More than a dozen theatre, music and exhibition projects will tour regional New South Wales over the next two years under a new round of funding from Create NSW.

Announced today, 3 March, the 2025/26 Regional Arts Touring fund will distribute more than $850,000 to support 13 productions and exhibitions travelling to 49 regional communities, from Bega and Bathurst to Broken Hill and Byron Bay.

The tours are expected to engage more than 65,000 audience members and participants and provide employment and professional development opportunities for 152 NSW artists. Five regionally based productions are among the recipients, sharing locally grounded stories with audiences across the state.

ATYP’s Saplings. Photo © Clare Hawley

One of the flagship tours is Australian Theatre for Young People’s award-winning production Saplings, written by Yuwaalaraay playwright Hannah Belanszky. The work, which explores young people’s experiences with the law and justice system, will return to regional and Western Sydney communities whose stories helped shape it. The seven-week NSW leg forms part of ATYP’s largest national tour to date, spanning 11 venues in 2026 and incorporating songwriting workshops to embed local youth voices.

Other funded projects include a regional tour of Andy Griffiths’ You & Me and The Land of Lost Things from CDP Theatre Producers, Monkey Baa Theatre Company’s 2027 tour of Where is the Green Sheep? and Sydney Youth Orchestras’s place-based orchestral project Big River tour celebrating communities along the Darling River.

Soft Tread Enterprises will undertake a NSW tour of The Gospel According to Paul: The Second Coming – starring Jonathan Biggins as the erstwhile Prime Minister Paul Keating – to 10 NSW venues across seven weeks.

Musicians of the Sydney Youth Orchestras. Photo supplied

Programs led by Moogahlin Performing Arts, South West Arts and Arts Upper Hunter also feature, alongside independent artists and multicultural music initiatives.

The next funding round opens in April 2026.