F**k I'm a Freelancer Again

A while ago I wrote this blog about the responsibility of drama colleges to pay freelancers on time

Today a director friend of mine posted a semi-regular tweet that I see from colleagues bemoaning the timeframe that it takes for freelancers to get paid. I mean I obviously replied with a link to the previous blog, but then it struck me. . . I am now a freelancer again after 12 years of receiving a monthly salary, and in truth, I felt a bit nauseous just thinking about it.

The last time I was freelance I had no dependents, it was just my wife and I, nicely set up in our flat. Now though we have 2 young children and a mortgage to service so the pressure is really on to budget under our new circumstances. Due to the way The MTA closed I don't have the luxury of a large redundancy payout to relieve that stress for a few months, and given that our life savings frustratingly disappeared with the college too we also don't have the luxury of savings to cushion the blow.

Now I should quickly add that we're really lucky as my wife works so we don't live with the imminent threat of losing our home or anything like that (I mean know your privilege right?), but as anybody with children will know, they seem to haemorrhage money at a great speed of knots, so I need to get myself out working sooner rather than later, and the only trade I know is that of a theatre musician/composer. . .an entirely freelance profession.

Now personally I love the hustle of trying to find a new contract every few months, and indeed it's one of the things I missed whilst running the college, but I've always resented and loathed having to chase up invoices. Now after 14 years of being responsible for paying hundreds of people I think that I'm going to struggle with it even more because I know that it's entirely avoidable.

Here's the thing . . . our entire industry is built on the foundation of freelancers, so why the hell hasn't our industry worked out how to treat them properly? Step forward all the people shouting that it was easy for me, I ran a teeny tiny college - of course, I could pay people quickly, and to a degree that's right, but it's also because from the outset I understood our industry and put people first.

Drama colleges have it easy - the money all comes in at the beginning of the academic year or term, and then they're simply sitting on the money. They're not like producers waiting for people to buy tickets and relying on those ticket sales to pay people their salaries. Their income is set and solid. So why can't they distribute it quicker? It's really quite simple. . . that's not how they've ever done it. Payroll gets done at X time of the month, every month, so that's when everybody will get paid and god forbid they deviate from what used to be done. However, we're missing a vital development, aren't we? The rise and speed of internet banking. It really doesn't take long to set up payments, and those cumbersome institutions claiming that I don't understand the numbers that they're dealing with I would say one thing. . . I was doing it all on my own, you have a person or a department purely dealing with finance, and if you still think that it's impossible knock yourselves out and hire an extra pair of hands. 

You can't claim to be worried about your employees' mental health when your employees don't know when they're going to get paid. It is terrifying knowing that you have outgoing commitments that you can't meet, all because you gave in your paperwork one day past the self-imposed deadline that triggers the "payroll"  Understand your workforce and you'll have a workforce that will go above and beyond for you every time. What you'll receive back will more than compensates for the 5 mins it will take you to sort out that freelancer's pay. 

Why do we have to live in a "'puter says no" world? If you're hiring freelancers understand their world. Understand that they'll send you an invoice with a set date on which you need to pay. They've set that date because they probably need the money by then. Not everybody lives in a world with money to spare, and not everybody has the bank of mum and dad to fall back on (and why the hell should they draw from that anyway if they've done the job?) and not everyone has a partner who can fund the gap between invoice and payment.

As an industry, we scream about inclusivity, and we love paying lip service to socio-economic diversity, yet god forbid we use the advancement of internet banking to overhaul our systems and our thinking when it comes to payment. 

I suspect that these systems were originally devised by people that have never known financial hardship - sounds a bit like the recent fiscal event, doesn't it? Well, take it from somebody that's from a council estate in Swansea. . .paying people just a day late can cause horrific stress, it's like the pebble in the water analogy - the ripples spread far and wide, but the difference here is that nobody is forcing you to throw the pebble, you've just decided that you can't change the status quo. . . but somebody in your organisation could. 

So if you're hiring freelancers - pop the pebble back in your pocket, pick up your computer mouse or your phone. . . and click. I absolutely promise you that you'll have people queuing up to work for you,  it's called mutual respect. Try it.

Trying to remain Meta

I have a real love/hate relationship with social media, I both love and despise the power that it harnesses. I watch the harrowing footage of those brave women over in Iran as they undertake their #unveiledwalking protest, trying to ensure that Mahsa Amini's death was not in vain, whilst for every moment they're protesting they themselves risk coming to the same fate at the hands of the so-called morality police. In those moments I'm in awe of their bravery and also in awe of the power of social media

Then I read up on things like the TikTok Blackout Challenge and note the damage that social media can inflict. On the 1st Sept this year, it was reported that 8 children had already died trying the infamous challenge that had so publicly ended the life of 12-year-old Archie Battersbee. I mean 1 child's life is too many right. . . but 8! 

Years speaking to students who felt that they had found their "tribe" online makes me grateful for such a connected global network, then a quick conversation with somebody that learned the majority of their eating disorder "hacks" by equally "finding their tribe". . . and once again I'm scared about what our children are now exposed to.

I'm adamant that the rise of referrals for a neurodiversity assessment is in part fuelled by the rise of symptom information now readily available on sites such as Twitter and TikTok. Knowing how liberating that diagnosis can be for people that have struggled in their attempts to fit into a neurotypical world with no understanding that their brain was just wired differently, I'm again celebrating the spread of important information in a viewer-friendly format.

For sure the pandemic lockdown life expedited the Truman show life that so many people now live. Suddenly we can all be the stars of our own digital TV series. The rise of influencers and indeed digital celebrities has been fascinating to watch. We can all acknowledge an "Instagram" life as opposed to "real life" and yet so many of us opt into this parallel online world so willingly. 

I'm old enough to remember a world without the internet and maintain that this globally connected world is so much easier but we need to understand it better. As I mused here the rise in popularity of some influencers is hugely concerning and massively divisive to our society. How ironic that with all the facts finally at our fingertips so many people are content to stay in their own echo chambers, accusing those that disagree with them of not doing their research. 

For a world that is attempting to break the shackles of binary thinking (no doubt again accelerated by people finding their tribe) social media debates lack any nuance - you either agree or get cancelled? Where's the spectrum of opinion that used to make all of us question our beliefs? I used to love going to the pub when I was younger listening to friends that might have very different opinions to me and allowing myself to be challenged. It's how I evolved, and indeed how I'm still evolving. 

So this is me a 50-something adult trying to grapple with the pros and cons of online life, so how the hell do we keep our children safe online? Between social media and streamed media, they are potentially getting bombarded with a lot of grown-up information that they might not need to know yet.

Until us adults can fully grasp what this interconnected world really means we don't stand a chance of keeping our children safe. Online bullying turns playground bullying into the Hunger Games and yet still parents think that social media is harmless.  Parents bitching in Whatsapp groups' fail to see that like their children they've moved toxic conversations online, resulting in what once would have been a conversation at the school gate suddenly turn into a rallying cry of defiance about whatever it is the school has done this time.  Teachers are fighting the online battle from all sides, whilst trying to navigate an online presence themselves.

The bottom line is of course that social media is still relatively young, and when it was still maturing the pandemic forced it to grow up a little bit too quickly, and now we're all trying to play catch up with this truculent adolescent.

It's worth noting that according to the age limit set by all social media companies primary schools shouldn't have to deal with this issue at all, giving teachers and parents time to educate the children about online safety and online etiquette. However, speak to any primary school teacher at the moment and you'll start to see why the problem starts so young.  Speak to a secondary school teacher and find out how the parents' Truman show is now negatively impacting their children as those once cute baby photos turn into playground ammunition.

Until us adults learn to multi-task responsibly in the virtual world as well as the real world, social media will I'm afraid create far more problems than solutions over the next few years. Throw in a crazed leader that was clever enough to use this virtual world as a home-made weapon available in the palm of your hand for good measure, and whilst we can't put the genie back in the bottle, we might start thinking as a society how we teach it to behave.

The Accidental Disruptor

 For regular readers of this blog - please get yourselves over to www.theaccidentaldisruptor.com where all new blogs will now reside. The intention being to blog a lot more regularly (now that I have time)

Many thanks for reading my ramblings

ALT/TAD

Silence can be deafening

It's fair to say that the last couple of months have been quite hard going. Finding out as late as we did that a benefactor had on reflection decided not to give the college the money that we had been banking on was quite a moment, swiftly followed by "that" report. . . you know. . . the one that we continue to contest as it's so obviously cobbled together.

In many ways, it's been like the most awful nightmare that a part of me still hopes that I'll wake up from. You know when I tell my wife "you'll never guess what I dreamt last night. . . I mean. . . as if both things would go tits up so late".  Of course, I'm very well aware that I am extremely wide awake and The MTA closed a few weeks ago.

A few things have struck me during this time though. . .

1) As the head of an organisation I was haunted by the words that somebody once told me that it was my job to hold it all together for everybody else. Throughout my 14 years as "the boss" those words have loomed heavily in my subconscious, as every time an event happened, every time people around me were struggling, I held it together. Not because I'm afraid to show weakness. . . as close friends know I have zero issue at being perceived as "weak" and even more than that I see displaying vulnerability as a huge strength, but rather because I felt that it was an important part of my role to appear strong, to be the life raft if you like that everybody else could cling to. 

Of course the more people you're trying to keep afloat the more you start to sink yourself, but history has taught me that I'm hugely resilient in moments of high stress, and somehow I'd always keep just above the water.

2) I've been very lucky to have received a huge amount of support from people around me.  I have a handful of lifelong friends that haven't surprised me at all, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.  As somebody that really can't handle compliments, it's been a little overwhelming at times to take in the enormity of some of the things that have been shared with me. Here's the thing though. . .isn't it strange how you really clock the people that say nothing? Like, why is that even a thing? When discussing this with friends we all acknowledged that this is human nature, but isn't it a weird one? 

So why do we concern ourselves about the radio silence? I guess that it's that old imposter syndrome, you make up reasons as to why people haven't commented, or question friendships because somebody hasn't checked in. Of course in reality those people might not even know that your disaster has happened. Just because your world is consumed with it, judging by the number of emails I've had over the past week asking about available places or hustling for jobs, the majority of the world doesn't even know that we closed. Or maybe they have other things going on that are consuming their every thought and they don't have the capacity to check in on somebody else. After all. . . nobody died right? Or maybe as a few people have told me this week, they didn't contact me sooner as they just didn't know what to say?

In other words, there are a million reasons why people don't check in with you, and the likelihood is, none of those reasons is about you. 

3) As I've been very vocal about holding a certain organisation to account over what I consider to be malpractice, it's been really interesting watching the people that will publicly speak out about it. As I've previously noted my concern is not for The MTA but for the vocational training industry as a whole. IF my whistleblowers are correct there is much to be concerned about both over how we were treated, but also about the future of an organisation that literally holds the key to the gate of government funding. 

The number of messages I've received after reading the whistleblowers' accounts exclaiming horror and incredulity of what they've read has been reassuring insomuch as I've not been making a mountain out of a molehill, yet what also comes back to me is the fear of people speaking out, either because they work for establishments that don't want to rock the boat, or indeed they're worried about their establishment being penalised for voicing a concern.

Which brings me back to a question that I asked on Twitter quite a while ago - why is it that some people will always speak out? Why do some people always see the bigger picture and feel compelled to fight for justice, or fight against injustice, whereas others shout very loudly in private, yet publicly toe the line and simply hope that change will miraculously happen? Maybe some people feel like their purpose in life is to cheerlead the people that do speak out, I really don't know, but it's interesting, right? 

In many ways I desperately wish that I could just leave things be, but no matter how hard I try to tell myself to just keep my head down and let somebody else fight that battle. . . I can't. So however hard it is being the person that will always pop their head over the parapet (Mental Health crisis flagged back in 2014 anyone?), like a compulsion I will always do it. 

So here's to all the people that speak out. . .know that you're seen, and to all the people that say nothing, know that your silence is deafening

We Created A Community

 When I opened The MTA back in 2009 I always knew that I wanted to create a #college4life. I used to joke with the students that it was so much more than a hashtag, but in truth, I don't think that I realised the enormity of what we co-created until it all ended.

I commented last year when we announced that we were closing for the first time that I was amazed that the college and indeed the theatrical community rallied to save us.  I was surprised that people cared and I was amazed given the anti-drama college narrative that had evolved since 2020. Whilst of course it's true to note that we were saved by a couple of rather big donations (I know....I know...I see the irony too), it's also fair to say that the crowdfunded appeal helped enormously. Let's not forget that the students raised £16,858 in just 14 days. Donations came from known supporters, friends of students that had been part of The MTA life over the past decade or so, but also from suppliers that we worked with and staff who all valued what we were trying to do.

I have to say that I had spent the last year buoyed up by that appeal. It felt like we had received some industry endorsement to carry on after years of feeling on the outside of the establishment. Then when Trinity changed their validation criteria so that we could finally work towards a government funding stream for the students it felt like the fight was well and truly won. We'd got through the worse.

Of course, I'm writing this on my 2nd week of funemployment, so it's fair to say that I had been lulled into a false sense of security. However, in that gifted year, we saw our community slowly emerging from the hibernation of covid. We had started to see our ambassadors (graduates) returning to college for free classes or just for a catch-up. Things were getting back to normal.

We have a private Facebook group for those graduates that want to participate in the old #college4life. It's a safe online space where graduates can voice opinions, ask questions, hell, maybe even rant and we all sort of listen without judgement (well. . . there probably is judgement off-line but that's just life right?)

You see The MTA was designed to stay small, thereby ensuring that all of our graduates had a shared experience. All the headshots on the wall were part of our everyday lives - so when a student eventually graduated and hit that first audition, they just might see a familiar face ready to reassure them. Due to our stupidly low staff turnover, there was a common ground that they all inhabited, from the stories of being called into my office to the various quirks of all the regular staff. It was reassuring. 

When the Trinity pre-validation assessment required me to hand over student destinations for the last 3 years, I pointed out that I felt that that was unfair, as theatres had been dark for a large percentage of that time. So I volunteered us to send in student destinations since our first graduates left in 2011. Of the 192 graduates that we had a stonking 180 of them filled out quite an involved Google form within 2 weeks. In fact, when we were on our 3rd month of waiting for the much talked about report <ahem>, Trinity told us that our percentage breakdown of destinations needed to be expanded on. Now in truth. . . I honestly believe that this was yet another delaying tactic in the "who's going to write our report" saga, however, if it was, it must have backfired on them massively when I was able to present 180 graduate CV breakdowns by return email.

My point of course is that the majority of our graduates kept investing in us, and that is incredible and really humbling.

So why a community then and not the drama college favorite of "we're like a family". Well for lots of people the concept of family is hugely problematic, so why try to recreate it? Better a community which could support one another, provide a safe space when needed, and of course most importantly of all laugh together. 

When we announced that we were closing the faculty and  I remained committed to the #college4life idea of community. The MTA email addresses were changed to private email addresses, the emergency phone numbers were swapped to personal phone numbers, the Facebook group remained, and a WhatsApp group was formed. You see if we've learned anything since the pandemic it's that communities are essential lifelines to so many people, and if lockdown taught us anything it's that an online community if managed responsibly, can still provide the safety net that can keep us connected.

Finding your tribe is an important rite of passage, holding onto them is your greatest gift in life.

The Rise of the NDA

 I mean it sounds like a Stephen King novel doesn't it? Like some odious triffid-like creature that threatens the mere existence of us mere mortals. Before you correct me I'm aware that it was John Wyndham that created the triffids, but I obviously went for the writer more easily associated with horror stories. Anyway. . . back to the point of the blog.

NDAs or Non-Disclosure Agreements to give them their full legal title have been around around for decades, they came into their own in the 1970s, however, it wasn't until the 80s that they started being de rigueur in legal settlement agreements. When they originated (and indeed even today really) they made sense. Companies dealing with valuable intellectual property wanted to protect their knowledge and innovation, and so wanted to ensure that employee X couldn't just nick their ideas or indeed sell their ideas to other companies.

Interestingly enough most of us became really aware of NDAs through court orders designed to protect abusers. An affair here, an out-of-wedlock baby there, maybe even some criminal activity, all shrouded in secrecy by the perpetrators being financially able to pay their way out of a scandal, with a cheeky NDA thrown into the deal to guarantee that the story didn't come out, thereby ensuring that their "perfect public image" remained intact.

More recently our industry has seen an explosion of NDAs being used, predominantly for castings eg it's not unusual now if a performer is auditioning for a major production they are first required to sign an NDA. In a way, like the origins of the NDAs, this makes sense - there can't be that many creatives around who haven't seen one of their informally discussed creative brainwaves be turned into a show by a bigger, more resourceful company before they could ask for loose change for a reading. I completely get wanting to protect your idea.

However, there is a huge concern that the use of NDAs is being exploited by companies with the resources to gag and isolate performers. In fact, so much concern that Equity have now issued guidance on it. Then there's the thing that completely floored me when I first heard about it - drama colleges getting people to sign NDAs, indeed not only drama colleges, universities too. This is seemingly so much of a big deal that even the government have stepped in to stop it happening. When all the various horror stories were coming out about the systemic abuse and racism in certain colleges, it was striking that people were too afraid to speak out because of this NDA culture.

When discussing NDAs with some friends quite recently I discovered that it's now considered normal to add some sort of NDA into a termination of a contract package. . . not, I should quickly add for the protection of the person leaving the job, solely to protect the reputation of the organisation that they're leaving.

Which leads me to this conclusion - why has it become the norm to silence people that might have something incredibly important to say? When did this sub-culture start to emerge in the UK which basically says that those with money have the right to silence those that need it? We're not talking about intellectual property, we're not talking about trade secrets, we're talking about a culture of silence designed to protect those people and organisations that know they've done wrong. It's like legal blackmail - if you want the financial settlement either at the end of a contract or as compensation for some wrongdoing, you have to sign away your right to speak out. They are legally preventing people from implementing change, meaning that those toxic environments & indeed toxic people can simply move on to their next fodder.

Seemingly I'm not the only one to think that this is corrupt and indeed immoral, back in 2020 Forbes published this take on the situation, and there is currently a lot of talk within the UK of NDAs not being enforceable when they have been used as part of a golden handshake (surely that should be handcuffs), or when the power imbalance is such that the person felt compelled to sign the order.

Money should not buy silence when there has been wrongdoing - and do you know what would work better? A radical idea I know but I'm going to run with it. Treat people properly then you don't have to buy their silence.

People Watching - Social Media style

Since the first lockdown, I've been fascinated by the work of the conspiracy theorists that have worked solidly for nearly two years now to portray themselves as enlightened, whilst nicknaming all the rest of us mere mortals as sheep. As a Welshie I've got no issue with being linked to the Bovidae family - it comes with the territory.

I wrote about my experience at the time here. I enjoyed the sport of chatting and challenging these people. To be clear I don't condone trolling, so my interactions were always respectful as in truth I felt concerned for a lot of the people holding onto the drivel that some of these conspiracists came up with. Then after reading a bit more I became interested in how these people were monetising their hate. A Just Giving account here, a Patreon account there, the monetization of successful youtube channels - it quickly adds up to a healthy income.

What I quickly discovered is that there were known "leaders of thought", people that portrayed themselves as helpful but in reality, were feeding the anxieties of their followers with their various "concerns". As the pandemic continued you could see that some of these people were loving their newfound celebrity status, whilst also professing to have been forced into the limelight as "somebody had to stand up for all the injustice" These people were operating outside the realm of the known right wing media like Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Peter Hitchens et all, but were building followers of thousands.

After the college FB account got attacked by some anti-maskers over our panto "Covidella and the Masked Ball" I took even more interest in these groups. I couldn't understand how a simple stupid online panto was suddenly being accused of being a propaganda tool for the government.  I mean I know that it was a pandemic but we were talking about covid here, not some mind-altering virus, as if I'd be hired as a propanda tool for the Tories. Hell at one point somebody had a go because even the mice in the cartoon postcard were masked! On a FB ad we were getting trolled left, right and centre, with the most used words and phrases being that we "should be ashamed of ourselves", we were part of the government's "propaganda" machine, and the most popular word. . .paedophiles. Literally we were accused of being padophiles for "abusing children". To clarify. . . all because we said 'masked ball' and the cartoon characters on the promo were masked. 

It was then that I discovered that right wing groups consciously looking to divide and rule were deliberately infiltrating alternative medicine groups, spiritualist groups and groups focused on holistic wellbeing. So they were targeting people who already had an issue with "big pharma". Most of the ground work was already done for them. Of course fast forward a couple of years and there is the much held belief that the origin of all this nonsense was just part of the new online war with Russia. Divide and rule. . . whichever way you have to do it. What was also really evident from the people that fell for this nonsense was that these dangerous messages were really hitting their target with people that had known mental health susceptibilities. It was fascinating to watch friends and acquaintances falling down the rabbit hole.

When challenged they would all helpfully tell me that I was being manipulated by MSM (Mainstream Media). They would link me to "facts" that were always so easy to disprove. I learned more about covid and the ONS in a 3 month period than I would have thought possible. Through the joy of social media algorithms I quickly found a group of people like myself that would call out this nonsense. It was a lovely feeling of community at a grim time. 

When the answer to every probing question is "you're being manipulated" it becomes a dangerous narrative. Their followers really were like sheep (ironically), all stating the same "message" like loyal followers. At the time my nephew was working on the NHS front line up in Liverpool. Pre and post pandemic he's a geriatric consultant, but like many in 2020 he suddenly became a 'covid doctor', and like many on the front line would tweet about his experiences. As I read his tweets with pride, I was bemused by how many people would call him a fraud, claim that he wasn't a doctor, accuse him of being "in" on the conspiracy. It's when you see the truth being distorted like that you understand the magnitude of the problem.

One of the people that really fascinated me was the journalist Anna Brees. A few of my friends had sent me clips of hers in a bid to convince me that covid was not real. However that's all I saw was the smoke and mirrors of somebody that had found her niche. I would regularly challenge her narrative, always politely - then one day she sent me a DM stating that "(your) comments on some of my posts recently are very negative" Her message went on to tell me that if I "constantly questioned (her) journalistic abilities" then she'd block me. I wrote back informing her that it was social media ie we could all interact, I mentioned that I was curious as to why she was trying to silence me. She declared me to be toxic and blocked me, not before taking a screenshot of the blocking and posting it to her thousands of followers claiming me to be "dangerous". Cue a social media pile on of her followers, like the gangs from your playground memories, they'd blindly play "follow my leader". Increasingly I noticed that the people shouting the loudest about protecting our "freedom of speech" were only looking to protect their own freedom.

I've continued to follow this group of people as I've been interested to see what they go for next now that the "loss of liberties" created by the pandemic has subsided. One of Anna's mates was the recently convicted stalker Alex Belfield.  They would appear on each other's feed tantalising their followers with the prospect of a joint channel (though I think to be fair that was just Anna angling for that - Belfield was far more successful than her, so she was hoping to nab a few more followers). 

Belfield's persona was clearly to play up to his right wing audience. Like all the rest he claimed that he was simply executing his "freedom of speech", but unlike Anna his venom was very much on display for all to see. How anybody could watch one of his phone ins and not just feel utter contempt at his style is beyond me. 

So this is when my "hobby" of SM people watching finally collided head first with our industry - as Belfield loved a "showbiz story", and he also loved going after people in our industry. For somebody looking for notoriety in a Trump like fashion he's just found the ultimate accolade - the first person in the UK to be sent to prison for online stalking.

It is well known that Belfield went after countless people in our industry, and many of them have spoken out recently. However I was struck yesterday by Ben Hewis' post about the impact Belfield's campaign had had on him and his family. I remember when Belfield turned on Ben, and watched the escalation online. Reading Ben's account though this was clearly just the tip of the iceberg. 

Knowing the connection I nipped across to see what Anna had to say about her "mate's conviction".  True to form she's currently framing it as the "establishment" out to get Belfield. Her follower's are back to talking about paedophiles, but this time in a bizarre whataboutism as they try to compare the perceived severity of Belfield's sentence with the perceived leniency of a paedophile. 

Those seeds planted in 2020 have been watered, nurtured and propagated like a good 'un. Empathy of anything outside of "the fight" doesn't exist. Today I was reading how Right Said Fred like Brees and the rest loving a bit of misinformation, accused Ben of being upset by some "hurty words", implying that somebody should just accept being stalked by somebody who is clearly unwell. Zero empathy.

This court case might make others think twice about selling hate - then maybe we'll all find out if these people are deluded, ill, or merely opportunists looking for their next Patreon subscriber.

Changed For Good

 When covid hit and we were faced with the bizarre reality of being confined to our homes none of us could have guessed quite how long those "strange times" would last. When the theatres went dark in March 2020 it's hard to recall now that there was a belief that they'd be closed for a couple weeks, whereas of course in reality those weeks quickly turned to months. I remember the excitement of taking my children to watch a drive-in Dinosaur show after months of nothing. As my children looked on in amazement and wonderment I distinctly remember sitting in the driving seat shedding a 'happy tear' just to watch a company of actors being able to work again.

Even though this is very much our recent history it already feels like a lifetime ago that I was in my kitchen doing the homeschooling with my eldest prior to rushing online to check in with the college. I remember telling one of my students who was struggling with the lockdown that once it was all over, it would be like returning home from touring - it would be like we'd never been away. Normal life would just trundle on as it always does we'd just be a bit more knowledgeable about ourselves, as anything away from the ordinary is bound to influence our future self.

As I've said before I'm writing a book about The MTA at the moment, and it's fascinating sketching out the pandemic chapter - how quickly we all adapted and changed in a bid to ensure that no time was lost.

Of course, the reality is that covid is still very present, whether it's a random positive test, a reminder to wear your mask in certain settings, or for so many people the debilitating legacy of long covid symptoms lingering on like a bad memory unable to be 'filed' away as finished. Recently I was chatting to someone that was telling me quite how many friends they've lost recently, friends that prior to covid were young and healthy. For many the explosion of sudden deaths fits nicely into the anti-vax rhetoric, it feeds the paranoia that the pandemic left the world with. Of course in reality (and according to multiple peer-reviewed papers now), the reasons for the excess deaths are somewhat complex. A mixture of a global population that was exposed to a deadly virus (it was never a bad cold), leaving more people than we realise with ticking time bombs as the virus goes for one more mutation, plus a global population that stopped routine appointments, meaning that early warning symptoms have been missed.

2 years on our industry is struggling to find its way forward as I wrote about a few months back. Pre-covid the thought of a show being cancelled was just unthinkable. The adage "the show must go on" was our lived reality, post covid though there are no such guarantees. Even at the college level of producing shows it was terrifying how quickly things could change.  All of The MTA's shows since March 2020 were hit in one way or another by a covid outbreak and each time it gave me sleepless nights trying to work out the logistics. . . and that's without the pressure of needing to break even, so hats off to all producers muddling through this strange time.

As the UK lurks from one crisis to another though there's one thing that's struck me recently - how so many people and indeed so many organisations didn't actually "evolve" during the past 2 years, and how right up to the government there appears to have been a naive belief that we would all simply recalibrate back to a pre-pandemic time.  I'm bemused how so many people have missed the evolution and therefore have failed to plan for it.

Take our industry - the constant cancelling of shows has a profound knock-on effect on our audiences. Even as somebody in the industry I hesitate now to book a ticket too far in advance, I'd rather wait and take my chance on the day that I want to go, yet in making this choice I'm also mindful that there are producers needing to see an advance ticket sale. I'm assuming that time and time alone will restore a much needed equilibrium to this, but I also wonder whether from hereonin the show won't go on? 

Whilst our perceived reality pre-2020 was that things were somewhat fixed eg you'd book a holiday and assume that your flight would happen, we now find ourselves in a world full of uncertainty, and I'm curious how that permeates throughout society. 

Speaking recently to some business owners I was struck by their optimism that things would "soon get back to normal" but they seemed to have missed the point entirely that normal in 2022 has a different complexion from normal 2019. It should be noted that not all the changes are bad, take zoom life for example, the fact that the pandemic normalised video conference calls as opposed to traipsing here, there and everywhere for meetings that often took a fifth of the time to travel to places is revolutionary for personal time management. As a parent of young children the normalisation of hybrid working is a game changer, but I can also recognise that this change has the potential to change the city landscape for good.

We lived online for over a year - that is bound to change us all. I've definitely noticed that my concentration span is much shorter these days. I sense myself metaphorically scrolling through information said in person to me with a sense of undue urgency. With online life comes the pros and cons of social media, the artificial divide that's created when we all unwittingly believe a truth just because somebody wrote it down and posted it.

What will it mean for the training industry this fast-scroll life that now exists as a shop window to dance and drama training. Well I think that we've already seen a shift. It's no coincidence that some of the newer colleges that hit the ground running with their brilliant social media campaigns of commercial videos have done considerably better than the "old guard" colleges over recent years. The rapid growth of quite a few of them has been fascinating to watch. As with all these things only time will tell if they're actually any good. It'll be interesting to see their stats over the next few years to find out the quality of that growth. Alternatively of course there's my other theory that elite training is on its way out, and bulk "life training" is on its way in. When training hundreds at a time there will always be enough clickbait to mute the fact that the majority of students don't do that well. 

As for waiting for things to settle down and go back to "normal" though. . .we all have to accept that "normal" has always been a moveable point.

We all live in glasshouses

It's been a wee while since we've caught up with the Trinity "case". In the past couple of weeks we received the result of the external arbiter's investigation, plus a defiant letter from the Chair of the Board, which once again threatens me with legal action if I discuss my experience with Trinity, and indeed my concerns about the entire process. However last time I checked we still lived in a free country (I mean, thanks to the Tories, only just) and I am completely entitled to publicly discuss my concerns, just as I am entitled to state that I've received additional information, so these constant threats of legal action are clearly designed to shut down a dialogue that I'm completely entitled to have. It should be noted the level of detail that I consciously go into in these blogs - I do this to justify clearly and rationally why things just don't add up, and why maybe another narrative that has been disclosed to me. . . does. Anyway. . .to continue

So the story so far from Trinity's perspective can be traced here, here, here,  and here. I feel that it's vitally important for you to read things from their perspective, after all opinions and thoughts are formed when we have all the information.

You might have read in The Stage that the arbiter did uphold our complaint with regard to the process taking so long, however, they didn't uphold our other concerns, concluding that Trinity "operated with appropriate due diligence as a validating body". As you might imagine I don't necessarily agree with that conclusion. If we hadn't pushed our initial complaint Trinity considered our case closed after complaint No 1. However we did escalate it, and our complaint was upheld, therefore is that due diligence? Of course, the counter-argument is that the organisation had a safety net in place which allowed us to proceed with our complaint, however, I would still argue that the complaint should have been taken seriously from the beginning. We had 6 pages of corrections on a 9 page report - is that due diligence? It should also be noted that the majority of these corrections were upheld. We have evidenced some serious concerns which have not been fully investigated - is that due diligence?  

The new narrative from the organisation appears to now be around a complete U-turn on original thoughts after an assessor watched one of our shows. A show incidentally that they had made positive verbal feedback about on the day. According to their records this assessor had clearly gone away and rethought their original praise which of course they are completely entitled to do, and on reflection felt that the show didn't meet the correct standard, these revised views were, we were told shared by our main assessor, however, they've never explained how he actually came to share these views, as he didn't come to see the show? So when did he watch it?  Given that this one show is pivotal to one of our "issues" surely this is a critical point? It would be great to have a straightforward answer to this given that so many things seemingly changed on these observations. 

Such was the level of their concern the narrative now is that they "diligently" watched additional material online to get greater clarity, oops sorry, that's now turned into sampled additional material online. The wording changed after we called them out on their original claim that they had watched our productions. Was there an expectation that they would have watched all the shows that they had asked us to send to them - of course not? Life is far too short. Do I think that you can judge the dance standard of a college by watching 6 mins of a show, 2 mins of which is a couple of title screens, 3 mins of which is a whole college dance piece expertly choreographed by Jreena Green as a piece designed to show the true origins of jazz dance, deliberately using set moves to trace that history? As an aside, this piece was part of our commitment after BLM to operate with an anti-racist policy. So the moves that they deemed to be "too simplistic" were an accurate, authentic re-enactment of the origins of jazz dance from the black history perspective! So do I think that they can form an opinion of a standard based on those 3 mins? I think that you can guess the answer. Then let's not forget at this point that in the classroom observations there were no concerns about the standard.  Is it any wonder that we still have questions?

Anyway. . .back to the concerns, it was noted in the arbiter's report that on 15th March there appears to have been a handover document between our assessor and the person that would eventually deliver the report to us. Just as an aside it should also be noted that this was the exact day that the original assessor wrote to me apologising for the delay in getting our report to us, stating that the other person (that'll be the other person that was involved in the handover) had been off work ill with covid for 3 weeks, and they were hoping to return soon. So was it usual practice for handovers to happen when people were off sick? I'm aware that the assessor was waiting to discuss some things with the other person. . .though interestingly nobody has flagged up those specific questions anywhere? Even more interesting to me as they were issues that I had flagged up given that we were the first accelerated programme to undergo a validation process. Anyway, back to the "handover document" it was in this document that the concerns around the standard of dance were documented, having "diligently" sampled more of our online work, but here's the thing. . . the online stuff wasn't "sampled" until 8th June. Our main assessor was on "sick leave" from at least 25th March. On 9th June they came to assess a show and assessed that all students had reached the standard required in all 3 disciplines? The dates just don't add up for the level of concern that was seemingly raised.

They've used this perceived "concern" over dance to explain away the absence of any observations from the singing and acting classes on the day of the pre-validation assessment. Of course, this is quite key to our belief that the notes from the main assessor were not handed over in their entirety. The suggestion now is that the report "helpfully" focuses on the area of concern. They weren't concerned about our singing and acting so they didn't bother including any classroom observations. So why pop in an observation report about the voice class - that wasn't an area of concern? Or could it be as we've always suggested that two assessors watched that class? The only observations missing are the classes observed solely by the main assessor.

Trinity have created a strong narrative around us needing to put in a structure for formal assessments, and how this would have been a cultural shift for us, but erm. . .via our shows of work and via our productions, we had shifted to an assessment structure back in 2020, the main assessor was aware of that, he had seen the schemes that we were using. The arbiter quite rightly noted the adjustments that we would have had to have made if we were a college that didn't already have these systems in place eg they asked where these assessment points could come in our calendar, who marked them, what would be the marking guidelines, what grading systems would we be using, how could the feedback be given and in what timeframe. . .all extremely valid points, except that if they'd checked the student handbook all that information existed. Literally, the only thing that was recommended for us to change around assessments was the marking criteria. In fact, what they had asked us to do was far easier than what we had done previously. From 9 subsections of marking looking at personal development as well as industry-readiness their recommendations allowed us to just give 3 marks. We couldn't believe our luck.  The recommendations made had already simplified our infrastructure. As for when these assessments happened. . . that information was in the handbook too. Our students got marked twice a term - once for technical studies and once for performance. Who marked them (according to the criteria that was clearly set out), the heads of department for the technical studies, and our guest creatives for the shows. When was the feedback given. . .every last Friday of technical studies via four 1:1 tutorials, covering all core disciplines. Zero restructuring needed, and no big cultural change required.

As I've kept stating that zoom conversation was predominantly taken up with a conversation around Guided Learning Hours and moderation. The moderation of the course took up the bulk of the meeting, not the change of assessment criteria.  We chatted around various options as in fact, this stuff did have the potential to force us to change the course, and the discussion was around the fact that I wouldn't risk the integrity of the course for a simple box-ticking exercise.  To both of the assessor's credit, they agreed with me, and we worked hard to find a solution that we could agree upon. A system that was so simple to implement that we were already running it 4 weeks later. A system that I was informed in the July zoom meeting that they had failed to understand as the other assessor ended up being confused by it? So where were the notes from the main assessor??

I can 100% see how this can be viewed through the lens of the "distraught" Principal, unable to understand how their course could have any faults, maybe acting out of character due to the upset of them losing their college and of course their income as a direct result of this report (whilst also noting that there was another contributing factor). After all, as the arbiter noted, back in Feb & March we did feel that we were home and dry on this one. For the first time ever we could see a clear, attainable route to secure government funding streams for our students. A game changer. However, as a large number of my friends & colleagues have noted often with a wry smile - this is not out of character for me.  Name me the college principal that has shouted louder or more frequently about the need for greater regulation in our industry. . . I'll wait. I mean here's the piece that I wrote for The Stage just last year on this very subject, or scroll through the blog to note the recurring theme.

Am I upset that the college has closed? Of course, I am - it would be bizarre if I wasn't. Am I distraught by it - no. Life moves on and I'm excited to see what the next chapter holds for me. Am I hugely concerned to discover that this entire process is not regulated by anyone? Yes. I'm curious as to why in all their statements Trinity state that they're regulated and bound by the rules of OfQual, but omits to say that the process to get validated is not regulated by anyone. So what "if" my whistleblowers are correct, what "if" we somehow fell through the cracks of some systemic issues at the only organisation that can open up government funding streams at Level 6? "If" I'm right - how can we as an industry guarantee that this won't happen to another college?

Shouldn't the response to this quite simply be - look things went wrong, there are major loopholes here, let's investigate properly (and by that I mean an external investigation which looks at the process as a whole, with the key people involved in our case all being at least approached to be interviewed etc) silence these rumblings, and then put things in place to ensure that these questions need ever be asked again. Two charities looking to protect their reputations. . .working with total transparency to get to the truth. If that had happened back in July I would not still be blogging about it. Why do simple, reasonable questions get met with threats of legal action? Why have I acquired a Trinity troll on twitter? An account clearly attempting to discredit the college and indeed me? Why would somebody respond to reasonable questions by creating an anonymous profile? 

Transparency was one of the central tenants of The MTA. I guess that these blogs and again the level of detail that I go into in them is indicative of how much importance I put on that value.  Of course, it makes me hugely vulnerable - but by posing questions publicly I'm also allowing myself to be challenged.  For quite some time we've been very clear that whistleblowers had come forward to us, Trinity has made it very clear now in both letters to us and indeed to their staff that this sort of dialogue is not welcomed. I find that interesting, as for every single "event" in this day and age of social media forensics, there are people eager to find out the truth. We had it ourselves years ago when that vexatious grievance was made about the college and a certain blogger was publicly asking to speak to students to "find out the truth". Whilst of course I had feelings about it, I wasn't anxious as I had nothing to hide, and more importantly, if there was something going on then we needed to address it.  As brilliantly described in a podcast that I listened to the other day, organisations have to understand that they no longer operate within a "black box", thanks to social media we are all living in glasshouses.

It can't be wrong to ask these questions. The concerns noted above are valid concerns which have still not been adequately answered or investigated. I believe that the external arbiter did a great job with the information made available to them but I'm still curious why the remit of that investigation did not extend to interviewing the only person that could really answer our accusations - the main assessor. 

Given what was lost as a result of the pre-validation assessment. . . wouldn't you want to know the full story? Similarly, students, colleagues, and staff - all of whom have seen every bit of documentation that's been passed between the two organisations are equally entitled to ask questions. That's not a campaign - as one student wrote in a thread the other day - they are questioning things of their "own volition", because it wasn't "my" college, it was "our" college. Over 300 people were directly impacted by the closure of The MTA, it's just that only one of us blogs ;-) 

The Right To Reply

All I wanted to do was to run a small drama college, when things went tits up last year I took time to process it all and then just move on, and in truth whilst I've found this year's closure announcement harder, it's only because of the way that it's come about. Now, simply by standing up for the college, the course, the staff and the students, I've unwittingly found myself embroiled in some ridiculous battle for the truth.  

This week I was accused of embarking on a social media campaign against Trinity, with Trinity emailing me with an ultimatum of removing my blogs, publishing this letter, or run the risk of them setting their lawyers on me.  Now as regular readers will know for the past 7 years I've used this blog account in an attempt to raise awareness of certain issues, a place where my voice can be heard unedited, after all, I am only ever writing my truth. So given the ultimatum and the contents of the letter, I was delighted to share it, even though it was worded to raise questions about the validity of our concerns.

In their letter they once again attempted to address our complaints. I mean I have some observations about some of their statements. Let's start at the beginning - by noting that we had a well-publicised campaign to fundraise back in 2021 in order to stay open, they're sowing the seeds of doubt as to whether or not we were financially viable.  This is because we've been very clear that two things would have saved us - one being the validation, and the other a private benefactor. Both together would have been exquisite, but having just one of them would have potentially saved us. 

Moving further down I'm curious about this sentence when discussing our main assessor how he'd "reflected the view of his colleague that the performance which she attended in early March was strong in material and acting, but the dance numbers were basic and overall the work seen did not fully demonstrate appropriate Level 6 standards." I'm a massive fan of John Gardyne our main assessor. I could talk for hours about the conversations that we had which bore no relationship to what they're claiming were his private concerns, but of course that would come down to my word against theirs (or indeed for some of those statements, our word against theirs, as both students and staff heard a very different version), so I won't bother going into it all again, however I'm really curious about how John came to the same conclusions that the other assessor allegedly came to over the show, as he hadn't seen it. Only one assessor came to watch SOSN and that was Brenda Garrett-Glassman. 

In this situation I'm always curious about what people don't say eg in their response, you'll note that they failed to mention that the assessor on our final show clearly named that all of our students did meet the right level in all 3 disciplines? Anyway, I'm sure that they just wanted to keep their statement brief? I mean they also agreed that the short film that they did watch met the standard too, even though it was cast with 1st years. So in August the students met the criteria, in January when they were with us they did, somehow it went wrong in March, but got back on track in June? How odd.

The letter did for the first time say that our main assessor "withdrew" from our assessment, so you guys found that out at the same time as us. Lucky you!  As far as we were concerned until that statement was sent John went off sick with covid sometime around 25th March and never returned.  When we chased the report we were told that we'd have to wait for his return, so really interesting to now hear that he withdrew from it all. Of course, we've tried to track John down, after all, he was the person that we'd dealt with, unfortunately, when we contacted him he told us that he'd left Trinity and therefore couldn't speak to us. 

I think that the wording of the statement was interesting eg when discussing watching online performances which is one of the areas that we think is contentious they said this: "Trinity has never represented that it watched in entirety the hundreds of hours of recordings that you submitted." See that's really interesting to me as that makes me sound a bit mad doesn't it? Like I've been sending them hours of recordings? Why on earth would I have been doing that? In reality, John asked me to send all of our archive performances from Dec 2020 - just 7 shows in total. They literally received the shows that they requested, so not hours at all. In fact, John had been monitoring our shows since June 2020 and had already watched some of our online work prior to the 2021 stuff, as he wanted to be sure that our work was meeting the correct standard before agreeing that we should apply when the criteria changed.

I find it interesting that they attempt to discredit me again when they write about me not understanding the validation process. It's like they hadn't received a handover of the 90 mins conversation that John, Brenda and myself had when they were giving me their original recommendations in a zoom, as if they had there was no way that they could have made that statement after all that zoom discussion wasn't an informal chat, it was part of our formal assessment procedure, they were literally giving me their report recommendations? 

Similarly, their stuff around funding is somewhat muddied, for sure the EFSA allocate the DaDAs but you must be offering a Trinity Level 6 Diploma in order to be considered. As for "other ways for in which your students can access ALAs" (I think that they meant ALL) well at Level 6 there isn't, and our course operated at Level 6. What I find fascinating is how all the assessors that we dealt with had such pride in the Trinity Diploma, all of them were pleased that we had elected to take this route to student funding as opposed to a degree route, yet here it's like Trinity themselves don't understand the value of their course?

To add a bit of authority to their response they make out that they're regulated by OfQual - but fail to point out that OfQual's regulations don't apply until you've been validated. At the point of entry they're not regulated by anybody.

Anyway - their letter (I'm mindful to keep sharing it, as I want all of you to read exactly what they're saying) was clearly designed to scare me, the threat of the lawyer and all that. Of course, you can't involve lawyers if the person making the statements that you feel are harmful to your organisation are true. I mean you can. . . but you really run the risk of being exposed. I would be bloody stupid to be fighting this report if I wasn't sure of my facts. For me, the reputation of my college, students and staff is every bit as valuable as the reputation of a global organisation such as Trinity. The MTA is closing in 2 weeks and I'd like the final word to be the report that John had written, not a report cobbled together with huge inaccuracies. 

Of course, things are even more interesting now as 2 whistleblowers have come forward from Trinity. The definition of a whistleblower is "a person who informs on a person or organisation regarded as engaging in an unlawful or immoral activity". I've discovered that Trinity staff were sent an email warning them not to talk to us (or the press), once again being advised that Trinity "do not tolerate personal attacks on their. . . staff" so I'm hugely appreciative of the people that have come forward. 

For obvious reasons I'm not going to divulge what we know as that would be dumb right? We were hoping that OfQual would have investigated for us, but see note above. Our concerns are still sitting with the Charity Commission so we'll wait to see what they do. As a result of the new information, we are now also taking some legal counsel to see what our position is.

Meanwhile, in line with the ethos of The MTA to always be transparent I've shared all the information that I was given with the wider college community, and I guess IF the Trinity external arbiter fails to uncover the truth then it'll be down to me to get the truth out. However we're a way off that, as it seems only fair to let the Trinity internal investigation run its course, and I'm looking forward to chatting to the arbiter.

You see we all have a reputation to protect, and just because some charities are bigger than others, it doesn't make their reputation any more valuable. I spent 14 years building a college on a foundation of integrity & transparency, and that is the relic that I want to be leaving as a legacy.  In the meantime though. . . keep reading their letter

Levelling Up not Dumbing Down

I'm not really sure how this happened but over the past few years, the idea of elite training has become a bad concept, synonymous with "exclusive", and frowned upon in an era when everybody should be able to access everything. I mean the roots of this are plain to see - elite training comes at a cost, and for the majority of people those costs are prohibitive. Similarly for lots of people "elite" training is seen as a thing steeped in a western culture vacuum, thereby blocking off so many brilliant pathways before we even get going.

I believe that elite arts training should be "inclusively exclusive" and by that, I mean that our industry is so much richer with a diversity of voices, different ethnicities and different demographics all coming together as one to create an arts scene that is vibrant and evolving. However, I don't believe that we should become a "lifestyle" industry.  I 100% believe that training in the arts makes people well-rounded, gives confidence and should be compulsory to all children, but I also believe that it's OK to have a space where the best of the best train, and in those places, it should not be the buyer's market. Selection for that training needs to be robust and selective. I'm so proud that in the 14 years that The MTA operated we never once lowered our standard. Even when financially it was a struggle, we found a way to make it work. Personally, the thought of accepting somebody that I truly believed was never going to make was abhorrent. I would have been nothing more than a grifter.

Somehow the arts have been dumbed down so much that the only equivalent that I can think of is if the National football team had to try out everybody that was vaguely interested in kicking a ball, and more than that they had to put a few keen but useless amateurs on the team. . . just cos those people really wanted to be in the team. It's ludicrous, isn't it? Yet that's where many colleges are now when it comes to vocational training. 

We can't keep using the argument of "inclusivity" as a way of dumbing down elite training. We need to find people from all walks of life that meet the standard (and my goodness there are hundreds of them) and then we have to fund that training.  We need talent scouts going around youth groups, dance schools, and state schools ensuring that it's not just the nice middle-class kids that know about vocational training. Soccer scouts actively start looking for their next stars from 13 up so this isn't a unique concept. We should have a national network where talented youngsters are scouted, nurtured (in their home environment) and then at 18 undertake "elite training".

Why have we become satisfied with mediocrity? What's the thinking behind the "cream will rise to the top" in overcrowded colleges - as that cream battles against a wave of at best "average" but very often "not that good"? We're ripping off the people that are electing to train with us if we're accepting them knowing full well that they don't stand a chance of making it.

We're in an overcrowded industry as it is, and year on year we're just piling more "highly average" out into it, meaning that lots of extremely talented people leave our profession earlier than they need to.

I've genuinely lost count of the number of conversations I've had with people that came to work at The MTA because all of our students were good, the shock on people's faces when they realised that all of our students could sing (and by that. . . I mean sing well). We were a musical theatre college for goodness sake - shouldn't that be the norm? I'd hear story upon story of how college X had a handful of brilliant people but all the rest were. . . well. . . average. 

UK training is considered to be one of the best in the world, hell that's why so many colleges make a handsome profit overcharging overseas students. It's supply and demand, isn't it? Yet if we keep dumbing down our training industry we end up devaluing our arts scene, and at one point that was a big old jewel in the cultural crown.

We have to fund elite training though - and stop lying to people that £9K/year pays for it. Those colleges perpetuating that myth have devalued their own training, and eventually, I fear they too will pay the price for that Tory bit of spin. We need the government to be supporting the arts scene like they support elite sports. We need that support to be properly regulated.

We need a proper qualification for that training, a degree isn't the one, it just sits uneasily within our industry. Like a funded apprenticeship scheme or something, properly regulated from start to finish. 

Where people are looked after and not treated as conveyor belt fodder. Funding needs to be attached to results, and not to worthless bits of paper. 

Back in the day of the PCDL colleges had to prove their track record, the funding wasn't automatically gifted as it is nowadays to every degree course out there. Our industry needs to wake up to what's happening - the dumbing down of our standards as everybody chases the pound. Now if that's not a metaphor for Tory Britain I don't know what is.

 

Trinity's Reponse

Very happy to share this as requested - my response along with supporting evidence is now with OfQual and the Charity Commission

Trinity's Response  

A Time For Reflection

 It's been over a week now since The MTA announced that it was closing in Sept 2022. That's a week of everybody including me attempting to process the news.

Having bizarrely gone through this week last year too I'm struck by how different it is this time. Maybe of course because last year as soon as we announced it some hope materialised within days, so it never really felt real at all.  

Last time we knew that this was coming. We'd had months recognising that the problem was real, with weeks passing before people applied to join us. It was inevitable that the closure announcement was going to come.

This year the hope came before the announcement, which somehow made this feel all the worse. You see even though we'd lost a benefactor there was always the hope of the Trinity validation pulling through for us, after all, as I've written about a fair few times now, the evidence from the day of the assessment and subsequent assessors coming to see our shows was overwhelmingly positive.  Literally, hours chatting to the main assessor both on the day of the pre-validation assessment and even before had clearly raised no red flags at all (and trust me when I say that I'm always on the lookout for red flags). The assessor (John Gardyne) clearly understood what he was talking about, and was hugely diligent in his dealings with us. 

We always knew that we needed 3 things to survive beyond this year, and we knew that we could have survived with 2 of the 3 things in place, we didn't need the full house. The 3 things were simple, additional funding, the cohort size returning to pre-pandemic levels and the all-important validation from Trinity. Now 1 and 2 and intrinsically linked - which John completely understood. If there were no major issues on our course and we were able to whiz through the validation process, for the first time since 2018 we would have been in a position to offer assistance with fees.

For background from 2011 - 2018 we were able to offer students help via a government back Professional Career Development Loan - the PCDL. Whilst not massive - just £10K/student, we saw our applications increase once we were in a position to offer that help. Interestingly the criteria for that loan was determined by a government office all based on paperwork and stats, ensuring that we weren't some rogue organisation.

I had attempted to shout loudly when the PCDL was suddenly pulled with no warning, and have subsequently continued to scream into the abyss like some harbinger of doom with vocational training's death knell ringing loudly into my own echo chamber, but nobody listened. They all just turned away because it didn't impact them. We were after all an outlier of a college so we were hugely insignificant. Our problems were exactly that. . . "our" problems.

Anyway, back to 'now' and our situation, suddenly being able to apply for a validation that could access the Advanced Learner Loan, a loan worth £22k/student for us, was clearly going to be a game changer. Even taking into account the current cost of living crisis, the increased competition within the training market, the number of phone calls and conversations on lives on various platforms was proof if proof was needed that having an ALL attached to the funding options for the course was going to completely put us back on track. We 100% had to get through another year with a teeny tiny cohort which was always going to be a challenge BUT there were ways and means around that. Our business plan was going to look hugely different with that student funding stream secured, meaning that we could have looked to the bank to help us through the 2022-23 academic year. My wife and I were still down as guarantors for loans taken out by the college, and we had already discussed the possibility of guaranteeing a loan to get us through the next year. There was no way that we'd do it without the validation in place though as we had already loaned the business a lot of money back in 2015 to facilitate the move to our new premises and that money was still in the college, so we would have had to be really sure of success before committing even more finance.

So with all of these "knowns" in place, we had hope in abundance. For sure with each passing week that Trinity failed to send us the report that hope waivered. We needed to move onto the full validation assessment with a real urgency in order to secure it and advertise the fact that our training came with some form of student funding. 

When the report landed in July a few days after having made a formal complaint to Trinity about the 4 months of delay, it was devastating to discover that the report that was presented to us bore no relationship to the report that was verbally discussed with me back in March. In fact, I barely recognised the college within that report.  Over the past week, we've released that report to our students & graduates (as I've always believed in completely transparency), and they are equally bemused by what they've read. 

You see #theMTAway truly is unique, and unless you've taught at the college or been a student there or, like John, spent hours trying to understand how it worked, you just couldn't blag a report on it. Well. . . I say you couldn't, somebody at Trinity has clearly given it a bloody good go.

So this year's closure does feel vastly different - but predominantly because this year's closure is unfair, and whilst we all come to terms with that, the fact that a major organisation such as Trinity has not only failed to own up to their part in our demise, but rather lie even further in the most ridiculous of press releases that salt is being rubbed rather harshly into the wounds. 

They have just 9 more days to present the findings of their external arbiter, plus 9 days to present the full report - complete with our 6 pages of corrections. I'll say it again though - a report on our training cannot be blagged, it's a unique 2-year training programme so unless they've found the original report or at least spoken to our original assessor this is all going to get very messy. THAT'S why this year feels so different - we're definitely closing, but the post-mortem into why we've been forced to close is going to drag on for months, and eventually, I know that we're going to be vindicated, at which point that hope will turn to despair at all that we might have been and all that we've lost. The loss of a truly unique college amongst the homogeny of training available, the loss of free training & rehearsal space for our graduates, the loss of a creative hub for new writing, and that's before you even start to count up the financial cost of it all that, wages, redundancy monies, lease, deposits, damn it. . . even our loan.

We're over. . . but we're not

Defining Gaslighting

My mum, a staunch unionist, always taught me about social responsibility. She would always call out injustice wherever she saw it. She inspired me to do the same.  This ongoing discussion will not help the college, but if it holds an organisation to account then it's a really important conversation to have. I can't turn a blind eye to this (I mean I seriously wish that I could). . . the cost to our industry is too high.

Over the past couple of years lots of people's eyes have been opened to the fact that certain people in the public eye are culpable of gaslighting. I did a poll the other day on twitter asking people if they felt that gaslighting had increased since we've had a PM that literally does nothing else.  A stark percentage believed that his lack of integrity had trickled down through the cracks of society.

For those that aren't sure what gaslighting means, to gaslight is to make people question their own reality. So when Johnson says one thing and then denies it in the next interview, we're all left wondering if we'd imagined the first statement.

In my first blog about all of the Trinity debacle I was clear that I felt that their response to our initial complaint was rather. . . well. . . gaslit. They actually didn't address any of our concerns at all, simply telling me that the report was the report and we just had to suck it up really. To be clear they didn't write those exact words. . . but that was definitely my takeaway. 

I find gaslighting fascinating - take even their initial response, all of my senior faculty had read that report, and we all had input on the corrections, we had all come to the same conclusion that our main assessor's input was missing, yet when faced with a corporate response taking zero accountability, you instinctively have to take a step back and question your own reality. The massive difference here though is that my faculty, the students. . . a LOT of people had heard the same things at the same time. This wasn't one person's word against another. 

Anyway - today they've issued a statement designed to shut down the unofficial social media campaign that would have the potential to damage their reputation. . . and they've disappointingly gone for gaslighting one more time.

So let's just deal with facts shall we . . . here goes

1) Trinity failing to process our pre-validation assessment within a reasonable time frame did massively contribute to our closing. We've been clear all along that they weren't solely responsible. It's no secret that we had announced last year that we were closing. . .so clearly our position was always precarious this year. Suddenly having access to the potential of student funding though was a game changer for us and would have allowed us to be sustainable and indeed viable for the foreseeable future. So both of those facts can just sit side by side comfortably.

2) Even in their statement they've got their facts wrong. . . the company that has named itself as a regulated awarding organisation are now stating that they only watched one in person show. They came to 2. . . maybe it was just a typo eh, but you'd expect a bit more rigour in a statement defending their integrity*

*UPDATED to add that they've now issued a correction notice about this, but when I say a correction notice, it's actually not, they just now say that they watched 2 shows, they've just tried to make it all casual and normal.

2) They say that their work is scrutinised, they spend a long time telling us about their great reputation. It was a 9 page report and we had 6 pages of corrections. Make your own conclusion.

3) We would have been OK with the decision to pause the validation process IF that decision was based on facts taken from the main assessor. The report focussed on dance, it didn't mention our singing or acting at all, other than in the show report for Hair, which states that we had "demonstrated standards of singing, acting and dance required by the diploma"

4) They state that our report had been 'unavoidably delayed' - which is true as I had received our original recommendations back in March, yet the report (with different recommendations) was presented in July.

5) They state that they're working within the "published guidelines". Firstly I'd love to see those as we haven't been able to find them anywhere, but also every college is so different. eg they might have made a recommendation that we had a new building, in which case it would have taken us years to be validated, so validation is a piece of string issue. The difference here is that we were TOLD by the assessors on the day that we could be optimistic to be validated by July. Our main assessor had worked for Trinity for 17 years as their main assessor, he wasn't some rookie prone to error. In my meeting with them, they chastised this assessor for speaking out of turn, noting it as a point of learning. You conclude whatever you like, as we are not able to contact our main assessor. He's not able to speak to us. We did reach out to him, only to be told that he no longer worked for the organisation and therefore couldn't comment. 

6) They've refuted in the "strongest terms possible" our claims about them falsifying parts of that report. Who would be so dumb to suggest that without tangible proof? Not us, though interesting that they've now popped out in the public domain that they've watched a "sample" of online shows. 

7) Finally this statement "Further, we wish to make clear that we will not tolerate any personal attacks being made against Trinity’s staff and assessors and any questioning of their integrity in their professional work." Now that's very clever isn't it? That leads the reader by the hand inferring that personal threats have been made to assessors. To my knowledge, not one threat has been made to anybody.  More than that I'd be mortified if it had - that's not the way to hold an organisation up for accountability. A social media shout-out requesting accountability is not threatening behaviour.  Let me go further - I DO question the integrity of the person that wrote the report that we received, and I DO question the integrity of an organisation attempting to gaslight their way out of an issue. I DO NOT question the integrity of John Gardyne, our main assessor, we don't question the integrity of Catherine Dulin who came to assess Hair and took time to speak to us after the performance, and we DON'T question the integrity of Brenda Barratt-Glassman who was our second assessor. I DO find it a shame though THEY weren't so loyal to their assessors in a zoom meeting when they mentioned that one of them hadn't been able to understand a system that we were trialling at Trinity's request.  Note how I would NEVER sell one of those brilliant assessors down the Swanee. In fact - it strikes me that we're standing up for the integrity of the assessors by wanting to see the original report. We believe that report to have been an accurate representation of our course.

To conclude, we are also a charity. . . but I'll save you the gaslighting PR job, as I'd rather just deal with facts.

The "Holey" Trinity

I'm aware that I'm posting a lot about Trinity. I'm aware that it could be perceived to be sour grapes, or bitterness even that something just didn't go the way that I would have liked to. Here's the thing though, only ONE validating organisation holds the strings to DaDa awards. When the government took away the PCDL in 2019 they replaced it with the Advanced Learner Loan, and once again in our vocational training industry the only courses approved for the ALL is. . you guessed it, the Trinity Diploma.

So to summarise, if you choose to train in a vocational college, one that has not gone the degree route to funding, literally the only pathway to student funding is via the Trinity Diploma. So Trinity College London, a registered charity worth millions is the main gatekeeper to literally thousands of pounds worth of student funding. The ALL alone is worth £22k/Student. 

Little wonder then that my little college with its unique 2 year accelerated learning programme was elated when they caught up with the modern world and agreed to validate accelerated learning courses such as ours. Suddenly we had the POTENTIAL for our students to receive funding. 

Now if you've read my last blog you'll know that our pre-validation assessment process went massively array after the pre-validation assessment visit had happened, indeed even after I'd been in the zoom with our main assessor talking through our recommendations. Now I should state for the record, our main assessor had worked at Trinity for 17 years, indeed he had been a team leader for them, so not an underling learning the ropes on our assessment. This was someone that was an essential cog in their validating machine. Over the past few years, I'd had several conversations with him and he really knew his stuff. 

This assessor - actually he deserves more than anonymity, this assessor called John Gardyne really took time to understand our unique little course. He asked pertinent questions, and he took an interest in the staff, students and the course. When observing classes he was clearly engaged. When informally discussing his findings with us at the end of the visit he was clearly enthused. He had completely won us all over.

We were genuinely worried and upset when we kept receiving his out-of-office reply saying that he was on medical leave. In fact, I even wrote to him a few times whilst chasing the bloody report to say that I just hoped that he was OK. 

So when I had to sit in a zoom with 2 people that had never visited the college, and I heard one of them in particular clearly gaslighting me - starting the zoom with "if you want my advice you shouldn't bother going for validation" I KNEW in that instant that John's original report was not included in the work of fiction that they presented to us even though they had stated that it was (cue the dramatic music)

Let me give examples:

The report stated that (and forgive me for not directly quoting, but you'll get the picture in a moment) that our timetable was busy with no private study time (let's not forget here that private study time is actually a money-saving device used by colleges), and our students must be tired and potentially prone to more injuries. Swiftly followed by their account of chatting with our students where the assessors asked them if they were tired and our students said . . . no. The recommendation? We should undertake a year's study to find out if our students were tired. and more prone to injuries.  We've been running for 14 years with no major injuries. We have an amazing physio within the faculty that is fiercely proactive in injury prevention. The nature of our course means that in reality, our students are less likely to be injured. . scientific fact. They had also noted in their report that our students had felt heard, so why the hell were they asking us to waste time on this study? Our students meet with all 4 of the senior faculty at the end of every term for 1:1 tutorials, they speak to staff all the time AND we undertook anonymous surveys twice a year in case students wanted to let us know something that they weren't comfortable with telling us face to face.  We hold regular debriefing discussions after every production. Name me another college that spoke and listened to its students as much.

Or how about this:

They noted that the course was different, and not everybody was suited to an accelerated learning programme (like no sh*t Sherlock), so they recommended that we spent a year looking at our audition process to check that we're taking in the right people!! We've been running for 14 years, in the same report they'd correctly noted that we had the amazingly low dropout rate of just 3%, whilst they incorrectly stated that a "high percentage of students had secured agent recommendation". I say incorrectly as literally every single one of them had secured representation. I'd say that the evidence was actually already in their report, why did we need to look at anything??

Those are just 2 examples of many. From stating that we held Q&As with our graduates (which literally has never happened other than Ambassador Afternoon which is an informal sharing). . . have you seen the amazing people that come to work with our students? No disrespect to our ambassadors but our guest list includes people like Imelda Staunton, Stephanie J Block, Mike Jibson, Alison Steadman, Hadley Fraser, David Eldridge, Mike Leigh, Jenna Russell, Rosie Craig, so a host of other inaccuracies the report that we received was not of our course.

They spoke about our original film musical J - a film that won countless film festival awards - a contemporary retelling of the Don Juan story set in a non-binary world, but claimed that it was a story about a degenerative pop star? Now I'm not kidding when I say that I haven't a clue where they picked that storyline up from - as I was one of the writers of the film and there is NO mention of a pop star lifestyle at all.

If this wasn't so tragic it would be bloody hilarious as this faux report instantly blocked off all access to student funding. We can prove that they lied about watching other shows online - yet their lies have cost us our last lifeline.

I am 100% confident that they didn't have John's report - a report that I had already been talked through.

I am 100% confident that they cobbled together the report when we eventually complained that the process had taken 4 months longer than we had originally been told.

I am 100% confident that their first response to our complaint was to gaslight us into submission

I am 100% confident that we will be vindicated. . . .but that it's too late to save The MTA

But that should not stop us from fighting to make Trinity accountable. They've mistreated us, and my hunch is that they mistreated John too - and I'm happy to fight for the truth