Carefully Taught

As we attempt to navigate the latest path out of the pandemic some of the residual anger and resentment that we saw build up during the lockdown has stayed with us. Lockdown forced everyone to become reflective. World events shone a spotlight on systemic inequalities, and that slow burn anger suddenly ignited, sending people out onto the streets demanding change.

Of course in reality that call for change had been ever present, but a series of events amplified the voices to a level that they just couldn't be ignored. From BLM, to safety for women right through to 'freedom marches' there was a protest for everyone to get behind, whatever your own political beliefs.

The ripples of all those protests have been found in schools and colleges across the UK (and no doubt world). Students empowered by movements and causes that they can get behind have all vowed to make us a better, more equal society. For those of us that can easily remember the 80s it's quite a throwback. I was training during the student occupations in the late 80s, hell I even took part in one, we thought and indeed had to believe that we could create the change that was so desperately needed in the world.  I was raised by an ardent trade unionist who taught me to always stand up for what was right and to fight for injustice. In other words I'm all about radical change, but now a few decades on, I realise that meaningful change takes time, and we owe it to our 'cause' to have the conversations that will lead to systemic changes, not just quick fixes.

In our industry various institutions and organisations have been called out for historical wrong doings. Drama colleges in particular have been called out for poor behaviour and inequality.  So many intention statements have been issued around what changes certain institutions are going to undertake in order to wake up to this new order.

I think that a sad by-product of these important discussions though are the amount of teachers no longer wanting to work within the drama college framework. I've spoken to so many people recently that are literally too scared to teach as they feel that they're now unable to get things wrong.

Now before you jump on this blog and shout that it's a good thing that 'those' teachers want to leave, and that people who can't evolve and change should be kicked out, yadda yadda . . . hear me out, as I don't actually think that it's the 'problematic' teachers that are wanting to leave. After all, those sort of teachers are never reflective on their own practice, and will simply dig a trench of their own belief system and hide in it for a while until it's safe to come out. "Those" teachers will find other jobs in other sympathetic organisations that won't require them to even give 'lip service' to the systemic changes that are needed.

No I believe that we're losing the teachers that are desperate to get it right . . . all because the sudden hunger for change does not give them the right to get it wrong. One dumb comment, one thought provoking question can result in a social media backlash, or an official complaint needing weeks of investigation in order to follow protocol. Their confidence is being eroded, and a teacher consumed with self doubt is never a good one.

Whatever happened to nuanced discussions, discourse, learning from mistakes?

Again before you jump on this there are clearly some things that are just 'wrong' eg wilful mistakes that could and indeed should lead to a legal prosecution. However that's in a different league to a teacher just having a bad day and saying an unthinking sentence in the spur of a moment. As educators we should not be expected to get everything 'right' straight away. Like our students we have to learn how to exist in this brave new world too.

The teachers that I've spoken to feel like they've lost that freedom to get it wrong. One wrong word, one stupidly phrased sentence leads to them being called out as an 'ist'. However it's important to remember that teachers are fallible humans too. The thoughtless sentence that's hurt a student can't be assumed to have been said with a premeditated intent to hurt or damage. There's so much more to the issue than that moment. A context, a nuance, an understanding. . . a conversation.

Teachers are expected to take into account the wellbeing of their students, to acknowledge and make allowances for a 'bad day', to attempt to stay curious about why somebody reacted in such a way, as opposed to writing off that person for their actions in a single moment. We hold in high regard the ability for somebody to learn from their mistakes, we encourage 'daring to fail' as a mantra for learning. Yet teachers are now expected to just get it right straight away. 

We are all living through the pandemic, as angry and frustrated as students are for the slowness of change, teachers are also burnt out and spent, as they too attempt to navigate the change that is so sorely needed. However I believe that we also have to give teachers the right to get it wrong. Once again for clarity I'm not talking about things that are illegal, I'm talking about regular things where they just get it wrong or handle things badly.

Teachers should be afforded the same luxury of learning from their mistakes, being held accountable and also making right where necessary.

With the recent cases of school teachers being trialed by social media we have to be wary of these things as it's important to remember that one person's account is not necessarily 'the truth'. It is 'their truth', but we don't know what else was going on for them when they had those experiences. There is always another truth or another side to an event, and it is those two things that come together to create 'the truth'.

I spoke about this before having seen a friend be put through hell and back when somebody chose to lie about them on social media. As the person on the receiving end of the lie you have no recourse to defend yourself, as seemingly the first account of a story that people read is now considered to be the gospel truth,  after all, who would knowingly lie about 'such a thing'? Yet the thing is. . . people do lie.

I've had this experience countless times myself. Even quite recently on one social media platform somebody commented under one of our videos that they'd been to the college and had been physically beaten up by a member of the faculty during the audition!!! A ludicrous statement on so many levels, the person making the claim had never stepped foot in the college and other than this troll post had had nothing to do with us at all - but people were prepared to believe them, after all . . . why would they be lying?  I mean this is an extreme example and I called the person out on it, but you get my drift. Social media is as dangerous as it is brilliant. There was another case recently where somebody posted a wholly inaccurate account of a situation that they had been involved with, now for sure that could have been their experience of the events, but by missing out huge chunks of really important and vital information, their sense of injustice read true, however those missing chunks actually painted a very different picture. Again though - social media is not the place to try to defend actions. There's just not the space.  In an ideal world you'd call out these things, sue for defamation and have your day in court and a sense of justice, however the reality of that is that you have to be very rich to fight even the most basic of defamation cases. So you're forced to just leave it out there and hope that nothing comes of it. In the meantime, as in the case of my friend though, these wild accusations can lead innocent people down a dark path of despair. A huge price to pay for literally doing nothing wrong.

So what's the answer, as I really worry that we're going to lose a lot of brilliant teachers who really care about their students/pupils, and in truth I don't know. I guess we all have to keep striving to create workplaces where difficult discussions can take place, without fear of retribution when heavily edited accounts are posted online. Students need to be heard, but equally teachers need to feel confident with their voices too.  Is it more staff training? Is it more discussions in town hall type meetings within organisations?  We're well past the age of 'the teacher is always right', but equally we shouldn't be in the age of 'the student is always right'. I guess that it's mutual respect, constant conversations and an openness to change, and that change can sometimes come from getting it wrong, and both students and staff have to be supported and indeed granted the right to 'learn from their mistakes'.

Tis a brave new world, and one that we're all striving to belong to. It just takes time eh?

Mental Health and resilience

 I've read several conflicting articles over the past couple of weeks about how much better our industry is coping with mental health since the pandemic. Some claim that we're really getting on top of it all now with lots of additional help being put in place, others claim that we're still not doing enough, and we're about to witness a massive era of crash and burn.

Now as the person that started campaigning for better education around mental health in drama training some 7 years ago now, and as someone that was instrumental in launching the #time4change mental health charter some 5 years ago I'm finding the conversations really difficult - and here's why. We're focused on the symptoms, not the cause. We're working off the assumption that the industry is making people ill, whereas it seems to me that with 1 in 3 in the arts susceptible to mental illness, shouldn't we be moving a few steps backwards and try to deal with the fact that people who might already be experiencing symptoms of mental illnesses are entering our industry. For sure our industry makes it worse, but for lots of reasons, our industry attracts a certain demographic.

What am I basing this brazen statement on - 12 years of running a drama college with a clinician heading up my pastoral care team. I am truly gobsmacked at how many of my students over the years were attempting to deal with obvious mental illness symptoms and yet nobody had diagnosed them. Instead, there are countless stories of GPs, teachers, and even parents normalising their symptoms, putting it down to teenage angst etc when all the time they just needed treatment. I've witnessed first-hand the life-changing effect of treatments like CBT, talking therapy and sometimes where indicated, a chemical intervention. 

The trouble with the new culture of declaring your mental health is that we're failing to build resilience and we're failing to address the real issue. We all have crap days, and we all have days where we have to push through 'a mood' but for some, this is indicative of an illness. The answer isn't necessarily to have a day off though. For example, if our students hit a crisis at college we support them to come in as much a possible. Physical exercise is one of the best endorphin hits around and my lot dance for 3.5 hours every morning.  For sure we can give them moments outside of the space to breathe, but then it's back into the studio as soon as possible. Distraction is also really useful.

Now clearly there can't and shouldn't be blanket rules, this is not a black and white issue. For the student suddenly diagnosed with bipolar who is in a depressive episode, and who is attempting to get the right treatment, college is not the right environment for them, you can't 'push through' that. So it's about having a clinician on hand to advise us how best to help.

Anxiety is through the roof at the moment for all of us, but for some people, they've been living with anxiety their entire lives, so this is just the icing on a really big cake. Yet not many people seem to realise that anxiety is a treatable condition. So why learn to live with the symptoms when you could be living your life symptom-free? 

Some of these symptoms are incredibly nuanced, and would not be picked up by the much-lauded mental health first aiders, just like an underlying condition would not be picked up by a St John's first aider.  Here's the rub though there is no longer a shame about having a bad mental health day, but there's still a shame in actually having a mental illness.

Until we address the taboo that some people were literally born with a genetic loading stacking the odds against them from the off (just like we're genetically loaded to have other illnesses) then this is always going to be an unsatisfactory conversation.

The discussion around wellbeing has (I'll say it again) hijacked the much-needed conversation around mental illness. As one of my students once said, if eating vegetables, taking nature hikes and yoga could have cured their depression then they shouldn't have hit a major crisis. For them, the only solution was a medical intervention, their clinical depression needed a chemical reaction to rebalance them. No amount of broccoli, sea air and downward dog could replicate what their brain actually needed.

Early intervention is key, primary schools are slowly edging towards a whole school approach to mental health, in the interim though colleges should be the final safety net to catch people. 

They Saved The MTA

19th July 7pm announced publicly that we were closing The MTA in September 2021. This was not a ploy, it was a heartbreaking reality.

29th July midday announced that somehow we had been 'saved'. In just 10 days the darkest day of The MTA turned into the brightest day. We're under no illusions that we're saved for good - but we are safe long enough to allow the class of 2022 to graduate, and for the past 3 to 4 months that's all we were trying to do. We have plans and supporters in place to work with us to secure a better future for the college, but we'll be taking it one step at a time. Of course the intention is to keep going - but we set out to do one thing first.

In the last 10 days, though we've seen instalives packed with MT royalty supporting the #savetheMTA campaign, we've seen a Go Fund Me campaign raised at the last look over £16k, we've had offers of support both financial and in kind. I've spoken more to Chairman Jon Harris than I have to my wife, as we worked our way through the various obstacles and aids that were thrown at us.

I've been reminded time and time again that my poor self-esteem really can't handle compliments. I've been taken on countless trips down Memory Lane, with past students and staff, lots of those trips were just sheer laughter, a couple of sheer horror but quite a few of them were devastatingly humbling.

I've been reminded (as if I needed it actually) that I have an amazing group of friends that really 'get me', who know when to back off, and exactly when to parachute in with words of wisdom. My family are my heroes.

I spent half the week emailing people telling them that things had been canceled, and terminating contracts, whilst the latter part of the week emailing them back to say that things were all back on.

To say that I'm reeling is an understatement. However, most of all I feel a huge sense of relief. Carrying the stress of the past year has taken a tremendous toll on me. That old work/life balance definitely needs adjusting, but suddenly the college once again has a sense of possibility and hope about it, as opposed to a sense of inevitability. 

Over the past year, the pandemic had almost forced the wider MTA community apart. Not so fulfilling to pop into a zoom room as it is to pop into a Green Room. Whilst every so often we'd all come together for some online event or another it did feel like it had drifted. However, once the closure announcement was made those ambassadors were just phenomenal. I had spent the best part of the year sad for my 1st years because they had no sense of the greater MTA community when suddenly they all parachuted down to help out of nowhere.

I've kept saying this but The MTA is not the only independent drama college focussing on vocational training. There's a few of us about, and we're all being sold out by the industry's gatekeepers and that really needs to change. We're going to keep doing our thing because we know that it works, and from the outpouring of support we've had over the last 10 days it seems obvious that quite a few people agree with us. We've consciously not issued press releases - predominantly because I loathe how in recent years The Stage has noticeably changed direction from the 'we'll support everyone' stance that we used to know and love into the 'we'll only talk about the Federation of Drama Schools' as if there's nothing else out there. Well let's just call it shall we - as a lot of those colleges are currently undertaking internal investigations on really serious allegations, but The Stage still reveres the ground that they walk on.  The Stage (and Equity) should be campaigning to regulate the UK training industry. Instead, everybody stays quiet.

They are our industry newspaper and have done next to nothing to highlight and campaign about the lack of provision in vocational training, just like Equity have done nothing. Too many 'old boys' looking after the 'old boys' for my liking. Plus now that they've added these ridiculous clickbait headlines to social media posts knowing full well that the articles are behind a paywall . . . well I'm done with pretending that that's OK.  We've called it out a few times over the closure, and it's been interesting to see others call it out too. Well, we're done with being quiet with this stuff moving forward. Things really do need to change.

That said, and rant over, for now, I'm going to take some time to finish off this academic year, regroup, reset then move forward. The path ahead though doesn't feel as lonely as usual. 

Expect the Unexpected

 Every year when a new intake joins the college we ask our graduates and 2nd years if they have any advice for the newbies. Without fail one person will always say that to 'survive' #theMTAway they need to expect the unexpected. Now to qualify that really quickly - what they're referring to is our penchant of springing surprise auditions on them all the time. We do it to train our students not to be afraid of auditions, to almost see them as a game. Successful or not, just to have taken part means that it was an audition 'banked'. None of us ever know when the payout of that deposit will be, but if you did your prep, it will eventually pay you back.

Well, this week's event has made me really reflect on that phrase. Monday was truly horrific. Since the Board voted not to run next year late on Friday evening, it's fair to say that my weekend was . . . difficult. I still had a show left to finish writing, and it's REALLY hard trying to write a comedy when you're living in your own private hell. Just to make 2021 really perfect, just a matter of days earlier I had also been home to Wales to attend the funeral of a really close relative. It had been one of those tragic diagnosed one week died 2 weeks later sort of scenarios. With my wife looking after the children I ended up locking myself away in the office for the weekend writing, grieving and stunned actually. 

In a bid to support our students when we broke the news I was flagged by Jon Harris, the Chair of our Board, Sam Hull, a Trustee but also one of our original cohort (so she'd been there on the day that the college opened), plus faculty members Josh Mathieson (Head of Voice/VP), Giles Taylor (Deputy Head of Acting) and Tilly Vosburgh (Head of Acting who had literally ubered across to us after finishing a morning shoot).

The next hour was a blur really, emails scheduled to go out to incoming students, staff, supporters, 2 year groups to tell, a social media live in a private group to tell our graduates. Here's what I do remember though - the first years whilst devastated were instantly galvanised into a group of action, even though the situation was desperate we still managed to find things to laugh about (a very important MTA trait). The irony that they had literally just finished a MT class looking at rep only to discover that the song of the day had been "Tell Me It's Not True"? I mean WTAF? 

The 2nd years were equally stunned, but recognised instantly that they were in many way unaffected by the decision (other than the lack of free dance classes moving forward), so immediately after we finished explaining the situation to them - their response? They asked to go across to the other studio to support their friends in the first year. It was as beautiful as it was devastatingly painful to watch.

Then this is when it all changed - as I had made the decision to personally tell our graduates (college for life and all that, so we have regular contact with them, and this was far too important to just send an email). I nipped into their private FB group to go live and tell them (I should add that the only other time that I've ever done that actually was when it was announced that the UK was closing down for a global pandemic, and we went live in all our groups to reassure them and tell them that we were around to support them).  As with our students, we explained our financial position in detail as we're always transparent with our students, yet even when I made it clear that we were looking to find stupid money very quickly, they were instantly galvanised to try and help.

By that evening a group calling themselves "The MTA Community" has started a Go Fund Me, we had already been contacted about the potential of some larger donations, and by the time the news went public at 7pm it felt like this kamikaze juggernaut that I'd been trying to steer for the last few months had already been taken away from me, with a whole group of people suddenly attempting to steer it instead. 

It was a conscious decision to put out our statement on our own terms via our social media channels, as for quite some time now it's been evident that our industry press has a clear bias supporting the Federation of Drama Schools, and their clickbait social media headlines invariably belie the story of the articles held behind a paywall. We had nothing to hide and A LOT to say, and we wanted the full story out there.  Whilst we felt that it was too late for us, we know that we're not the only college struggling with policy decisions designed to push out true vocational training.

Never in a million years did I think that our post would have the reaction that it did. We felt that we were such an insignificant cog in this beast of an industry that we would be gifted the dignity to slide away quietly. I was aware that we had facilitated change in the training industry, especially around all the mental health stuff, but even that felt like it had been sidelined recently having heard the absolute horror stories that were spilling out in the media. Organisations that had signed up to the #time4change mental health charter had clearly done nothing more than offered lip service to it given what else was alleged to have been going on in these colleges.

How wrong we were.  As people that work with me know I'm fastidious about responding to messages instantly, invoices are literally paid on receipt as I just like to keep on top of my work. However, there was no way that I could keep on top of this. Once I've finished this I've got some serious catching up to do.

We still don't know what's going to happen, we still haven't secured all the funding that we need, however, we have now said that IF we did reach our £250K goal which would enable us to end the course properly for our current first years, we would also run one more first-year group, only this time with no guarantee of a 2nd year, and as the £250K is essentially paying for "ghost seats" for the students that we failed to attract, we committed to filling those seats with disadvantaged students who would never usually be able to afford a vocational college. We'll hold auditions for a diverse group of students who would like to train #theMTAway for a year. They'd get to do 3 shows with us if nothing else. 

My only unfulfilled dream around The MTA was to find a way to fund 50% of our places with 50% funding already in place. Maybe, just maybe our final year would finally allow me to reach that goal. A bittersweet irony, but a hugely gratifying one at that.

The story goes on. . . . 

Here's a link to the Go Fund Me page: https://uk.gofundme.com/f/save-the-mta

End of an Era

 When you're forced to close a business, you're also forced to be self-reflective to work out what went wrong. Over the past few months as the seriousness of The MTA's position became ever clearer to me I've done nothing but self reflect.  The obvious answer really must be that the course didn't work - after all, if it did we'd have people queuing outside the door to come and train with us, except that in many ways we did have those people queuing up - but they all turned away when they found out that our course came with no funding stream. It didn't matter how much we'd try to reassure them that we'd find a way to make it work for them, we know for a fact that it stopped people auditioning.

This dichotomy of running a college that clearly worked - 100% of students securing agent representation is no mean feat when you're not massaging your figures with signings with associated agencies. In total we trained 193 students through to graduation, and a further 15 were trained up to the end of their first year.  When I opened the college I was told that 95% of our graduates would drop out of the industry within 5 years.  I always vowed to base our success on the longevity of the careers that we created. Pre-pandemic a staggering 78% of our graduates were still in the industry with 23% of those having secured West End or No 1 touring contracts. However that's just the PR headline, as the reality is even richer, our graduates went on to perform all over the world, from Lapland to the USA (via China, Malaysia, Australia), working at the National, the RSC, West End, International tours, open-air theatres, schools, community theatre, on screens big and small.

Hard to see the place as a failure when you're looking at the evidence, isn't it?

So where did we go wrong? We stuck to the idea that vocational training was enough to get you a career, we didn't buy into the Tory-inspired myth that people needed a qualification to succeed in our industry. We invested in the students, not in the system. That ultimately was our downfall. With no desire to expand, the business model literally involved securing enough students year after year to train with us. We had various plans in place for low numbered year groups so we plodded along quite nicely. However, in 2019 with the demise of the PCDL, it became harder to recruit students as we suddenly had no funding attached at all. We saw the drop of applicants instantly during the 2020 'audition season'.  We started to explore other options but these things take time, so when we were suddenly facing Brexit (20% of our students tended to come from the EU, but we would no longer be permitted to train them), and then Covid right on top of it, all the wheels that we had started to put in action ground to a halt.

We had exhausted our evaluation of moving to a degree model when we realised that to successfully do that we would need to change our course in order to make it financially viable as we could only realise a certain amount of government funding. It was suggested that we could introduce the idea of a reading week (thereby saving us money), or dropping some of the performances, or putting private study time in - basically filling the course with non-contact hours in order to save money, but at the expense of the training. Then we explored taking on extra students in order to make up the deficit that we would hit should we end up running a degree course which didn't give us the option of adding a top-up. Of course, by taking that route we would once again be diluting the students' training - so we just wouldn't do it. However even if we'd opted to sell out that much in order to secure a degree status course we knew that the timeframes involved in all that (pointless) bureaucracy would be too long, and the pandemic pushed those timeframes ever longer.

We were mid exploring applying to get approved for a named diploma. Whilst we'd gone down this route once before, we were stopped by their criteria of only considering 3-year courses. This time though we pursued it and were negotiating the changing of the wording of that one sentence, setting the criteria at minimum hours/year as opposed to naming the length of the course. The organisation was definitely up for it but needed to discuss it fully as a Board themselves as this was a major change for them. That meeting still hasn't happened over a year later. . . as of course covid has meant that other things have had to get prioritised.

To give you an idea of the timeframes involved, all of this was going on (including independent consultations) whilst we had been forced like every other UK college to put our training online. Even writing that reminds me of the stress that we were under at the time. Desperately restructuring the course to ensure that our students still made progress during 2 terms of online training, attempting our best to pastorally support them all, plus try to strategise how we could protect the college against the oncoming juggernaut of Brexit just 2 years after the demise of the PCDL. 

Of course, as the 2021 audition season kicked off the world felt a little less certain after months of lockdowns, so we weren't surprised when the applications slowly came in as opposed to all land together as they did every other year. The expectation was of course that we'd get later applications once things were more normal. The Christmas Covid wave was on its way - who the hell would be applying for college then? As the applications started to trickle in we also saw a much larger percentage than normal of withdrawals - even before coming to the audition. Now, this was a new pattern for us. On one of our audition days literally, 2/3rds of the applicants withdrew at the last minute. We'd been forced to move their audition date when we went into lockdown in January, but this was still really unusual.

As we always audition late we usually get a steady stream of applications from May-August each year, in fact, several times in our history it was the August auditions that proved to provide us with a large percentage of our year group. However, those applications just never materialised this year. Then when all the applicants dropped out of our June audition date (again, a first for us), it was clear that things were really bad and potentially critical. Board meetings were hurriedly called in a bid to update but also brainstorm new ideas. Friends of the college started to lend their expertise (very generously I must add) in a bid to see what was going on, the marketing spend increased, hell I even gave up 2.5 months going live on social media 4 times a week in a bid to remind people that we were here and still auditioning. Literally, nothing worked.

Other friends came on board with suggestions of where we could raise charitable donations in a bid to support our class of 2022 to finish their year (with the hope that this was just a 'perfect storm' situation, but next year would be better). A call to action was sent out to everyone and anyone we could think of, but of the 40 or so emails that I sent out we had just one reply, and whilst that person offered a donation, it was clear that we weren't going to hit our figure, or indeed get anywhere near it.  In truth when it came down the fact that we were going to need to raise the funds I knew that we were stuffed. Over the last 3 years we'd undertaken a brilliant fundraising feasibility study, the consultants involved felt sure that we would be able to raise a regular amount of money/year in order to fulfil my dream of running a college where 50% of the places were funded. Yet a couple of brilliant fundraisers later, and a load of rejected applications, and it was quickly evident that people weren't interested in independent colleges. How many times did I read that sentence "we've already allocated our funds to other institutions" only to see the same old names come up time and time again.

We were aware of the ticking clock of the end of the academic year which meant that students would be putting down deposits on houses for the next year, plus of course starting to pay for their 2nd year (or 1st year) So it was at this point that the Board had to make the devastating decision to close as if we didn't close we would run out of money by March.  The business model could not support the size of the year that we had coming in, and the business model of the course was never designed around just one year group (well. . . other than our first year obviously).

So a week ago I had to start making calls to other colleges to try and secure an alternative for our first years. I mean how bloody horrific for your college to close in the middle of your training, but also how horrific to be planning your new London life at your drama college only to get the rug pulled from beneath you 3 months before? Knowing that we were letting down 22 students was by far the hardest part of this journey. Also going into college to work with them whilst knowing that things were not looking great was horrible, and definitely not a position that I'd ever want myself to be in again, and in fairness I wasn't scheduled that much during the first few weeks anyway as I was also trying to write a show whilst this real life drama was unfolding. The only thing I could think of to soften that blow was to try and secure them places at another college.  I am indebted to Leo at Associated Studios who firstly didn't just try to grab the money when I called her, but first offered to sit down with me to see if there was anything that we could do to save the college, but then secondly reassured me that as another 2 year MT course in London she could take on our lot if they chose that option. This of course meant that they could continue their training together. Obviously, it's up to them whether they take this option, but I'm so relieved that the option was offered to them. Plus thanks to Louise at PPA and Adrian at LSMT for also agreeing to see any of our students that were interested in their courses. So nothing here is ideal, but at least there were 3 concrete alternatives being proposed to the 22 students most impacted by this and indeed 2 of those options were considerably cheaper than us, and potentially came with government funding attached.

. . . and so we're here with the announcement of our closure. 

As you can imagine there is so much more to sort out now, and the next few months are going to be difficult for all of us I'm sure. Why the blog? Because I need to remind myself right now quite how hard I fought to save the college that I set up in 2009. I need to hold onto the reality that I really tried everything to save it.  100% I failed, but as no doubt I'll cover in another blog (now that this one is out of my head), there's been a massive shift in the training industry this year, and I think that we're going to see a very different landscape emerging over the next few years unless somebody starts to regulate it.

A Funding Crisis

 This week Yale School of Drama was able to announce that thanks to a donation by David Geffen all of their training would be free from September onwards.  I facetiously and blindly optimistically retweeted the article with the comment that my DMs were open in case any UK philanthropist equally wanted to make such a generous and life-changing gesture. You won't be surprised to learn that my DMs have been relatively quiet ever since.

However, there is a major issue around philanthropy and indeed supporting the arts in this country. Oh for sure the usual suspects literally throw money at the same old colleges and they all continue to build and rebuild their spaces, ensuring that the benefactor's name will live on in bricks and mortar form. 

I've always found it really sad that a donation worth millions was spent on a building as opposed to supporting more underprivileged people training for nothing. Of course, a nice theatre is great, but investing in people always seems a preferable option to me. Saying that. . . most of those same colleges are also on the elite DaDa list, so why get benefactors to sponsor their students when the government will do that anyway?

The MTA opened in 2009 and we have constantly been chasing our tail to find supporters that would invest in our students. Over the years we've had a few - notably the Take That Trust Fund that supported us for the first couple of years until our students were eligible for a PCDL.

Now the Professional Career and Development Loan was nowhere near as generous as a regular undergraduate loan but it was something, and actually, something that facilitated a lot of our students training with us. Knowing that a large chunk of their training made the rest more accessible. It was only £10k (and our course is £32k), but it allowed us to massively reduce our instalment plan so more people could access it.

Then, as I've written about countless times before, in 2019 they stopped the PCDL literally overnight. Suddenly there was no help at all available to a performer that chose to train at a 100% vocational college. Other than a small article in The Stage nobody shouted about its demise. Nobody cared that this lifeline for vocational training had been stopped. Of course, fast forward to this year when the government started discussing reducing the funding for performing arts degrees and we had petitions the lot

Once again let me contextualise this for you some more - literally any university can suddenly start up a performers degree course (and check through UCAS, literally anybody does), their students can do no shows, spend as little as 16 hrs/week in lessons led by tutors, the lack of contact time alone on their course means that they graduate not eligible to even get onto the Spotlight directory - but those students are given access to a loan of up to £27k. They are literally being trained for nothing (both financially and career-wise). The government finance is not based on the results of the course, but rather the piece of paper that says degree is worth £27k of our money to train these wannabe performers. Lots of the courses don't even audition their students - they accept them on grades only.

Now I've worked at some of these colleges and I've seen for myself how shocking the training is. I've seen 3rd year graduates who literally don't know their way around a rehearsal room, unable to warm up, unable to understand a basic theatrical language - and yet these students also told me that they were going to work in the West End once they'd graduated. They were lovely, kind but clueless. They raved about their courses, but of course, they knew no better. Check out some of the posts on various Facebook groups if you think that things can't be that bad. If you've just paid £27k to be trained you should not be asking in the group how to get an agent, how to find work.

Then jump to our course at The MTA. Our students do 40 contact hours/week, they put on a production every term, they exclusively work with top industry professionals, they all graduate (to date anyway) with an agent. . . and they now get zero funding.

Then let's look briefly at how else some of the colleges make their dosh. Overseas students are a massive earner for them. They mark up the price and recruit from abroad - after all, it seems like you can't pay enough for a UK education in the arts. As they are all offering degrees this source of income has not been hit by Brexit at all - they can still fleece the overseas students, no questions asked.

Now we've always had a great tradition of training EU students (due to being a vocational college we were never permitted to sponsor a visa for any other overseas student). Controversially we always charged our EU students exactly the same as our UK students - after all it didn't cost us any more to train them, and we loved the diversity of culture that they brought into the college. Fast forward to Brexit and we are no longer permitted to train anybody without a UK passport. . . . but the college offering just 16 hrs of training a week can continue as normal?

Over the past year and a half, we've been exploring all of our options in an attempt to get some funding for our students. Covid has made this task particularly hard as all the various departments stopped accepting applications for anything. We explored turning our course into the UK's first accelerated degree in musical theatre (stage and screen). We brought in consultants who agreed that we were easily working at the right level, and discussed ways in which we could stay true to ourselves and not sell out (I remain adamantly against this idea of private study when students are paying course fees), but this was to be a long drawn out process, and covid meant that we couldn't even start the process. We explored the idea of a degree franchise (which in truth I'd never even heard of). Now, this was a positive thing as it was felt that if we found the right uni to work with, we could be offering this by Oct 2021. . . except for one thing - our fees would drop from £16k/student to £9k. We already budget within an inch of our lives as it is because we know that our course is only so successful because we only take a max of 22 students/year. There was no way that we could run or even adapt our course to make it work on £9k/student. We'd have to stop all first-year performances and probably a couple of the 2nd year ones too . . . which would mean that our students would be financed but they wouldn't be industry-ready.

So we looked at the Trinity Diploma as an option, after all that does come with some funding these days in the form of an Advanced Learners Loan. However, you might recall some years ago when I moaned about this then. . . one of the first criteria that they list is that the course must be 3 years. We're out of the loop before we even got on the ride.  Not one to be deterred though (and knowing that Brexit was looming) we started to liaise with Trinity to see if there was any desire to change that wording at all - and glory be. . . there was. They agreed that in terms of hours, outcome, standard we appeared to be doing it all (obviously subject to a proper inspection etc). They would have a meeting to discuss rewording that one clause. Unfortunately, thanks to covid that meeting still hasn't happened, and indeed is unlikely to happen for a few more months.

The government department that handles the ALL won't even consider funding a course that is attached to one establishment. 

So to recap literally any university can start a Musical Theatre degree and will get access to instant funding, no questions asked, they can automatically accept students from anywhere in the world (and charge them a premium) - nobody checks whether their students are industry-ready at the end of the course. Their degree, that piece of paper, those marks are enough to open the government's coffers to support training.  You might recall that I explored the impact of vocational training turning into degree cash cows a while back

Our course - the first of its kind in the UK, which used to be eligible for a PCDL (a loan that we had to apply to be eligible for, and in order to access it, we had to prove that our course worked), is now eligible for literally nothing. Our students work 40 hours a week with us, 100% of them have secured independent agent representation before graduating. In 2019 pre-covid, our stats were that 78% of our graduates were still in the industry, 22% of those had secured West End or No 1 touring contracts, at the time of the survey all but one of our graduates had secured a professional job after graduating (and the one that hadn't had emigrated within a month or two from graduating). In other words, we have really proved that the course works. . . .yet our students get nothing.

So you'd think that we'd be eligible for various bursaries for our students wouldn't you? Organisations that would really value vocational training eg Equity and Spotlight who together with SOLT offer some really decent bursaries, after all our students are permitted to join both organisations once they've graduated. . . but nope. They won't allow our students into that club as we don't offer a degree. So that money goes to the colleges that have access to DaDas, student loans, and benefactors who build them new theatres.

We have students at the moment desperately trying to fund their training with us, students who are really talented but don't have the good fortune to come from a wealthy background. The recent interview with Michael Sheen really nails this idea of luck and the injustice of who gets the luxury of choosing to study performing these days.

So where are the UK's Michael Geffen's? Where are the philanthropists that genuinely want to invest in people and not buildings with their names on it. How the hell are we ever to change this landscape? As ever . . . my DMs are open

The danger of not staying curious

 As regular readers will know I'm somewhat addicted to people watching on social media. Spotting the people that are forever hankering for 'likes' and 'followers', the ones that pop on once in a blue moon when they're bored, or are really miffed about something, the ones selling a lifestyle (but who are not, and never will be, influencers), the ones surfing around the popular opinions of the days, in our industry the 'likes' and support which are clearly networking, the genuine people that are bemused by all the hate that goes on, and over the course of the last year I've become fascinated by the people using the various platforms to share (knowingly or not) misinformation to people that are already struggling.  It's like my private town centre bench where I can watch the (cyber) world go by.

Here's the bit that I've never grasped though - the people that simply lie. Now the chances are that they lie in life too, but online the gift of anonymity allows those lies to be ever bigger and potentially more damaging.

In life, just like online, I can't abide liars. I understand the theory that the people lying could be crying out for help etc, but there's no excuse for trying to rob someone of their reputation, and these words online count for a lot more than people realise. In fact just this week I was banging on to my students about the importance of your reputation, and how we should all be fighting to protect 'ours'. 

As Trump proved so brilliantly (and alarmingly) using various social media platforms, say something enough times and with enough conviction and people will start to believe you. We all saw Trump say X at a press briefing one day, then swear that he didn't say it the next day. This gaslighting forces us to doubt ourselves.

Which leads me to the point of the blog - how bloody dangerous some of these people truly are, and leaves me questioning if they actually know what they're saying when they're saying it? Is the kick the fact that they've successfully stolen the most precious thing from us . . . our good name.

Recently I've been in the sad position of watching a friend get their name trashed online.  I was made aware of the situation when their partner contacted me asking me to speak to them as they were so distraught there were real concerns for their safety. Now this is one of those friends that I've known for decades, the type of friendship that has grown up and weathered a lot of dumb behaviour on both sides. Importantly the type of friend that you know would give you an alibi if you suddenly needed to 'bury the body'. So if they had done anything wrong, they 100% would feel safe enough with me to let me know.

In fact my first indication of my friend being so unwell was when I contacted them directly to find out what was going on, only to be sent a novel in return explaining the circumstances around the 'drama' that they were embroiled in. However in reality the situation was absurb. Somebody was trying to ruin the reputation of my friend's business. This person had posted an inflammatory and indeed libellous post up on a local community group's site. This post had descended into alleged stories of other people being unhappy with the service that my mate was providing too. Hell they were even posting photos of 'proof' of my mate's appalling trade. Here's the rub though. . . .all the pictures were fake, the people posting in agreement were not my friend's customers. My friend was devastated. 10 years to build up a successful business and one piece of malicious tittle tattle had descended into something much more sinister and potentially damaging. Here they were swearing blind to me that they didn't know the people posting - they were not their customers!

Of course, I've already been there and bought the T Shirt so I was pre-armed knowing quite how devastating the fake news was going to be. I tried to tell them to stay calm as this storm would be over within a few days, I noted (from experience) that this major news event in their life was probably barely registering a glance from the rest of the world. It doesn't matter though - your mind races, you think that everybody is talking about you, it just drives you bonkers.

The thing is when people lie about you online you have no choice but to let if play out. If you try to defend yourself the pile on gets higher. Your truth was not the first thing that people have heard, therefore the majority of people will assume that you're the one that's lying. We assume that nobody in this world of ours is malicious enough to just . . . well . . . lie. However they are, and we don't actually hear that much about it.

How many times have I read the smart comment of 'if they're lying. . . sue them'? Have you checked out the cost of a libel or slander case? They are notoriously hard to win . . . as the person that 'lied' is protected in law if 'they' believe their own story to be true. To prove that somebody maliciously lied takes a small fortune, so the large majority of people just suck it up and hope that it'll pass. 

My friend was devastated and beside themselves. It didn't matter how much 'common sense' and previous knowledge I threw at them, they couldn't see a way through the mess that these people were creating.  The chatter died down, but for my friend all that noise was still in their head. The paranoia gets to be very real. You assume that everybody is as obsessed with this story as you are.

Thankfully my friend realised that they were getting to be really ill because of it all and booked an appointment to see their GP and booked themselves into a therapist to chat it all through. Some 6 weeks later they're slowly getting back to themselves after a clinical and chemical intervention. 

What about the person that start all of this? Well they disappeared into the cyber universe taking all their lying minions with them too. I dare say that none of them have given it a second thought. 

In the current climate of "I believe the victims" we must attempt to do due diligence around stories shared so freely online. We must remember that we're only ever hearing one person's viewpoint with no context. I'd be the first in line to join the lynch mob for some of the stories that are coming out at the moment, and around 99% of the time I really do just 'believe' what I'm reading. . . but I also remind myself to try and keep some objectivity and curiosity around the fact that it might not be the whole truth. 

I followed the thread that libelled my friend - and it was very convincing. I'd be calling them asking if they'd heard of 'so and so' as their 'story' was really convincing. I kept to my own mantra of remaining curious - but with an increasing regularity the answer would come back - I swear they're just not customers of mine, swiftly followed by a long discussion where I witnessed my friend losing themselves.

I know that the person that's creating 'the list' in our industry is being really careful around this difficult subject - which probably explains why 'the list' is still being compiled. They're staying curious at all times. Please though . . . next time you read somebody's truth online, or hear their truth in the media, also keep in your mind that some people literally . . . lie.

Check in on your friend - trial by social media is harsh, the 'perpetrator' literally has no right of reply. You become the spectre at your reputation's wake. 

#time4change 5 Years On

TW: This blog discusses mental illness, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, anxiety, OCD plus a healthy dose of ignorance about all the above!

Last week I had the absolute pleasure of chatting to Hazel Leishman, one of my 2020 graduates, on an instalive as part of a series that The MTA's been running called "In Conversation". Mostly I just get to catch up with my graduates during these discussions. Sometimes the graduates have asked to use the platform to get certain messages out there eg Eva Bortalis a 2018 grad used it straight away after the George Floyd murder in order to air her views about the then growing BLM movement, or Paris Hoxton, also a 2018 grad who used it to raise awareness of living with bipolar. In fact we've had quite a few mental health awareness discussions, Sarah Hjort (2019) discussed living with anxiety and David Murphy (2017) had a hugely thought provoking chat about living with depression. In fact David's words have really stuck with me. When asked what were his early symptoms of depression his replied without hesitation - always looking happy. A stark reminder that we shouldn't assume that the depressed person who's at most risk, is the one rocking in a corner.

Last year when we started the series Hazel had commented that we should have somebody speaking about Eating Disorders as part of the series.  Now that's easier said than done as I would never ask somebody to speak about a mental illness, the impetus and request must always come from the 'guest'. At the time Hazel dallied with the idea of going 'live', but I actually stopped it, as I didn't feel that she was well enough to do it. Whilst she was clearly over the worse of her own experience at that time, I always feel that the best stories that would have the most positive outcome are the stories from the people that have truly got their illnesses under treatment, or in remission, or indeed cured. So we agreed to shelve it.  Cue Hazel coming back to me this year to tell me how well she had been doing and how she was about to launch a social media platform on which she was going to be open about her own EDs, with the aim of helping people that found themselves in the same position as she had found herself in, and so she was now ready to have the conversation.

So little is known about Eating Disorders, the misconceptions around how they start are legendary, Hazel went straight into myth busting mode, naming from the outset that the majority of EDs come from a place of needing to be in control. In fact they're very similar to OCD insomuch as control is often the major contributing factor.  For sure other things can trigger them, but the widely perceived logic that people just want to look smaller is often miles off the mark (yet I guess easier for people to try and make sense of loved ones starving themselves to death, or binging, or . . . well . . you know the rest). EDs, like OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia are often the ugly side of mental illnesses that people don't really like talking about - they've never made the popular list.

Even after the recent high profile death of Nikki Grahame this insidious illness still managed to hide in plain sight. As a few posts started to go online about the ludicrous situation that people suffering with EDs had to be essentially 'ill enough' to even start treatment (and by 'ill enough' please understand that sometimes that translates to 'too ill to treat effectively) within a few days it had crept away again to a few niche posts. 

Then fast forward to this week and on another social media platform I watched one of those autobiographical "A Day in the Life of a dance/drama/music Student' videos. I always find it interesting to see a day from the students' perspective. What I didn't expect in this specific "A Day in the life of  Dance Student" was this sentence "then we went to get weighed".  In fact I watched the video several times thinking that I must have misheard it.  Then I read the comments. Lots of people had also questioned this part of their 'average day' - even more alarmingly the people posing the question of WTF were "reassured" that this was part of this particular college's strategy to PREVENT eating disorders!! By regularly monitoring the students' weight they could spot an issue before it arose.

I immediately did my usual twitter rant to find out if everybody knew about this practice, but as per usual those posts never really 'take off' and promote the discussion that's actually needed. I mean interestingly pop up a post about wanting to see more 'normal' shaped people in roles and they go viral in a heartbeat, as of course 'self interest' will always prompt a viral response. 

Heigh ho, the post did prompt a few interesting private messages though. So did you know that some colleges and some work places (specifically cruise companies) will make students/casts sign a contract which essentially ties them into a specific weight (give or take a few pounds)? That's right you did read that correctly - people are made to sign a contract to keep them within a certain weight parameter. Let's not discuss hormonal weight flux, or muscle mass etc, let's just pop people on a scale to see how they're doing.  Believe it or not - this is meant to be helping mental health in the workplace or during training. I'm going to chose not to share some of the techniques and secrets that were shared with me that people did in order to get around some of these conditions, as I know that people with EDs are clever sods who are always on the look out for a get around - however let's just say that you should never undermine the intelligence & creativity of a person in the middle of an ED, those illnesses are bloody crafty.

Let's quickly recap back to Hazel's opening gambit - EDs are usually about control. Notice the bloody massive issue here?

However that's not all I've learned recently. I've also discovered that certain cruise companies are STILL not issuing contracts to people who have named that they're on anti-depressants.  I mean it makes sense doesn't it? People that are on a treatment for depression should not be permitted to work in the middle of the ocean.  Far, far better to essentially force people to either lie, or indeed (and I've witnessed this myself) make people chose between a treatment or a job. I mean - that's never named, but I've known people that have chosen to come off a treatment dose that is helping them in order to fulfil a contract on a cruise ship. The thinking being that work, sun and sea will essentially do the work of the medicine, failing to understand that vitamin D helps all of us feel a bit happier, but for many people they require a much more robust chemical treatment in order to recover from a mental illness. Those same people wonder why they're in their dream job, in a luxurious part of the world, having a mental health crisis. 

So next time you're reading all the positive posts about people being more open about mental health and mental illness these days, next time you're celebrating the 50th person you know becoming a Mental Health first aider, please know that at a very basic level, during training and during jobs, our industry has a hell of a long way to go in order to get on top of this epidemic. 

Next time you see the "It's OK not to be OK" mantra that's become so popular, or the "My DMs are open" invitation to chat to an understanding mate, what would be better is if we actually dealt with mental illness (not just look at mental health, it always has to be both, and) at a grass roots level, because you know what's better than being OK? Being well or being in recovery.

This and that

 As BAFTA still feign surprise at the Noel Clarke allegations, I'm struck by the dilemma that we all seem to find ourselves in. . . we all know the names but none of us can do anything with the information. It's not as if people aren't trying, take the recent list put up outside various theatres. A bold move which of course couldn't be shared anywhere publicly for fear of libel action or fear of hindering a police investigation - and so it continues.

I was struck by the dilemma a few times this week as I've watched quite a few of 'those' people rather brazenly posting online about what they're up to, or contributing to other conversations. Like most of us in the industry I've watched them go from job to job with (seemingly) no repercussions from past actions. I literally shudder when I see some of the things that 'they're' involved with as they raise serious safeguarding concerns, yet somehow we're helpless to stop them.

There's so much noise at the moment thanks to the Guardian article and everybody seems determined to make a change - but is such a systemic change even possible? Take 'that agent' that everybody discusses with disdain, the one that's never named, but as soon as a post goes out discussing them, everybody knows who it's referring to. Why does 'that agent' still secure clients? Surely enough people know about their reputation to warn performers off them. Well interestingly seemingly not - as they're still invited to drama college productions with a view to representing the most vulnerable in our industry - the graduates. CDs still use them, even though they might have named privately that they don't actually like dealing with them. Hands are tied and the cycle continues.

Or let's take 'that creative' that we all know. The stories and anecdotes increase every year, every so often somebody will hint heavily at them online, we all think that everybody knows . . . yet they still get the gig don't they?  'That producer' or 'that production company' will keep using them even though they've witnessed the fallout.  Even more interesting is if you speak to the powers that be about this person's reputation - they simply shrug their shoulders and keep hiring 'them'. 

The particularly interesting thing here is that some of the people that are shouting for these people to be named & shamed actually know the names themselves and STILL use them. Hoping I guess that 'they'll' be OK in their production. So some of the people trying to incite change are confusingly the people that are facilitating the toxicity that we all want removed from the industry thereby perpetuating the cycle. What a bizarre industry we work in

Or what about 'that actor' that we all know - the one that is high maintenance, who treats everybody else in the company like they're sh*t? Well. . . everybody except the director or the producer possibly. How do they go from show to show creating the most toxic atmosphere? We all know 'them'. . . just like the CDs do, and the production companies - but 'they' still get hired. Their bums on seat value is higher than the welfare of the company. Regardless of how loud the shout for change is, I guess theatre is a commercial venture so it'll be profit above people.. So in fairness to these toxic individuals who walk amongst us in plain sight why would they change? Are they actually receiving any feedback? 

All students love 'that teacher' that will socialise with them as they're just too cool for skool aren't they? It's the sign of an adult education environment when you can have a boozy evening with the 'teacher'.  Where's the boundary between professionalism and personal? As we've heard quite a lot recently, these blurred boundaries can very often turn into something much more sinister. Yet still, it continues.

All of us can make poor choices, all of us can make mistakes, but we all also have the possibility to change and evolve, but how can anybody do that if they're neither receiving the feedback plus continuing to secure the jobs? What impetus is there for self-reflection and change? Surely we want to create a safe environment where this feedback can be given and heard. For people to have the opportunity to do the work on themselves. The chances are that they're not 'happy' either, and their own trauma is coming out sideways perpetuating abusive cycles.  If the actions are criminal then we should be an industry where people are encouraged and supported to report incidents to the Police, not the industry that likes to sweep it under the carpet and pretend that it didn't happen.

Do we talk about 'that' casting director who seems to have missed the fact that the casting couch is yesterday's news? We all know 'them', as the Principal of a drama college I warn my graduates about 'them'. Are we to believe that 'we' all know 'them' but the production companies that hire them are simply not aware of their reputation? 

It truly feels like a Catch 22 situation. Throw in an added caveat that as small a percentage as there is, some people will also lie about their experiences. So we also have to proceed with caution on hearing and acting on rumours. That said it shouldn't take 20 people coming forward about an individual for serious questions and investigations to take place.

Catch 22 appears to be the mantra of the industry though as I wrote about quite recently here. It's really hard to see a way out of the environment that has dominated certain areas of the industry for decades. Today the focus is on Noel Clarke, however, he is definitely not alone. It's time to widen that spotlight and reform the industry.

How long should you train for?

 How long is too long to be training? Well in reality we are essentially training our whole lives, aren't we? We are forever the student trying to hone our skills and develop new ones.

In the US it's standard practice to do a 4-year undergraduate course. The UK has traditionally always adhered to a 3-year model (working in terms not semesters), then of course in 2009 I popped up with The MTA and completely challenged that again fast-tracking the training into a 2-year model.

However back in the early noughties, the UK started up this thing called a foundation course (apologies if they've been running for longer, but that's certainly the time that I started to notice them popping up). I guess for the bigger colleges it made financial sense. You're seeing people for your 3-year course who are blatantly not quite ready, but with a bit more training, using the resources that you're already paying for, you could get them ready for a 3-year course (potentially). Then lots of other people saw a sensible business model for purely training pre-undergraduates and a group of independent colleges suddenly opened.

So maybe we really did need to be doing a 4-year course after all - just like the US system?

Foundation courses and colleges quickly moved into mainstream thinking when it came to planning your future career. All the courses varied, some running in the evenings, some over concentrated periods, but all essentially training you to er, train.  

Over the years we've accepted lots of students that have had some sort of pre-training, and there are certainly some foundation courses that we inherently 'trust', insomuch as their students invariably always seem to be ready by the time that we see them for the audition. So they're clearly doing what they say on the packet. Then there are the students that we've rejected in one year, who've gone away, done some further training and have come back to us the following year and we've accepted them without hesitation - so a big yay to the training that they've received in that year.

However, I do have a couple of serious concerns around it all. 

The foundation course is entirely focussed on getting students ready for a traditional undergraduate programme which runs Sept - July (or in our case Oct - Sept), yet their courses all run to the same academic calendar year, meaning that they've started training in Sept, and within 3 months they're likely to be applying for their undergraduate course. Surely it would make more sense for the foundation course to run something like Jan - Nov? That way people that had got rejected have got time to look around for the best foundation course for them, they would have 10 months of training behind them before they've started to apply to other colleges?

As all the foundation courses are supposed to be preparing you for further training, you would be surprised at how many of them actually discuss all the options available to students. Some are great and seem to get all the colleges in to do some sort of outreach, or their course leader will be calling us to ensure that they have the right information for entry onto our course. However, some of them are purely fixated on the more established colleges.  That's always struck me as a bit elitist and even slightly gate keeperish. The number of colleges that we've approached annually to ask to speak to their students about the 2-year model and have had our request ignored is actually quite shocking.  Even more shocking when you look at our stats - we have a 10-year track record for getting all of our students out into the industry with agent rep, so regardless of your personal feelings, our results speak for themselves. A 2-year model works - but those pathways stay blocked (until one rogue class member comes to auditions for us and tells all of their friends about their experience)

Then there's the issue of brand awareness. Lots of young performers grow up knowing that they only want to really train in the one college. Their dream college. Their entire focus is on that dream. They've gone to see shows and keep seeing 'that name' in the programme, they believe that this is the only place that will get them industry-ready.  The big audition comes but they're not accepted on the dream course BUT they do get offered a place at the college, but on their foundation course. Here's the rub. In my experience, a lot of the people that get offered foundation courses at the major colleges would probably get straight offers onto a 3 year training programme at another college. Over the years we've auditioned lots of people from one of the 'major colleges' foundation courses, and we've pretty much been able to accept them all. You could of course argue that the larger college had done an exceptional job in training them ready to be . . . er, trained, or you could hypothesise that they were always ready to be trained somewhere (just not their 'dream college').

Over the years I've always been amazed by people who have turned down offers at ours and at other really reputable drama colleges because they've also been offered a foundation course at their 'dream school' - such is the draw of the 'dream'. A concept that our industry thrives on. A quick caveat here that of course not all courses are suitable for all students, so 100% people should be turning down places on courses that they know that they wouldn't thrive at. . . but that's very different by being blindsided by 'the dream'.

Now these foundation courses do not come cheap. Training performers is expensive. Yet suddenly parents are paying out for this additional course in the hope of what? That their child will be accepted onto their 'dream course' - whereas in reality from what I've heard, all the colleges are really honest about the fact that their foundation course is not a guaranteed pathway onto their main course. Even more than that it would be fascinating to find out the percentage of people that actually do go from a foundation course straight onto the undergraduate course, as from hearsay it doesn't seem as high as you'd expect.

I understand that some people opt for the foundation course as they believe that they'll be more likely to secure funding such as an elusive DaDa so they believe that the cost of the foundation course is essentially an investment - but of course DaDas are hard to come by, and the majority of people just end up spending a load of money that they haven't got before needing to find a load more money that they haven't got. It strikes me as a very risky gamble and with foundation courses costing anything from £6k to £10k this is not a cheap gamble.

So do foundation course work? 100% yes, but are some students paying out on an additional year unnecessarily - absolutely. Surely after paying out for a foundation year that student should be guaranteed a place on a course . . . somewhere. You should only be taking the students that you can clearly see have the potential to train but who are just falling short in one area. 

We should be seeing stats from all colleges about progression (which I've been shouting about for bloody years). I believe that students should be applying for foundation courses, not being offered them as the consolation prize (as that plays into the false promise, albeit unwittingly), and of course . . . I believe that all auditions should be free, which would allow students to apply for a wider range of colleges, which might open their eyes to other possibilities. 

Temper Tantrums for the Entitled

My four-year-old can often be found these days acting like some sort of cartoon character, stamping his foot because he can't get his own way. As his parent it's my job to hold the line and teach him that in life you don't just get everything you want and you certainly don't get it because you're screaming the house down (as much as you sense that all your neighbours are begging you to give in as much as your decibel busting child) Sometimes you have to work for it, sometimes it's just not yours to have. In the age of helicopter parenting, mindful parenting is a minefield. Are you being too harsh? Should you just give in as you don't want to 'damage them for life'? What about the fact that you don't want spoilt children though? Shouldn't we be teaching them to be resilient? The questions that you're facing long outstay the incident that precipitated them.  

Since watching the Social Dilemma on Netflix I've become fixated on changing the narrative on my social media timelines (stick with it. . . I swear that it's all related). Our self-serving echo chambers do nothing to make us aware of other people's opinions, which in turn leaves us believing that 'we' (and that is very much a 'we' of the plural variety) must be right in our thinking as EVERYBODY agrees with us. In fact nowadays if you move outside of your social media safe lane, and dare to challenge somebody's narrative, you are automatically lumped into the 'other' category with everybody assuming you to be a sharer of 'fake news', which is a fast track to 'troll city'. 

Creating an echo chamber prevents personal growth. Whilst we all prefer an easier life, and let's face it, we all hope that we're speaking with authority, the reality of life is very different. Were I to employ a senior faculty that just went along with everything that I said, my little college would be all the duller for it. I'm not infallible, I need to be challenged, and sometimes, when trying to think outside of the box you can literally catapult yourself to a different planet. You need people around you that are challenging in order to progress and develop. Damn it, you need people around you that will say 'no'. 

The world of social media needs to be the same fertile space in order for us to grow and develop as emotionally intelligent humans. However, have we stunted this growth due to years of privilege? A world where well-meaning parents overindulged and protected their children, meaning that as soon as they're in an environment that challenges their narratives they hit a huge wall which results in people calling out injustice. Remember the fuss a few decades ago when it was suggested that at sports days we should stop having winner and losers? We were encouraged to tell our children that it wasn't the winning that was important, it was the taking part? However couldn't we have been sold the double narrative? It's great to take part in something, and we should be really thrilled if we win, or conversely, the taking part is everything and let's not worry too much about losing. If you want to do better next time, try training for the event? You might not ever win it, but you could see yourself improving? 

The obvious question now is - does it really matter as long as everybody's happy? Shouldn't I 'give in' to my son's demands just to keep him happy, after all, in the big scheme of life, the thing that he's crying for has now become a matter of principle? I've come to realise that I believe that it really does matter, as we're nurturing a society of people that believe that they can't be challenged, that losing isn't what 'they' do, who deliberately shut down an alternative truth because they want to protect their echo chamber.

Let's take an example . . . if his critics are to be believed this is the case with Donald Trump.  A privileged, spoilt man who always got his own way. Learned how to play the system and not get caught. Then suddenly in 2020 somebody (US democracy) told him 'no'.  He lost the presidentship and seemingly copied my son. He stamped his foot, refused to believe that he could have possibly lost and the rest is history, fast forward a few months and we have the assault on Capitol Hill. Old Donald didn't like the narrative, all the evidence supports the fact that he did in fact lose (albeit with a lot of support, which I believe supports my argument of teaching the taking part and losing/winning narrative as of equal importance). He protected his echo chamber by shouting down the other narratives as 'fake news', and his followers believed him . . . after all, why would anybody create such a monumental lie?

As part of my social dilemma experiment, I've been challenging narratives that I believe to be dangerous online. Always respectfully, never resorting to insults, yet interestingly the people consistently throwing out the most dangerous content also all seem to play the DT game. They protect their echo chamber at all costs. I've now lost count of the number of private messages I've received from people who are all pushing an alternative truth to the fact that we've been in a pandemic. So I've questioned the narratives around 5G, anti-lockdown, anti-mask, QAnon, the Great Reset, etc. They all see their 'followers' as their weapons, setting them onto people that don't agree with them. Yet privately they all ask you to stop disagreeing with them? Their private messages are all the same, they literally name that they don't like being challenged, they all 'threaten' you with being blocked unless you toe the line, then when you point out that their discourse is fighting to protect liberties and freedom of speech and therefore their private message is the antithesis of everything they claim to be fighting for . . . they block you. If they find you particularly challenging, they publicly block you so that their followers will give you a bit of grief for a few days. 

Are they trying to change the world, or simply get what they want? Are they well-meaning or just narcissists building up their empires? Where is their resilience to be challenged, or have they created an echo chamber so bubble-wrapped that they've started to believe their own narrative? Why do they cancel the opposing viewpoint as opposed to engaging in a healthy, respectful debate?

I don't know what the answer is, and I think that this toxic narrative of entitlement reaches out into some pretty murky areas, however, I do believe that this is something that we all need to grapple with a bit more. As parents, we have to show our children that life isn't always what 'they' want, we have to teach them to be resilient. We have to demonstrate curiosity for the other viewpoint to enable our children to grow both physically and emotionally. Most of all, when we're teaching our children that they can be or do anything they want, we have to make them aware that their path isn't some fairytale destiny, it's a path of challenges that they need to work through. My biggest thought of all though is to get some noise-cancelling headphones/pods when you're grappling with these concepts with your young children.

Where's the revolution?

Why is an industry that is full of liberal people desperate to do right so afraid of change? Why do we all doff our caps at the same organisations and people with gratitude when they've deemed to give us a crumb or two?

I wrote last time about the carousel of annoyance that swings by social media about once every 6 months that is the 'drama school audition fee' scandal - yet nothing changes. Several colleges have stopped charging altogether but they don't get a look in as the world goes crazy about one of the old guard colleges reducing their audition fees from £££ to ££. We're meant to be grateful that one of the 'big guys' has decided to open up for the 'poor people'. Press releases go out, social media celebrates the drawbridge going down (not acknowledging that it shouldn't have been up in the first place, and also not acknowledging that you still need a metaphorical ladder to reach the lowered bridge). With the exception of one or two constant voices, we are satisfied & grateful with the tiny step. 

There are various well-meaning organisations attempting to make some of these dinosaurs more accessible to a more diverse group of people (both ethnicity and socio-economic), blindsided by history and completely ignoring the fact that younger beasts have been growing and maturing and who might actually 'fit' this Utopian diverse industry more. Nobody invests in them though - so we mould the 'diverse' to fit into the establishment. We see that as liberal progress. We celebrate the pathway, not question why the destination is always via the same address.

The stories that hit every so often of the same businesses within our industry that have a monopoly over us. The independent businesses built entirely off people looking for work, which have somehow gained a complete monopoly over our industry with nobody coming close to rival them in spite of various attempts. So powerful is their position within the industry they act as gatekeepers.  Again social media posts pop up every so often which everybody piles on in agreement, whilst the majority of people keep their annoyance on the down low just incase they ruffle the wrong feathers. I mean the industry is tough enough isn't it, without making enemies? One brave soul will put their head up above the parapet, the industry paper doesn't cover it (yet another independent business with a monopoly within the industry, though of course that makes a bit more sense as we are, after all, a niche topic), the companies keep their head's down knowing that within the week it'll blow over.  It was never a fair fight as after all . . . they are the gatekeepers. 

Having campaigned for greater mental health for years, the pandemic has obviously swung the spotlight onto this issue now. Interesting to see the people that once told me that I was pandering to the 'eccentric' now positively gushing in their acknowledgment that mental health is a 'thing', and indeed a thing to be dealt with.  Once again the PR cogs work their magic and press release after press release pop up around who's doing what when in order to help our industry's 'mental health'.  Why aren't we questioning what took them so long? Why are we so easily sated? Why are we just forever grateful for the crumbs, when if this topic had been taken more seriously years ago, we might have been a bit more robust as a whole to deal with the sh*tstorm that is the Tory government dealing with a pandemic. 

In the first lockdown, the BLM movement completely highlighted the systemic lack of diversity in our industry. We were all up in arms . . . we all acknowledged that we had to do better. Posts were shared and apologies given for the 'sins of the past'. Did the revolution happen? Absolutely not. Many of the people that understood in that moment that representation matters, didn't join the dots to realise that representation matters throughout the industry and impacts every diverse group.  We'll all fight for a cause, but won't really make the sacrifice for it. So what if your cast/production isn't fully representative of the world today. You're not going to make a fuss from within as 'they' won't like it. 

The same argument stands around neurodiversity, ableism, size, anything other than the perceived 'norm' - which of course isn't 'normal' at all. It's a whitewashed, photoshopped world that has never really existed, but one that they believe that the 'aspiring' public wants to see. Negating to see that time and time again when we give people representation, when we put the mirror up to our audiences, the audiences will turn up in their droves to see themselves on stage.

It's a vicious circle of blame, performers periodically call it out, lots of people agree, but where's the root of all of this? Who is it that's sat in an office declaring what the 'perfect' cast member looks like? I ask the question as every time one of these hot topics come up seemingly everybody across the board agrees, from producers, casting directors, agents, drama colleges. . . yet somebody, somewhere has perpetuated these 'myths' and kept them going. How many conversations are taking place offline that contradict what people are saying publicly, because that is 100% the issue here, and those offline conversations are the ones with the real power to change - whatever their public face is telling us.

The industry is still such a clique, and the members of that clique guard it with their lives. They form new bodies and organisations all the time in order to form a 'wall' that nobody else can breakthrough. They've got each other's backs, the private businesses that are our gatekeepers won't lead the revolution as they're too busy fleecing our pockets in the name of commercial enterprise. . . . and we won't say anything as 'we' want to work. 

When Thatcher destroyed the unions forcing us out of a closed shop scenario that was meant to free up our industry - allowing everybody a fair bite of the pie. Some 30 years on it feels like we never opened up anything, other than a revenue stream for the few to deprive the many. We see the same faces, we see the same organisations and companies all telling us that they're not controlling our future, all pretending to evolve, with the press coverage celebrating the smallest of movements but where is the real change, and I guess as importantly, who the hell is sitting on the top of all of this refusing to budge and maintaining the status quo?

The Audition Question 2021 Version

Ever since I opened The MTA back in 2009 there's always been a rumbling of grievance around the fact that drama colleges charge for auditions. It's one of the regular 'hot topics' that pop up from time to time.

Before I opened the college I remember reading somewhat aghast as one of the main drama colleges unwittingly (I suspect) informed the members of The Stage Forum that it auditioned X amount of students/year, leading a whole load of us to do the sums. They easily made in excess of £105K/year in audition fees alone. 

If you're unfamiliar with the drama school/conservatoire model you pay for the privilege of getting seen, and probably rejected (as the odds are really stacked against the majority of people due to (back then) the numbers of students that they could accept/year). Auditions back then varied from £25-£75, plus you have to factor in travel expenses, possibly overnight accommodation etc. Now if you're getting an amazing workshop for that money maybe you could argue a case for the cost - but at some colleges, applicants are getting 10mins of somebody's time, at other colleges applicants get cut before being able to show the panels their full skillset, at some colleges you're seen in groups of over 100 people! Years later I discovered that at some colleges if you were successful during their first-round you were gifted the right to pay some more to get your next round audition?

I'm not blameless, we charged a nominal fee for years, as at first it was felt that if we charged nothing we would be underselling our course, so in order to 'fit in' we should value ourselves with a fee in order for people to take us seriously.

We often spoke about scrapping it, but as our policy was to only audition a small number of people each day we were despairing with the number of no-shows, so we not only kept the fee but increased it in order to deter people from wasting our audition places.  Yet still, we discussed it as it just didn't really fit with what we wanted to represent.

Susan Elkin from The Stage used to regularly call this out, and indeed I had many a conversation with her as I grappled with how we could manage the no shows whilst still placing a value on the course. I salved my own conscience by proudly seeing on every single anonymous feedback form since we opened that applicants felt that we had given them value for money. We had spent the day with them, we knew their names, we had workshopped, we had chatted, we had attempted to be helpful whatever the outcome was, and we would always give each applicant written feedback. We only have one round, but then we only audition a maximum of 15 on any one day, so we got the opportunity to see everything that we needed to see on that day, thereby minimizing the cost of a recall. 

Then back in 2017, we introduced #auditionfromhome. A self-tape first round really. Applicants could send us their self-tape and we'd advise them whether we thought that we'd a good fit for each other just based on the skill set. It meant that we were able to save people the additional expense of travel and accommodation if it was clear from the tape that we wouldn't be the best college for them. Interestingly when The Stage ran our press release I had a bit of flack on the old Twitter - people calling us out for making it too easy for applicants, "audition from home" they said, "how lazy". Ironic right now don't you think?

Whilst this certainly saved people some money it still didn't fit well with me.  As I bang on and on about I'm from a council estate in Swansea. My family would not have been able to afford for me to apply for lots of colleges, yet here I was - suddenly on the side of the establishment all because we couldn't grapple enough with how to solve the problem of how to place value on our time (even though the applicant's time was valuable too), and how to stop the annoying no-shows, leaving people waiting longer than they needed to in order to audition for us. I mean it was all rather arse about tit, wasn't it? 

So eventually we scrapped our fee. The compromise was to ask people to pay a refundable deposit in order to secure their place. They'd get it back if they turned up for the audition. We kept the day the same, a whole day audition like we'd done from the beginning, no cuts throughout the day, feedback to all applicants, we also threw in some comp tickets to watch one of our shows if applicants wanted to see us in action. Our audition panel was the same as when we started - the senior faculty. The people that the applicants would work with if they'd been successful.

When the pandemic hit we (like the rest of the world) moved straight to zoom. In fact, we were the first drama college to move our auditions to zoom. Obviously, that was just timing as opposed to us attempting to be a 'first', we already had auditions booked in for the first week of lockdown. We had a few practice runs at it and found a way that we felt worked for us, and hoped that it would work for the applicants.

In truth, we were shocked. The interactive online audition told us everything that we needed to know, and seemingly the applicants were leaving satisfied too. We'd changed the day to a half-day in order to avoid zoom fatigue, and we stopped the feedback as by moving it online we committed to only seeing 6-7 students at a time.  

The zoom auditions worked so well we announced back in August 2020 that we would be keeping them post-pandemic. It was a great way to see people without them having to pay a penny (other than the refundable deposit). Finally, it had all fallen into place. We started this academic year giving students the option of a half-day virtual audition or a whole day in-person audition, and that's the way that it's going to stay now I think. I mean who knows what will be thrown at us next. Having recently been bought an Oculus it's not that hard to envisage a VR audition room within the next few years, and I can't wait to embrace it (if only because I love a gadget).

Our auditions cost us money, I have to pay for staff to be in the room, not all of them are on salaries, and even for those that are, I need to pay for staff to cover their classes that day. We lose the potential of a room hire in the audition space - a much-missed source of income at the moment, as it's those rehearsal room hires that pay into our Hardship Fund. The admin takes time, and of course in business time always equates to cost. However, it is our cost to absorb. I got that wrong in the beginning. I just wanted to 'fit into the establishment'. For those of you that have followed The MTA's journey, you'll know how dumb that thought was given that we are forever the course on the outside of the establishment, doing things our way, from the 2 year model to a whole school approach to mental health.

Of course, what's prompted this blog is the social media call to arms to abolish audition fees at a time when a lot of colleges are just doing self-tapes. The irony of somebody calling this out as wrong whilst simultaneously starting a Go Fund Me in order to help people who are financially struggling sums up the disconnect in our industry. 

We shout about what's not right, we celebrate and indeed laud any of the established colleges that knock a couple of quid off their audition fees in the name of 'opening up the room', yet fail to see the systemic failure in the way that we operate. 

Next time you're at an audition, or indeed sat in a lecture theatre on the first day of your course, or see a college online telling you how 'lucky' you are to be offered a place because they've auditioned thousands of people - do the math.  Due to how many people we'd audition on one day we never made money on our auditions. I'm not that sure how many other colleges can say the same with their hand on their heart.

Auditions should be free. . . we got it wrong for really poor reasons actually, however, we've corrected it. Maybe the rest should too, and maybe if you're advocating for a charity or fundraiser trying to help the underprivileged pay those fees, you're inadvertently endorsing the business model.