Northampton venue say everyone deserves to enjoy the theatre
The Royal & Derngate has won the UK’s Most Welcoming Theatre Award.
A Northampton venue say everyone deserves to enjoy the theatre.
This week the Royal & Derngate picked up most Welcoming Theatre at this weeks prestigious UK Theatre Awards 2025.
For over 30 years, this annual event has celebrated the creative excellence and outstanding achievements seen on and off stage throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
It's open to all theatre's outside of London, for which the Olivier Awards exist.
Most Welcoming Theatre award, rates venues across multiple factors, from accessibility and inclusion practices, to programming, outreach, workforce and audience development.
The other two finalists for the UK’s Most Welcoming Theatre Award, alongside Royal & Derngate, were Birmingham Rep and the Shakespeare North Playhouse in Liverpool.
Artistic Director Jesse Jones spoke to us about the judging process:
"They come round and they visit all of your teams. So you're making teams and how you welcome artists into the building, how you welcome audiences into the building, how you welcome communities and participants into building. And they kind of eat in your restaurant, go and watch a show, talk to audience members, go and talk to the backstage. They do a real comprehensive kind of audit."
He added that this win feels like an award win for everyone connected with the theatre:
"We win numerous awards as a theatre and they often celebrate a very particular part of the theatre. So it's like best set, or best best design or best performance in a pantomime or best, whatever the case may be, best direction of a play revival of a play.
"Whereas this feels like it's something that really celebrates all of the workforce and all of the people that interacted here because it is also one for our audiences, because our audiences and how they are in the space, in our buildings, watching shows also creates that buzz that makes it feel a welcoming space."
Royal & Derngate Chief Executive Jo Gordon says:
“It’s wonderful to see the hard work, professionalism and enthusiasm of our teams and volunteers acknowledged in this way. We’re absolutely delighted to have been named the UK’s Most Welcoming Theatre in the UK Theatre Awards. Our teams have shown such resilience over recent years when we’ve experienced the challenges of RAAC concrete in our foyers, managing to work with restricted facilities while still maintaining a welcoming and safe environment for audiences, and in particular for our access customers.”
The Christmas period is one of the busiest for the theatre and Jesse says watching families experience theatre together for the first time or for the 10th time at Christmas is a huge privilege to be able to facilitate.
This week also saw the theatre launch their Unforgettable Gift campaign. Now in it's tenth year, donations enables the theatre to gift hundreds of free tickets to their Christmas shows, to children, young people and families in Northamptonshire that have had a difficult year.