Located on the edge of Clifton Down, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School counts notable actors Olivia Coleman, Daniel Day-Lewis and Jeremy Irons among its alumni
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Leading conservatoire axes ‘unviable’ undergraduate training
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School says challenges including the capping of student fees, restrictions to international student visas, cuts in grants, and increases in costs of living and teaching mean its undergraduate offering is no longer financially sustainable.
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School (BOVTS) will end its provision of all undergraduate training, the conservatoire has announced.
The school, whose degrees are validated by the University of the West of England, announced on Monday (6 January) that it will no longer accept applications for its undergraduate degree programmes and will cease admitting new undergraduate students in September 2025.
The changes will impact all undergraduate courses, including BA Hons Professional Acting, FdA and BA Hons Costume for Theatre, TV and Film and a proposed new course, which should have been launching for Sept 2025 – BA (Hons) Stage Management and Film & TV Production.
Last year, the school suspended its BA Production Arts (Stage and Screen) and Foundation Production Arts (Stage) courses, which included training in lighting, sound and scenic arts for theatre, pivoting instead to courses in stage management and production arts for the screen.
The school said that current students will be able to complete their degrees as planned and that the quality of the training they receive will not be affected.
Prospective students who have applied to the BA Hons Acting course for September 2025 entry, which has a £25 admission fee, will receive a full refund.
BOVTS will continue to offer its postgraduate courses, including MFA Professional Acting, MA Screen Acting, MA Drama Directing, MA Drama Writing and MA Performance Design, as well as some short courses.
The school said it hoped the changes would help to provide it with a “sustainable long-term future” and “keep it at the forefront of dramatic arts training”, but it added that it needed “time and space to work through the options”.
A representative from the school told Arts Professional that in the first instance, a consultation for redundancy will affect six roles within its professional services departments, including marketing and admissions, with a further consultation period expected to affect a currently unknown number of staff as the ‘teach out’ of undergraduate students begins from September 2025.
The school, which also employs a number of local theatre professionals to work on its student productions, said it was “difficult to quantify” how many freelancers would be impacted by the changes, but that it would be low in the first years as training for second and third-year students continues.
‘Financially unsustainable’
Established in 1946, shortly after its original parent company, Bristol Old Vic Theatre, which it separated from in 1986, BOVTS counts notable actors Olivia Coleman, Daniel Day-Lewis and Jeremy Irons among its alumni, as well as Tony award-winning sound designer Christopher Schutt and set designer Bob Crowley.
In a statement, BOVTS said the decision to axe its undergraduate courses was made due to a combination of “recent challenges that are having a widespread impact across the sector”, making its current training model “financially unsustainable.”
Those challenges, it said, include the capping of student fees, restrictions to international student visas, cuts in grants, and increases in costs of living and teaching.
The school added that a recent change instigated by the Office for Students (OfS) to halt applications for self-registration until August 2025 had “necessitated a completely new approach to the school’s business planning”.
A spokesperson for BOVTS told Arts Professional that the school had planned to apply for self-registration this spring. If successful, this would have enabled the school to apply for future grant funding and reopen its doors to international students.
However, on 2 December, OfS announced it would be “temporarily refocusing” its resources to support the financial challenges affecting higher education providers in England.
As a result, it said it would no longer accept new applications from providers seeking to register, gain degree-awarding powers, or gain university titles.
‘Not viable in the future’
BOVTS principal and CEO Fiona Francombe said that deciding to end undergraduate provision now would allow the school to plan for the next two academic years “calmly”.
“Along with many arts and higher education organisations, we are facing unprecedented funding challenges which we need to address as our current training model, focusing on teaching undergraduate degree courses, is not viable in the future,” said Francombe.
“It is our intention to create a long-term sustainable future for the school where we can deliver high calibre training for which the school is renowned, but we need time and space to work through the options, and our current focus must be on existing students and staff.”