The Leverhulme Trust awards Central over £525,000 to help students
The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama is delighted to announce that it has been awarded a grant of £526,133 from the Leverhulme Trust to establish a range of student scholarships and to further support its internationally recognised work in Applied Theatre.
The generous award follows a grant of £414,620 that Central received from the Leverhulme Trust during the period from 2019 – 2021. This most recent funding forms part of Leverhulme’s Arts Scholarship programme and, over the period 2022 – 2025, will enable 18 Major Scholarships for incoming students. The funds will also provide financial assistance as Final Year Scholarships for 24 undergraduate students embarking on their final year of study to help alleviate financial hardship and enable them to complete their course. Finally, it will continue to support the School’s Applied Theatre work allowing approximately a hundred and fifty Applied Theatre students to increase their learning and engage with global communities.
Since the first grant in 2007, Leverhulme funding has enabled Central’s Applied Theatre students to learn through vital work study projects and to undertake key elements of their training via placements outside London where appropriate. Through the generous, ongoing support of the Leverhulme Trust, students are supported as they learn from working within special needs schools in Cornwall, hospitals in South Africa and with impoverished communities in Mumbai, to name just a few. These placements enable students to develop their learning in a variety of social and community contexts, developing the necessary experience and skills to secure professional work upon graduation – thus providing them with the very best possible route to employment. In continuing to enable their participation in these excellent and innovative projects, support from the Leverhulme Trust helps Central graduates to stand out.
This new grant will also make available scholarships for incoming and existing students across all our disciplines, enabling them to benefit from outstanding training and education regardless of personal or financial circumstances. The scholarships will support Central students during their studies and help to alleviate the costs of studying, accommodation, food and travel.
As a part of Central’s due diligence process for receiving financial awards, the particulars of The Leverhulme Trust grant went through appropriate ethical discussions at our Executive Management Group and Board of Governors. Central welcomes the acknowledgement of the Leverhulme Trust of their shared legacy with Unilever and looks forward to the sharing of independent research into the use of forced labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Solomon Islands, which has been commissioned by Unilever.
Information on applying for one of the new Leverhulme Scholarships will be available on our Scholarships page this autumn. Instructions on how to apply for Leverhulme Applied Theatre Bursaries are given to eligible students during the course.
About The Leverhulme Trust
The Leverhulme Trust was established by the Will of William Hesketh Lever, the founder of Lever Brothers. When he died in 1925, Lord Leverhulme left a proportion of his holdings in Lever Brothers to provide ‘scholarships for… research and education’ to further his philanthropic aims - and so the Leverhulme Trust came into being. Today, it is one of the largest all-subject providers of research funding in the UK, distributing approximately £100m a year.
From the Trust’s Statement on Equality Diversity and Inclusion:
“The Trust is aware of its own history. It was established with a legacy from Lord Leverhulme, founder of Lever Brothers, one of the companies that merged to form Unilever in 1930. Unilever are funding independent research by leading academics which will examine Lord Leverhulme’s later business operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Solomon Islands. Recognising our shared legacy, the Leverhulme Trust will be engaging fully with this research and the findings will be published and widely accessible.”
For more information about the Trust, please visit https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk and follow them on Twitter @Leverhulme Trust.
