking how the cultural sector can work collectively to build a more resilient, connected and equitable touring landscape that serves communities across the country.
Conclusion
Ultimately, touring is not simply about moving productions from one venue to another; it is about ensuring that access to culture is not determined by postcode. It enables audiences across the country to experience powerful storytelling, engage with perspectives beyond their own, and participate in shared conversations that foster empathy, critical thinking and social cohesion. Touring is a commitment to making theatre accessible, relevant and reflective of the diverse communities that make up modern Britain. As the UK continues to rethink regional investment through devolution, touring must be recognised as an essential part of the nation’s cultural infrastructure, not an optional programme that can be scaled back when resources are stretched.
Investing in touring means investing in people, places and the connections between them. If we believe theatre and generally performing arts has the power to broaden perspectives, strengthen communities and help us better understand one another, then the question is no longer whether touring matters, but whether we are prepared to build and sustain the infrastructure that allows everyone, wherever they live, to take part.
