The Sir Barry Jackson Trust

Knighted in 1925, Sir Barry founded the Malvern Theatre Festival in 1929 and was director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford in the late 40s. At Birmingham, Sir Barry continued to discover and promote great actors at the Rep (from Paul Scofield and Elizabeth Spriggs to Albert Finney and Derek Jacobi); in his autobiography, the director Peter Brook (another protege) underlines Sir Barry Jackson’s importance in the postwar British theatre story.

In 1935, Sir Barry Jackson had founded a trust to run the theatre (effectively donating it to the city). Following his death in 1961, the Sir Barry Jackson Trust became a theatre charity. In 1986, the Trust’s income was dramatically increased, when the about-to-be-abolished West Midlands Metropolitan County Council donated a large sum for the promotion of touring theatre in the region.

Since then, the Trust has donated well over half a million pounds to The REP’s community tours to schools and other venues in Birmingham and beyond. In addition, the county fund has given well over £300,000 to other touring companies in the region, including Big Brum, Banner Theatre, the Shysters and Theatre Absolute.

The Trust supports education work in theatre through a bequest from the Hornton Foundation, and continues to look after the Birmingham Repertory Company’s archive; and it continues to rely on donations and legacies to support its work. In 2003, the Trust published a new history of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, to complement earlier books by T.C.Kemp and J.C.Trewin.