Arts Council England recognises NYB All In!
“I loved it all! Everyone was so nice and supportive.
Not just the staff but every dancer. It’s a place I always want to be.”
National Youth Ballet is delighted to have been awarded an Arts Council England project grant for the next phase of NYB All In! to increase access to ballet as part of our widening participation and professional skills’ development aims. First piloted in 2022 and rapidly growing in impact, highlights have included showcases at Royal Opera House Next Generation Festival in 2024 and Ballet for All conference in 2025 with Birmingham Royal Ballet and the Dance Leaders Group. In 2026 this vital funding will allow us to extend NYB All In! to even more communities, participants, practitioners and audiences by showing that ballet really can be for everyone.
NYB’s Creative Director Jo Meredith will continue to develop this work with Natasha Britton, Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Parable Dance and with national dance agencies South East Dance in Brighton and Fabric in the Midlands, as well as sharing our learning with the wider dance sector.
NYB is striving to place NYB All In! at the heart of our culture. It is now fully integrated into our Beyond Ballet® programme to support emerging professional skills development and across the year it will include inclusive ballet classes with NYB’s All In! Young Leaders, a toolkit for practitioners to teach ballet more inclusively, CPD sessions for dance schools, our NYB All In! steering group and the NYB All In! Performance Company. This will culminate at NYB’s gala performance Echoes of Tomorrow on Saturday 5 September 2026 in Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London.
At a time where public funding in the arts is so competitive, this is a real vote of confidence in NYB’s leadership, recognising NYB as a changemaker with a voice to be heard, to ensure that all the young people we work with can benefit from taking part.
Quote by Barbara Palczynski, Chief Executive
“NYB has worked so hard to build this project from the ground up, often with little funding, whilst remaining true to our values. Our passionate commitment to ensuring that young people are empowered to thrive, shaping the future of ballet and the world around them is central to what keeps us going. This project has been beautifully curated by our visionary Creative Director Jo Meredith and a dedicated team. I am so grateful that the Arts Council has recognised the hard work that goes into creating an inclusive culture within an organisation and an artform. And the young people and audiences who benefit from this will be richly rewarded.”
Quote by Jo Meredith, Creative Director
“It is a highlight of my career seeing the young people that we have supported and worked with through our NYB All In! project develop their skills and continue their professional journey as part of the NYB Team. Receiving this funding enables us to offer more opportunities to new participants and gives us the chance to further shape and hone our practice so that we can begin to share our work with others.”
Further reading
Barbara Palczynski blog for Clore Inclusive Cultures
https://www.cloreleadership.org/resource/hierarchy-space/
Photo by Jules Renahan
🔊 Audio version available
