Sweet Legacies (York Theatre Royal)
Sweet Legacies was a community engagement programme led by York Theatre Royal (YTR) in 2025. With financial support from the National Heritage Lottery Fund, Garfield Weston Foundation, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Sweet Legacies extended creative community egnagement beyond the theatre's ongoing community production, His Last Report. "The idea for the project really came from the theatre’s aspiration to look at how the community production for 2025 could expand to reach more people across the city and be as accessible as possible".[1] Both His Last Report and Sweet Legacies were inspired by the city of York's history with the Rowntree's confectionery company and the legacy of the poverty reports produced by Seebohm Rowntree in the 20th Century.
Between January and August of 2025, Sweet Legacies worked with more than 20 local and regional community groups. Some of the outputs were made publicly accessible via an online project archive. The project also produced a series of podcast episodes, accessible via the project archive and culminated in a community ceilidh event on 30th August 2025.[2]