About Us

Lancaster Arts: where ideas, peoples and places connect

Our strapline underlines our commitment to exceptional art that connects people and ideas.

Lancaster Arts is based at Lancaster University in the north west of England and encompasses the Nuffield Theatre, the Great Hall and the Peter Scott Gallery.  We have a long-established artistic reputation for the creation, development and presentation of cutting edge contemporary arts and are proud to be part of Arts Council England’s portfolio as a combined arts organisation.

Artistic work has been presented at our venues and in the surrounding region for over 50 years, celebrating a broad range of artistic practices from contemporary circus to classical music, Live Art to visual art. The Nuffield Theatre is the largest black box theatre outside of London and has played an important role in the history of British theatre.

“Lancaster Arts is a distinctive cross-arts organisation in an academic context – Lancaster University – an environment that supports the questioning of what constitutes the artistic, the social, the political and the personal.”
LADA

A remarkable and diverse mix of artists from across the world have shared and created work here from Samuel Beckett’s own production of Endgame, visits from renowned artists, Jerzy Grotowski to Augusto Boal, to the early support for companies such as Forced Entertainment, Hofesh Schecter Dance Company and Proto-type Theater and artists such as Adrian Howells, Mel Brimfield, Rajni Shah and Mahan Esfahani.

We are honoured to continue this legacy through our thematic approach to programming seasons and commissions. Our themes arise from listening to a wide range of partners, audiences and participants, academics and artists that relate to what is happening in the world today. Examples of past themes have been Women and Circus, Rework, and most recently, Pathways. The theme for 2022/23 is ‘Age and Ageing’

We’re proud to work with a number of partners across the North West and beyond, visit our partner’s page to find out more.