The NEA Regional Performing Arts Touring Program began as an effort to increase access to live performing arts for all Americans. NEA support to the six regional arts organizations (RAOs) enables them to tour high-quality, diverse art across the country with an emphasis on reaching underserved and rural communities. To ensure that communities see new works, to help the performers build their audience base, and to help the organizations that present them to expand their offerings, the majority of tours commissioned by the RAOs must comprise out-of-state artists or arts organizations. In addition, each tour must offer substantial community engagement and educational activities such as master classes, school programs, or residencies, so that community members and artists have the opportunity to interact with one another.

At the start of the program, a West Virginia local arts council responded to a regional orchestra tour with the comment: “Your… funding made it possible for even the smallest fish in the pond to take part in an extraordinary performance of classical music.” Since 1999, the program has grown to include visual, literary, and media arts touring and shortened its name to the NEA Regional Touring Program. No matter what the discipline, engagement with the artist is key, so with film screenings, for example, the director will accompany the film and talk with the audience.

Through the program, each of the RAOs sponsors a wide variety of touring artists and groups. Recent tours have including CIRCA, a dance-circus hybrid performance; Aquila Theater Company; filmmaker Patrick Creadon; and Women of the World, an all-female singing group.

The program’s impact is significant. Each performance draws community members together in unique ways. For example, the New England Foundation for the Arts recently sponsored a tour of a performance featuring puppets titled Who’s Hungry. The show focused on food poverty in the United States, and in each town partnered with community-based organizations that work to address hunger. Since its inception, the NEA Regional Touring Program has brought more than 30,000 performances and millions of related engagement activities to more than 2,000 communities across the country.