Who are we lying to? The covid fightback continues

 Our industry's ecosystem is broken - from the ground up it's all gone pear-shaped. There was so much hope (ironically) back in 2020 when everything closed that when we returned, we would fix everything that was wrong. Of course, that was extremely naive and ambitiously optimistic, but it did feel like our best chance to reassemble and re-evaluate how our industry had limped through the last few years prior to the pandemic.

Fast forward two years and so little has changed. There are more angry voices calling out inequality in the industry, but no finance to address how we open up our industry to all. So for sure, there are more opportunities, but very often we don't have the talent coming through to give the opportunities too. We don't have the talent because the funding around training is worse than ever, and the outreach programmes aren't effective enough to create a real change in the landscape.

We spoke about how 'the show must go on' probably wasn't the best practice that we all thought that it was, then the theatres creaked back open and (some) producers desperate to keep the industry alive exploited the motto more than ever. As swings and understudies got lauded, dance captains and associates were buckling under the pressure of yet another cut show and more rehearsals than we'd ever had before (straight off the back of no work for 2 years). The landscape had changed and the unthinkable was now a regular occurrence - shows would cancel a performance, often leaving audiences out of pocket and slightly scared to rebook. . . yet.

The landscape is still so sparse to what we were used to pre-pandemic, and in spite of so many people leaving the industry during the dark times, colleges with their ever-growing populations kept churning out thousands of graduates eager to work and determined to stay the distance, whilst industry stalwarts that usually managed to stay afloat were suddenly left on the sidelines with them waiting for things to really take off again.

Throw in the real impact of Brexit and the lack of opportunities for performers to now work abroad - the cruise ship industry is still buckling under covid, and for the few jobs that there are available, an EU passport is now as valuable as a good turn out or a top-class voice reel.

In the UK we've finally named that the touring model is deeply flawed from digs to pay - but what's the answer? People are tired of things being hard.

2 years of hardship and people's resilience is low. Those 2 years stole more than our work, for many the pandemic stole their identity. As a vocational industry so many of us identify as our jobs - this is a personal choice not endorsed by the industry, but a reality of a lifetime of dreams getting fulfilled.  So many of us made the career choice at a stupidly young age that it somehow became a constant in our lives - until that fateful day in 2020 when our industry closed down.

The successful amongst us saw their life savings dwindling away to nothing. In technical theatre literally hundreds of 'us' realised that their skills were transferable, and more than that, were transferable in industries that naturally treated their staff better. Shorter working hours, larger paycheques, financial security. The talent drain amongst our technical theatre community is staggering.

We returned saying that we would look after each more carefully, but that hasn't happened, in fact, quite the opposite, we've returned more self-centred than ever, after all . . . all of 'this' could simply be snatched from us again. We have to look out for No 1 now.

As the person that started #time4change, the very first campaign for a better understanding of mental health and mental illness in the industry way back in 2016 the regression is clear. I mean the narrative and social media click baits are more on-message than ever. If you only studied theatre twitter you'd think that we'd had a revolution of understanding - but of course, the reality is different. People STILL can't differentiate between mental health and mental illness, now illness gets celebrated as opposed to people being encouraged to go and seek out help. A couple of schemes and an increase in mental health first aiders was not the revolution that I'd hoped for 6 years ago.

Take mental illness out of the picture and just focus on mental health and we've come back worse than when we left it. Now your resilience is tested because you should be grateful to be in a job - the cruise industry is currently a great example of this dangerous narrative. People on shows are working longer hours than ever (the joy of the covid cut show), for less money than ever. Less money adds to the everyday stress which was already hugely present for most freelancers during their non-funded pandemic. Companies are struggling so those invoices are being paid later than ever. The stress on the individual is huge (it should be noted on both sides of the table - as producing stuff during this time is a heart attack waiting to take hold).

All of the above will eventually sort itself out, but it would be a damn sight more healthy if the struggle was named more openly if people were supported during their wobbles and if companies focused on individuals as much as their accounting software.

There's still time for the revolution that our industry desperately needs, but first, we all have to breathe, take stock and heal. We have to learn to be kind to each other as we all take the next steps in the resuscitation of an industry that really could be world-class again.

What happened to the Money Tree?

 The Stage have been covering the news of ALRA's sudden closure this week, and they've even attempted to address the issue of vocational training under threat, in a great article by Georgia Snow which I was grateful to have been invited to add a comment to.

However in the article what isn't explicitly named is how the vocational training 'establishment' chased what they believed to be the golden goose of funding, and in doing so sold our industry down the river without a paddle.  Let me explain.

You categorically do not need a degree per se to be a performer. For sure you need a skill set, and techniques to enhance your talent, but you don't 'need' the piece of paper. A casting breakdown will discuss a look, a skill set, and possibly mention that the person needs to have undergone training - it will never mention a qualification. In fact, the introduction of formal HE qualifications is a relatively recent thing eg Birds introduced the first dance degree in 1997 - just 25 years ago. Of course, it wasn't that long before every established college was offering degrees - and why? Well, it's actually quite simple - they thought that a degree would open up a pot of money which would attract more students. A degree guarantees the college between £6K-£10K per person. Now back in the 1990s that must have sounded idyllic.  What a way to 'open up access' and get funding to all. . . including the colleges' bank balance too.

Of course, this is also when things took a nasty turn - because the colleges & universities that validated these degrees (as very few colleges actually have the right to issue their own degrees) also saw the golden goose, and also wanted in on these highly desirable courses. These courses were for many, a pathway to "the dream". So universities also started to advertise "industry-ready" courses. Some of them on realising quite how much demand there was to be a performer starting adding courses all over the place. They'd have their "jewel-in-the-crown" course, but they also had some mop-up courses too (hello foundation courses and a whole range of Post Graduate courses). 

The difficulty though was obvious quite soon - degrees are like the ASDA world of training, pile 'em high and sell them low. Cram 200 students into a lecture theatre, pop one lecturer in front, introduce the idea of private study and Bob's your uncle, it's a course running on a healthy profit, throw in long holidays, an occasional reading week/half term and sit back and watch your profits grow.

So this it where it's gone wrong, as training to be a performer just doesn't work like that. You need small classes as you need to work on the individuals - you can't 'batch teach'. You also need a lot of contact hours, as there's just too much to cover if you want to do it right. Then add in the fact that you really need to be doing a show or two (and they're not cheap to produce) and suddenly those figures don't look so healthy. So what happened? They all started to take more students to increase the income, forgetting that with more students you needed more studios, more teachers, more productions, we started to see things double/triple cast. . . yet nobody said a word. They were applauded for getting bigger! Their size became synonymous with their success, whereas in reality they were slowly selling out.

The universities didn't even play the game from the outset, they made sure that the figures added up, so simply cut the number of contact hours. There are currently courses that only do 16 contact hours/week with cohorts ranging from 30 - 60, they don't do any shows - but they're still claiming to get people industry-ready. Step forward the 'mop-up' Post Grad programmes at the drama colleges ready to take more money to provide what their undergraduate course should have - but couldn't afford to.

The vocational colleges slowly faded out the diploma courses or at least merged them enough with the degrees so that nobody noticed, as their business models became volume over quality. Elite courses that were once the very best of the UK vocational dance/drama scene became ALDI, loads of stock, loss leaders helping to support the creme de la creme (if you have over 100/year and run several courses it's relatively simple to have enough good news stories to cover up the fact that a large majority of your graduates haven't done as well as you'd hope, add in decades of history and alumni that can keep that PR flame burning and those loss leaders will still fight to get into your college).

Now add into the mix the fact that the government haven't increased the fee structure for a number of years, yet all of the costs have increased, and some 25 years later after they all found the "Money Tree" not only has it stopped delivering - it's now asking for money back. To train a performer effectively costs around £14K - £16k/year (depending on what other courses you have running, and what facilities you have free access to) - so suddenly that £6k-£10k golden goose has turned into a headless chicken flapping around looking for more revenue.

Lots of them found additional revenue from fleecing overseas students. There's never been an explanation as to why they felt it was OK to charge overseas students thousands of pounds more than UK residents, other than of course, it was still deemed to be a bargain compared to courses in their own countries. So it was the supply of the market I guess. However, Brexit meant that a huge chunk of that additional revenue dried up, as a surprisingly large percentage of vocational colleges are not permitted to sponsor a student visa. In other words - the "Money Tree" has well and truly been felled.

Here's the really sh*t bit though. When they chased the "goose" (apologies for using two metaphors), they left behind the true vocational training. They didn't fight one iota when the government stopped the PCDL - the only loan available for vocational training in the UK. They didn't fight because they weren't affected. The colleges within the FDS had long forgotten their roots - more than that they'd drawn up the drawbridge from the start to ensure that they were safe. They didn't care about the training industry - they cared about themselves. Those self-appointed elite colleges abandoned vocational training and opted for self-preservation. When people started to question their teaching methods they looked the other way. As investigation after investigation started over (now) proven racism and abuse they have said nothing! They protected their own - when they should have been protecting their students. 

So here we are - the goose is cooked, the Money Tree has been felled, and those of us that stuck to the belief that training was about talent, nurturing, and individuality are all on the outside deemed to be collateral damage. Yet this week that damage happened to one of their own and ALRA folded.

Equity suddenly got involved - but they have done absolutely nothing to help to protect vocational training in the UK.  In fact more than that, they perpetuate the myth of 'you need a degree to become an actor by only accepting colleges that do a recognised diploma/degree onto their graduate programme and let's be clear - they do absolutely nothing to regulate the training industry, they do nothing to hold the colleges to account. 

We will lose other colleges - bring on some more articles in The Stage discussing why, bring on more voices of shock from within the industry - but it all happened when you all watched from the sidelines.

Just this month another brilliant vocational college was sold off to a uni, in the past few years another couple of brilliant colleges were sold off to a conglomerate. You can keep celebrating the buildings - but the people inside those buildings the staff and the students are now just numbers on the database, and numbers on some accountant's spreadsheet, and when those numbers don't add up - more doors will be forced to close.

Freelancers in drama colleges

 The majority of dance and drama colleges will nowadays be hiring freelancers. My own college, The MTA, was built on a business model of almost exclusively using freelancers - as it just made more sense. I didn't need the same skill set every week of the term, so why would I put people on a salary and tie them into a contract with us? We have a handful of staff on the payroll (and by that I mean. . . 3), but everybody else is freelance.

It enables me to have a dynamic faculty of top industry professionals who come and go as their professional work allows (and before you start. . . we have lots of things in place to ensure that our students get consistency throughout the course. . . so don't be worrying about that right now, and don't be worrying about them not being good teachers either, if you look hard enough you can find top professionals that are brilliant teachers too) By having a faculty of professionals I can ensure that all lessons are current, and nobody within the staff group has become entrenched in academia. They all remember what it's like to be doing it. They all know what the industry needs today. I have nobody on my faculty that feel a bitterness about the industry. They all love it and have chosen to 'give back' as their in-between job.

Most colleges will constantly be hiring guest creatives to come into work on their productions, many like us will be hiring both creative and technical help. 

Colleges, like our industry, are built on a foundation of freelancers.

Up until 2009 when I opened the college I too was on the freelance treadmill, attempting to cobble together job after job that would allow me to pay my bills and survive.  I am not from a monied background so I would often be living hand to mouth. Maybe it was me and my poor budgeting skills but with no savings to fall back on I really needed every invoice paid on time in order to keep afloat. I have such vivid memories of invoices not being paid on time and me having to juggle my commitments in order to ensure that I could cope until whoever paid me what they owed. 

I remember the stress of checking my account to see what I could afford to do, the annoyance of knowing that I had done a job but somebody else was sitting on my fee. The sense of shame when you sent that email asking them if they'd received your invoice (knowing full well that they had, but you just wanted to prompt them to pay), the feeling of begging when you had to keep writing emails because people had held onto your hard-earned money that bit too long. When you don't have a backup, you remember those feelings.

So when I opened The MTA I made a promise to myself that nobody that worked for me would ever have to wait for their fee. I would always pay them on receipt of their invoice. It felt like such an obvious thing. The students would have paid their fees - that money was not mine, it belonged to the people that were working with the students, so why would I hold onto it? Some 14 years later and I still pay people on receipt of their invoice.

I believe that all colleges should do this. Now the argument will be that it's OK for me, I'm a tiny college, those invoices won't be flooding in, it's easy to manage. . . yadda, yadda. Here's the rub though - if the college is bigger they'll have a finance department whose sole job is to manage invoices, pay people and balance the books. With online banking this process is relatively easy. It's not undoable . . . it's just that none of them have ever done it, but why wait for 'payroll'? Be the change that this industry needs. We the employers need to put ourselves out to help the people that enable us to run our businesses. 

We don't pay the best. We don't offer our freelancers that much work every term, however, I have the most insanely loyal group of people working for me that have literally stuck with me through the good times and the tough, and I believe that I've secured that loyalty by understanding how the freelancer works because we're all in the same industry.

As soon as colleges get taken over by corporations and academic institutions they're lost, as those people have no concept of what it's like to go from job to job, earning a bit here and a bit there. They come from a place of security. . . but our industry has never gifted us that privilege.

How long before drama colleges are extinct?

 2 years ago I wrote this blog about how the education system was killing vocational training. Then last year I expanded on this even further in this article this was a matter of weeks before announcing that my own college was going to be a casualty of the underfunding of vocational courses.  Now by some miracle, we survived (thanks to a huge surge of industry support and some very generous benefactors), but the issue of funding loomed ever larger today when ALRA announced that it was closing.  Obviously, I felt a sense of deja vu.

Firstly my heart goes out to the students, staff, and graduates of ALRA. Losing your 'safe place' and your 'college' is disorientating, to say the least. I remember telling our lot so vividly. It ranks up there as one of the worse days of my life BUT we did ensure that all of our staff were paid, our freelancers had been given lots of notice to look for other work, and our students (like ALRA's actually) were all guaranteed a place to continue their training together, the big difference was that our students were TOLD this information in person by myself and the Board. We were there for the hard part. We owed it to our students to tell them in person and to help them to find some satisfactory closure to the whole sorry episode. They could contemplate the news in 'their' building. We remained present online. We didn't run away - we confronted the ugly head-on. 

I don't know what happened at ALRA but it's wrong that freelancers are left with monies owing, and it's wrong that some staff found out on social media. It's wrong that their students were told this information in an email when they weren't even on-site. That's a shitty way to treat your community. Even if they had been locked out of their building - call the students to a "town hall" meeting in a park or something, you can't just vanish.

ALRA is the 2nd drama college of the supposedly elite Federation of Drama Schools to suddenly close. Such an 'elite' organisation that they still haven't updated their website to note that Drama Centre London closed 2 years ago. 

The Federation plays off the fact that they all USED to be 'accredited' colleges, in fact, lots of people still use the term, but actually no course is accredited anymore, that ended with Drama UK - the parent organisation of the Feds.  In fact other than lauding themselves as the elite there is very little to celebrate within their tight-knit little group these days.  How many of their gang got called out for institutional racism back in 2020? How many of the 'gang' have got ongoing investigations around abuse? Some investigations have already concluded and have been found to be guilty. What has the Federation done about it? Absolutely nothing. 

As colleges fold they do nothing to help the students, the safety net comes out from the world of social media where everybody tries to help everybody else. It's a nice by-product of the industry - empathy.

The Federation say that their mission statement is this: 

"To engage in activities, projects and discussions collectively and individually that enable diverse groups of people to receive excellent training for the contemporary profession in all its aspects.

To work with other schools with shared vision, values and approaches in the training to share current best practice and identify opportunities for change and enhancement in the future.

To work with the industry and professional stakeholders to ensure that the training experiences provided allow graduates to enter and sustain professional careers with a current, adaptable and expert skillset.

To be an identified presence in public discussion of both the challenges and values of conservatoire training."

It seems to me that they've done none of this. It's a group of old boys navel-gazing and missing the big picture. It's not even myopic, it's blind!

Vocational training is so hard to fund as it's expensive. You can't sit 100 people in a lecture theatre and pay for one person to teach them all, you need to work in smaller groups, with a lot of contact hours to cover all the relevant work. Small groups, and high contact hours are very expensive. 

Most colleges sold out years ago when they went down the degree route. I've shouted about this for years but they were all too busy staring at what they thought was the golden goose, however, their myopic vision failed to see the Trojan horse. Validating universities are big business, they want value for money and our training courses just don't provide that.

I spent months exploring this option but failed to see how it could be financially viable to ethically train a group of performers with the financial restrictions of a degree. Something had to give, and actually, a lot of colleges have been 'giving' a lot. A reduction in contact hours, an additional charge, additional students to make up the deficit (which actually only increases the debt in the end as you need more studios to house them. .  which means that you end up trying to get more students to fill the half-full studios, and so it continues).

The books don't balance at degree level - that's the takeaway. I fear that ALRA might be a victim of that simple equation.

ALRA won't be the last college to close, we'll see courses closing or reducing in numbers (be that student numbers to reduce the loss, or contact hours to reduce the spending), we'll see independent colleges selling up and joining large universities or large conglomerate organisations.

UK drama training used to be elite - now at best it's functional, because the people that cared, the professionals, are no longer running the show. The accountants took over and the big boys aka the Federation welcomed them in with open arms because they never looked outside of themselves.

Shame on them, and shame on the organisations that have pandered to them (and yes, Equity and Spotlight I'm looking at you again on this).

The biggest shame of all today though is on our industry as we've seen yet again how the 'person' has been lost in the commercial. An increasing pattern of behaviour that does nothing to encourage people to stay in the industry.

The old-school camaraderie is still around though - social media demonstrates that when we hit a crisis. It's just a shame that this lasts for the briefest of moments before the next crisis hits.

We need an urgent review of vocational training in the UK. We need to share good practice. We need to accept that the death knell is tolling for all independent colleges unless something drastic changes. We need to value vocational training, not sell it to the highest bidder for a bigger studio and a branded theatre.