LONDON.- Dame Vivien Duffield announced today grants totalling £8.2 million to open up new creative learning spaces for children and young people in eleven cultural organisations across England.

The recipients are: The Donmar Warehouse; The Holburne Museum, Bath; Kensington Palace; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Museum of Liverpool; National Theatre; Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Cornwall; Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon; Tate Britain; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Whitworth Gallery, Manchester.

Dame Vivien Duffield said today: “I believe passionately that children and young people deserve the very best opportunities to benefit from the transforming power of our world class cultural organisations. I am delighted that we have been able to support such outstanding projects created by some of the best architects, in museums, galleries and theatres across the country – even in a royal palace. Now more than ever, I believe that culture should be at the heart of our children’s learning.”

The Clore Duffield Foundation was formed in December 2000 through the merger of the Clore Duffield Foundation (est. 1964) and the Vivien Duffield Foundation (est. 1987). Since 2000 it has distributed or allocated a total of £50,583,715 in grants to charitable causes, including £23,631,763 for Clore learning spaces. In addition to its particular contribution to cultural education, it has a focus on leadership training, having launched the Clore Leadership Programme for the cultural sector in 2003 and the Clore Social Leadership Programme in 2008. Among its most recent projects are the Clore Poetry and Literature Awards, a five year £1 million programme to fund poetry and literature initiatives for children and young people across the UK, and a new Award as part of the Museum of the Year Prize: the £10,000 Clore Award for Museum Learning. It is a founding supporter of the Cultural Learning Alliance, a collective voice working to ensure that all children and young people have access to culture. This month the Foundation will publish a review of the Clore Performing Arts Awards, a £1m small grants programme which funded exceptional experiences in the performing arts for under 19s, 2005 to 2010.

In addition to the Chairmanship of her Foundation, Dame Vivien was a member of the Board of the Royal Opera House from 1990 to 2001 and is currently Chairman of the Royal Opera House Endowment Fund. She is a Director of the Southbank Centre board, a Governor of the Royal Ballet and has just been appointed as a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum. From 2007 to 2010 she was Chair of the Campaign for the University of Oxford. She is a board member and founder of the Jewish Community Centre for London, which will open in 2013, and is Chairman of the Clore Foundation in Israel. Dame Vivien’s charitable work in the UK was acknowledged with the award of a CBE in 1989 and DBE in 2000. In November 2008 HRH The Prince of Wales presented Dame Vivien with one of the first Medals for Arts Philanthropy. In January 2011 she was presented with the International Society of Performing Arts Angel Award for arts philanthropy, in New York.