Trusts & Grants

The Saintbury Trust are a grant-making charity that supports organisations in parts of the West Midlands with a particular interest to enabling the arts, protecting heritage and the environment and helping those with disabilities.

We’re grateful to have been able to count on the support of The Saintbury Trust on a regular basis, most recently in 2024 with an award towards the delivery of Relaxed Performances. The grant of £5,000 has helped to create these specially adjusted performances for audiences with an autistic spectrum condition and/or additional needs.

By placing their award formed in our annual Big Give Christmas Challenge fundraising campaign, the Saintbury Trust saw their impact and support double in value due to match-funding format of the popular scheme.

Charles Holloway OBE is a significant arts philanthropist who has a passion for supporting venues and creative organisations across the UK.

As the Founding Supporter of our New Musical Theatre department, the UK’s first in-house department dedicated to developing musical theatre talent and commissioning and producing relevant, exciting new musicals.

A 3-year grant from the Charles Michael Holloway CT has helped to secure the early phase of the department, including the creation under the My First Musical banner of The Jingleclaw, our musical aimed at younger children, which played to critical acclaim and packed audiences in the Patrick Studio in Dec 24-Jan 25.

With the backing of the property region’s property sector, Property for Kids supports charities that help disadvantaged children across the West Midlands.

Property for Kids has been a consistent, generous supporter of our Hippodrome Education Network (HEN), helping us to provide incredible opportunities, skills and theatre experiences for children and young people in the city’s most under-served communities.

Property for Kids generously provided a £5,000 grant in support of HEN, equivalent to an academic year HEN Gold Category membership for a school in a deprived area of the city.

The package includes visits to world-class performances on our main stage, weekly creative workshops that enhance the curriculum delivered by a dedicated Learning Artist throughout the academic year, the hugely popular showcase performance opportunities for students in the Patrick Studio, industry introductions and the chance to work with professional artists.

Birmingham Hippodrome regularly applies to grants from Arts Council England (ACE). Recent awards have supported the delivery of major free, outdoor festivals and accessible capital plans.

Birmingham Weekender is an inclusive, city-wide festival which feature amazing performances, fantastical installations, pop up experiences and new commissions from a host of regional, national and international companies, welcoming over 200,000 visitors across the city-wide festival sites.

Now in its 10th anniversary year, B-SIDE Hip Hop festival brings together extraordinary artists and breath-taking acts from across all four elements of Hip-Hop: breakin’, graffitti, D’Jing and MC’ing.

With the help of ACE we have been able to make improvements to our website, especially for Wheelchair and Access Users to ensure they benefit from an equitable digital experience through the booking pathway. We’re proud to be working to Web Content Accessibility (WCAG) 2.1 Guidelines, the international standards with further work in the pipeline as part of our commitment to Access for All.