Cameron Mackintosh donates further £500,000 to Theatre Artists Fund
© Dan Wooller
Cameron Mackintosh has provided a further £500,000 to the Theatre Artists Fund, set up to aid those in the theatre community who have been left unsupported by the government during the pandemic.
Producer Mackintosh said today: "Though the Government's exemplary vaccine programme has shown that there is now light at the end of the tunnel, the probability is that it will still be over seven months before the West End has the majority of its major shows back. This latest grant from my Foundation, a year after our industry was closed down, will hopefully help some of our hard-hit freelancers to get through until we can employ them again, provided there are no further shutdowns
which would be catastrophic.
"‘My theatre and production companies have also during this last year supported hundreds of jobs throughout the closure of our theatres and productions, to ensure that our historic buildings and world-renowned productions are ready to come back, as soon as we have a permanent instruction from the Government to do so."
This matches an initial £500,000 grant given by the Mackintosh Foundation to the fund earlier in the pandemic. The Les Misérables and Mary Poppins producer has also aided the likes of Acting For Others and the Musicians Union while venues remain closed. CML has stated that, in total, £3 million has been given to artists either directly or through grants over the course of the last year.
Sam Mendes, who co-founded the fund, said: "We are immensely grateful to the Mackintosh Foundation for this extraordinarily generous contribution. Throughout the process of setting up the Theatre Artists Fund, we have been consistently moved by the feeling that the theatre community is pulling together to support and protect its most vulnerable members, and this is a wonderful example of exactly that."
