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 ;-) 

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

The Audition Question 2021 Version

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teaching In The Zoom Where It Happens

So a while back I wrote this blog about how, like so many other Principals, I suddenly found myself in charge of an online college. 

We're now about to enter the final week of our first online term so it seems like a pertinent time to reflect on the next part of the journey, especially as it looks somewhat inevitable that our next term will also be forced to be online (at least for one of our year groups anyway).

I think that what's surprised all of us the most is quite how much you can actually successfully teach online. We've seen students making huge strides in both their dance & singing techniques. Of course, everybody misses those great traveling exercises that only a dance studio can accommodate, but what we hadn't bargained for was a more independent learning style. I don't think that many people are consciously following the front line in a dance class, but it's a bit like harmony singing isn't it, you can work on that old satellite delay system, being a nanosecond behind the people that are finding the exercises easy and metaphorically being dragged through the class by them. Just like in a group choral rehearsal you might not be quite on top of your game, but sit surrounded by people singing the same part as you and somehow you can cling on by your fingertips - kidding yourself that you know your harmony line a lot more than you really do. 

Remote learning means that you are totally reliant on your own learning style and indeed your own learning resources. Sadly though it also means that you're denied the group cheer at that long-awaited breakthrough that you've been working towards. Similarly, you're denied the knowing look at your mate when somebody does that thing that you both celebrate (or indeed both get annoyed at). No teacher is naive enough to think that students don't moan about them in private, so when your tutor does that thing that they always do that annoys you more than it really should, remote learning also denies you a moment of solidarity with your fellow tolerators of that thing.

We were all concerned that we wouldn't be able to work on singing without being so hands-on so to speak. Masterclasses almost always rely on the workshop leader being able to get 'stuck in' and either clearly demonstrate what they mean or manhandle you (with your permission) to gently prod and poke the bits that they want you to work on or be aware of.  Online singing lessons also miss the collaboration of a pianist working with the singer. Suddenly you're forced to use backing tracks as latency is the common enemy.

Strange to think that latency has become an everyday word since the pandemic took off. It used to be the bain of every musician's life. Those of us of a certain age and with limited technical knowledge have been reminded of a time in history where we were setting up our midi systems dreading how we were going to solve the latency problem with notation software. Sibelius and I have had many strong arguments about this very topic.  Then suddenly the software and the IT caught up with each other and the 'latency issue' disappeared. . . until COVID that was, and the advent of the zoom room. I felt like I was time-warped back to the early '90s as I despaired at the realisation that there was no way to successfully accompany somebody online.  Then suddenly like everything else you learn to find the positives in the situation and you learn to teach in a different way.

I think that all teachers should be applauded as they've grappled the limitations of remote training, whilst grappling at the same time their own emotions about the world stopping. Teachers would check in regularly to see if the students were OK whilst simultaneously trying to manage their own anxieties and concerns. Good staff/student boundaries should mean that a faculty's personal difficulties don't creep into the zoom as part of the job is helping your students to feel contained. Of course in reality during these strange times, everybody needs containing, but students will of course be consumed with their own feelings. The downside of the boundary issue is indeed the fact that students seldom think outside of their own experience (nor should they, as that's what college is about for them). Teaching prep time increased substantially I believe. Partly because we could no longer do it the way that we'd been doing it for years, but also because options like screen sharing gave us more opportunities to do things differently.

Around the world, we've seen performances move into the digital era. There's the bog-standard streaming of a theatrical event, but there's also been space to develop a live performance element online. Looking around on social media it's been fascinating to read what every college has been attempting to do. Of course, none of us will ever know how successful any of us have been with our innovations because none of us would be tweeting that we tried XYZ and it was a disaster, whereas in reality to find out what will work online we will all have to have numerous disasters.

I was due to have a new musical premiered in September, obviously, that's been scrapped now, but I'm about to embark on co-writing an online musical. My regular collaborator Nick Stimson and I are both really excited to explore this area, but also very realistic about the success of such a project as a first attempt. The MTA 1st years will be the guinea pigs as of course at this stage of their training it's the process that's actually vitally important for personal growth, not the finished production. So we have a tacet get out of jail free card if the end result doesn't deliver as much as our excitement around the project would lead us to believe. Meanwhile, I live in hope that once all of this goes back to theatre as we know it, we will keep a vibrant digital theatre scene going too, so it feels pertinent to get our next set of graduates prepped in this area.

However all is not great in the zoom, and we would be wrong to kid ourselves.  All good drama colleges would pride themselves on keeping a safe space, a space where students can express themselves freely without fear. Drama college is a unique little place where somehow you end up divulging so much more than you really meant to, however you generally make those self-disclosures in a studio. A space governed by rules solely designed to keep you safe.

Zoom is impossible to monitor and impossible to be a safe space. Firstly there's the obvious thing you just don't know who's listening. If you're at home with partners, friends, families, or whoever, they could easily be listening to your classes. Of course, there's the nice by-product of this that parents suddenly see for themselves how hard drama training is. I mean if I didn't live in 'this world' and my child was having to train at home I'd be in every class interested to find out more about what it is that they do. Therefore you're obliged to keep reminding students that it's their responsibility to keep themselves safe, don't say anything that they wouldn't want out in the ether as public information. That's not to say that people are eavesdropping, but there's just an inevitability of working from home and for lots of people just a practical limitation. How many homes have that spare room ready to be enlisted as a temporary remote drama college? 

The thing that we hadn't bargained for though was the lack of nonverbal communication that could be transmitted through the zoom box. Of course, you're only really seeing the head and shoulders of all the participants. For those of you of a certain age just think Celebrity Squares. This also means though that you can't see what anybody's arms/hands are doing, whilst you see the eyelines darting discretely to something/somebody else within the square. You can see a wry smile that you know is incongruent with the current discussion (even taking latency into account). In other words, zoom rooms unwittingly facilitate multiple conversations. Some of which will be in the zoom, but in this age of WhatsApp and Facebook groups and indeed simple messaging, some of them will be private conversations taking place simultaneously with the class but out of view of the teacher.

This of course means that no zoom can be safe - unless you ask your students to take all classes with their hands above their heads (and believe me I did think about it several times). Of course, when you're a student you have absolute knowledge (I mean what do staff really know anyway?), you feel somewhat smart at working out that you can have a private conversation in a public zoom, you're confident in your multi-tasking ability, so have no fear of that moment of when your name is called you, you've managed to keep up enough to answer appropriately, however you bypass the bit of the equation that equals trust eroded. It's OK when you're in the middle of the conversation, but what if besides your conversation there are other private conversations taking place? The friends that are so active in your private conversation could actually be conducting another couple of private conversations that you're not part of, after all, most of us if we're lucky have a friend for all occasions. Do you know what I mean?

I have my friends that I can call on if I need to talk through an everyday problem, I have other friends that I can call on if it's a deeply personal problem, they there are the people that I chat aimlessly to just because they make me laugh and cheer me up. My world is richer for having all these 'resources' at my disposal to support me, so why wouldn't I bring them all into online college with me? What harm could it possibly do? Of course, the harm is potentially huge. The pandemic took away our industry overnight, it took away our way of life overnight, the world is already feeling very unsafe. The people that usually guide us through these 'new bits' of life are the grown-ups, our parents, and teachers, but for the first time ever we were all attempting to navigate something for the first time. So an unsafe world with no safety net. . . great! Young people forging their way through into adulthood suddenly found themselves back in their childhood bedrooms. It's not great though is it? When you're already feeling vulnerable you now also know that other conversations are taking place so blatantly behind your back (even when you're a part of it) leaving you completely and utterly exposed.

Like most colleges, I should imagine we have grappled with this issue most of the term. What I realised for the first time is that it's actually the students that create a safe space, not the teacher. For sure the teacher can set out the rules of the room, and it's their job to uphold them, however, it only works successfully when every student buys into it 100%. As soon as somebody breaks rank the tutor is helpless. None of us (I don't think) would allow students to keep their mobiles out and on during a regular class. Imagine the chaos. Students snap chatting away as you attempted to keep a disciplined safe space - however zoom rooms take the ability to monitor a room completely away from the teacher and rely on the students to take full responsibility for their actions. We've all been students. If we're being honest with ourselves we know that that is an impossible ask.

I heard a colleague making a plea the other day for all students at online colleges to remember the word respect as staff are still putting in the hours to teach them, they hadn't had the luxury of checking out during the pandemic. So this particular beef was around the level of attendance at classes and the sudden lack of notification about that absence. It's like the global lockdown had eradicated all the common decency rules of collaboration that we used to take for granted. We couldn't really challenge the sudden rudeness as we're conscious that everybody is struggling, so you have to give a bit of leeway, but how much? Where do you draw the line between understanding the difficulties but also understanding that no college could operate successfully without ground rules?

So does online college work? I think that the honest answer is that for lots of disciplines it actually could, but it would take a lot more personal responsibility from everybody for that to happen, and in truth, I don't think that that would be possible. 

You can keep up a skillset though, and indeed progress, but college is about so much more than a skillset. It's about hanging out and talking nonsense with your friends. It's about that opportunistic meeting with a tutor which prompts you to ask 'that question' that you've been puzzling about for a while. It's about a spontaneous dialogue, not a formal lecture. It's about giving your mate a hug when they did something brilliant or seeing a friend having a hard time and being able to take them for a coffee and a quiet chat. Those corridor conversations are the lifeblood of a successful environment.

I suspect that technology will soon catch up with the need to be more fluid. Most of us hadn't clocked before March that we couldn't create music together online, but now that we've noted the problem, I'm confident that somebody is currently working on the latency issue in order to resolve it. 

I question whether in time pandemic or not, more things will move online (or at this rate, stay online), but until things return to normal, we just have a responsibility to keep growing within the medium, and try to make it work as best as possible to ensure safe professional and personal growth for our students and indeed for ourselves - after all these ongoing issues make the staff every bit as vulnerable as the students. 

A College for Life

When I opened The MTA back in 2009 I knew from the outset that I wanted to run a college that would be there for its graduates even at the end of the course.

When I left college (back in the year when dinosaurs roamed the earth), I felt that I'd literally been thrown off a cliff. For sure they'd given me a backpack full of 'tools', and for all I knew they might have packed a parachute too, but they never had the foresight to let me know so I was just left in freefall for a little while.

Now in fairness times were different then, and my course rather bizarrely used to proudly say that they weren't training professionals and they weren't training teachers. . . but then never did tell us what they were training us for? However I got to create music and theatre all day, every day for 3 years, so I didn't care.

However, on leaving I do remember that feeling of being lost out in an industry that seemingly everybody else had a road map for (or would that be sat nav nowadays?) 

Obviously, training is massively different now, and I intended to open a college with a clear end game - to get performers out into the industry. The business side of our profession was going to be 'taught' alongside the jazz hands. I was adamant that 'my' students would know what was in their tool kit and how to use all the different tools. However, I also wanted to be very clear that I had packed a parachute. Hence the college for life policy.

Being a small college I wanted my graduates to know that the door was always open to them. Not just in a 'pop in and have a chat' way but in a very real, practical way. Rehearsal space is expensive, so I could give them that, dance classes are expensive, so they could come back and join in with ours, even prepping a song for an audition is expensive, so we could help them with that. Most importantly of all though, I wanted them to have the same level of pastoral care and mental health support available to them after graduating as they had received at college.

The MTA takes a whole school approach to mental health, we have 2 members of staff on call 24/7/365 (on of which is a mental health clinician) so it made sense for our graduates to have continued use of that resource? After all, if they had already accessed that support whilst training they would have a shorthand to access the same level of support once they'd graduated.  As our entire pastoral policy is a clinician based system it allowed them to jump back into talking therapies etc as and when they needed it. I've never understood the idea of sessions with a counsellor being time-limited anyway. How awful to start talking to someone, open up that can of worms, only to be told that your 6 sessions are up. Your counselling and/or therapy surely needs to last for as long as you need it?

In a poorly researched blog about The MTA last year I read somebody state that this was an unrealistic vision. They stated that we were a business not a 'community outreach programme' (I might be paraphrasing somewhat, but that was the general gist of the article). Yet my vision of the sort of college that I wanted to open extended way beyond the 2-year model that I had devised. I felt that looking after the graduates was a core belief that we had to achieve.  It's an interesting take isn't it to call an institution out for genuinely trying to help? Yet to me it was always a no brainer. 

We don't really start learning until we're out on the job, yet we all need somewhere to go and ask those questions that couldn't have possibly been known about on the course (as each job and each company will pose their own questions). Very often it's after college that all the self-doubt starts setting in. Prior to opening The MTA I had been told that 95% of graduates drop out of the industry within 5 years, and I completely understood that, as every day is a chore at the beginning isn't it (unless you're lucky enough to walk straight into a nice contract)?

 

I didn't want my lot paying all the money to train with us, but then change careers before they'd given it their best shot. I just wanted them to earn their fees back really.  However in order to help them to achieve that I felt that 'we' should be the parachute. Actually more than that - I felt that we were obliged to be their parachute.

Inherent in the vision for The MTA from the outset was ongoing support. 

As the years moved on our #college4life tag has become something of an in-joke to myself and the students, as it truly is more than just a social media hashtag. It's a lived reality if you chose for it to be so.  It's also helped to create an amazingly vibrant community outside of the day to day college. Our graduates are known to the current students (in reality all their pictures are up on the walls, so they are very present at all times). Lots of them come back at various intervals to take part in classes. It can be a successful reboot if that's what you feel like you need. Or maybe you've just missed a weekly sing-song, so you can nip into the whole college choral class and get those endorphins racing around again. 

Since 2012 our graduation has evolved into a thing called a Gradunion. A mixture of a celebration for the new graduates entering the industry, combined with a reunion for those that have gone before. Last year's 10th anniversary Gradunion was particularly glorious, with nearly half of our graduates returning to celebrate both the arrival of the new lot and the college milestone. 

The raft of well-meaning support projects to support the #coronagrads has really wound me up this year. Not because of all the things that are going on, as each and every project is brilliant and being supported by so many generous people and organisations. However, those students have paid money to institutions to fundamentally get them to the finishing line. To kick start their careers, to enable them to graduate. I obviously understand that these are unprecedented times, after all, there is barely a moment in the day where somebody doesn't use that very word BUT it is up to all businesses to adapt and fulfil our obligations (both contractual and moral) as best as we can. It is not up to the kind hearts in our industry to take up the slack.  

Whilst every day at the moment we're seeing colleges come up with really inventive ways to enable them to showcase their students albeit virtually right now, we're also seeing a lot of colleges and universities not bothering. Literally graduates online begging for help. Where's the colleges' contractual obligation in all of this?

We all need a 'parachute' when we leave training, and in truth, I fundamentally believe that your fees should pay for it (although I know that this is a rather unique thought). However as a bare minimum, we need to ensure that our graduates have a back pack full of tools that will equip them in our industry - they shouldn't be on social media trying to work things out. 

So. . . I now run an online college?

The MTA's strange academic year worked out well in terms of the CoronaVirus lockdown. We were incredibly lucky that we managed to complete our 5 performance run of our flagship revue show - Something Old, Something New.  Whilst it's important to note that it's not our Showcase, it is an important production to start introducing our graduating year to the industry.

However, our timeframe did mean that we were able to chat with our students before we ended the term and reassure them in person about how we were going to run an online college if the UK did follow the rest of the world and get put into lockdown. We were even able to chat through roughly how it might work.  We were lucky - 2 days later that's exactly what started to happen. Even though we were then on holiday I did a quick live stream to our private group to remind them not to panic as we'd already spoken about what would happen.


I don't know about anybody else, but I must confess I never had a backup pandemic plan up my sleeve ready for a global shutdown, and with no tech department to help me, I think that I undertook the biggest learning curve of my life (and I thought that I'd already made that journey when I opened the 'real' college 11 years ago). However, I had just 2 weeks to create The MTA Online. One of the things that I felt would work in my favour was that when I created 'the other MTA' back in 2008 I had consciously created a course that I could run and monitor remotely. The idea being that after the college was up and running I could go back on tour and continue to run the college in between my 'real work' as an MD*. The college has a policy that all staff have to be currently working, so the online infrastructure was actually already in place and part of our everyday life.  Our classnote system is online, the timetable is online, there's not a day that goes by where we're not communicating with them via private groups, etc. So it was just the actual teaching to sort out <gulp>

So then it was hitting each problem in order of urgency. The priority was to ensure that all the agent 1:1 auditions could at least be offered in an online format.  So I first made friends with Zoom. What a fast-moving world we all live in isn't it? Suddenly we're all speaking about meeting up in zoom, yet most of us had no bloody clue about it before the pandemic.

The majority of agencies immediately agreed to move their auditions with our graduates online, so that was my first relief moment. We wanted to reassure the students as quickly as possible (even though they don't graduate until September I was aware that they were seeing all the #UK2020grad posts going up which were bound to make them anxious even though they were not in the same position as those graduates that had lost their showcase), so back I went online to live stream some more reassurance. I felt that it was important to be 'present' as opposed to just posting notices.

The next job - was to move our 100% vocational course online.  Finally, after a few years of really fighting against the 'establishment' because I've refused to turn our course into a formal qualification (because our industry is vocational and therefore it's the training that's important not the piece of paper in terms of getting you into the audition room), The MTA came into its own. We could literally rewrite the course to ensure that this would be a valuable term for our students. I was so mindful that they were still paying their fees so I had an obligation to give them value for money albeit in a different way. I was also mindful that our industry had literally had the rug pulled from under it. The MTA has a faculty of very loyal freelancers - the very people that had completely lost their income. So I wanted to try and help to support as many of them as possible too. After all, a college is only as strong as its students AND faculty.  I felt that there was a moral obligation to try to help (if possible)

So emails were sent out explaining that we were going online, and if they wanted to continue to teach for us, they needed to work out how to run online classes. My only stipulation was that the classes had to be interactive. I felt that videoed classes wouldn't allow us to watch and correct the students in real-time, and therefore not achieve the aims of the course which would, in turn, impact the progression that we needed the students to make this term (pandemic or not)

Suddenly I had an entire faculty on the learning curve with me. With that cog working away in the background next up we had to move our auditions online for our 2020 intake. Once again I didn't see the value of them sending in a self-tape as we wanted to work with them, we wanted to interact with them. The MTA's whole day audition is all about getting to know the people, not just the talent. Cue several senior faculty zoom meetings as we worked out how best to run the online audition. Suddenly lockdown was our friend, as when we needed volunteers to help us work it out we were never short of students and graduates willing to pop into the 'virtual' room to help us try out our latest idea.  A plan was formed, the auditionees were notified and before we knew it my senior faculty and myself were all in a virtual room with several complete strangers.

This turned out to be our lightbulb day though. Whilst for sure there were limitations online, it also offered up so many great things. In many ways, we actually preferred the online audition, and it's certainly going to prompt a serious discussion once the dust has settled about how we audition people moving forward. We already offer a free online first-round audition in a bid to save people money, maybe there's a way to move the main audition online permanently - saving them a fortune in travel & often accommodation. Maybe we could offer both options? I don't know. . . but definitely watch this space.

Having experienced a few hours in the 'virtual' college, we all started to realise that there were endless possibilities that we could explore. The MTA does a 50/50 stage/screen split anyway, so actually working with a lens between us offers us lots of opportunities to explore. We live in a world where more and more auditions are via self-tapes. What an amazing chance we had to really focus on all of this stuff.

The dance staff met up and all were confident that they could offer worthwhile online dance classes, voice, and acting were easy to transfer online. Strangely enough, singing was the hardest area, as whilst 1:1 singing lessons could happen with ease, group singing is just not feasible in our 4G world.  After much asking around it seemed like my only option was for the students to mute their mics and sing to a screen? Our students are not singing for pleasure, they are singing to enhance their skill set, we're looking at the nuances of group singing. They might have been blending beautifully, their harmony line might have been divine - but the tutor would never know. However, we did know that the 1:1 stuff worked really well.

Still on holiday we had another live-streamed chat with our students (& graduates. . . as we have a college for life policy and therefore I needed to check in with them too), and as part of our 'checking in with your mental health' chat, we were chatting about what people could do during this lockdown, and lots of people started chatting about learning to play 'that instrument' that has sat in their room for years but they've never had the time to learn it. Cue the next idea. We are not an actor-muso course, nor do we aspire to be, however we all know that instrumental skills are incredibly useful to a performer. So a quick check who could gain access to a guitar to check that my plan would be worth it - and suddenly 75% of the college are now having weekly guitar lessons. Learning in streamed groups expect to see something spectacular at next year's revue (she jokes, but not really).  Then a group came to me as they had access to a keyboard, could we teach them how to play the piano? We're currently putting this in place.

In our senior faculty meeting, we were chatting about the fact that literally, everybody was available right now - so we should try to get some good Q&As and masterclasses going, as they'd work well with this format. It would also mean that our students always had something to look forward to. Days and weeks of lockdown monotony were going to hit hard. We needed to offer them something to be excited about. What an amazing opportunity this online term was going to offer us. Of course, being online meant that we weren't limited to UK guests - so off I hopped over to Broadway (virtually of course), and with the help of our friends, we suddenly found ourselves with one hell of a term. Q&As with film directors, Dexter Fletcher & Joe Wright, writer David Eldridge returns to the college, masterclasses with Cassidy Janson & Annalene Beechey, Q&As with Broadway stars Claybourne Elder, Laura Osnes, Julia Murney, Kara Lindsay, with West End stars Adam Garcia and Louise Dearman, plus meetings with producers, casting directors, resident directors AND a private screening of the Desperately Seeking The Exit thanks to the ever marvelous Peter Michael Marino. . . and. . . well, who knows? 

We're on day 3 and already we've discovered new things, but again because we're completely independent we can implement new ideas within hours. From an 'oh no' term, we're seeing our Pandemic Term as an 'OMG we could do this too...  .' sort of term.

My virtual office stays open for a while after regular classes, so students and graduates can pop in if they're struggling or just to say hello. Our mental health clinician is still available to the entire college 24/7/365 and is of course now just offering online or phone sessions, but it does mean that our lot (& staff) have instant access to a mental health professional if the lockdown is particularly hard for them. 

So that's it, within the space of just 2 weeks . . . I now run an online college. I sit in mission control for hours on end looking at screens, opening up zoom rooms, and planning. What else can we do? Maybe I'll revisit this blog at the end of the Pandemic Term to see if it was really as exciting as we currently think that it's got the potential to be.

Stay safe all 

*this never happened. Turns out running a college is really busy

The Mental Health Epidemic within the Pandemic

Last night the unthinkable happened. Theatre in the UK closed its doors. Frustratingly for theatres and producers this came about via a carefully worded recommendation to our audiences as opposed to a directive to them, thereby potentially preventing companies from having a valid insurance claim. Making companies and individuals even more vulnerable than they were already feeling.

I can't be the only one that never thought that we'd see such a day in the UK (or indeed around the world), but here it is and an entire industry is left reeling as each individual tries to work out 'what now?'

Of course we all knew that it was coming. Broadway closed last week so it's been a waiting game since then. The big difference of course is that our American colleagues earn substantially more money than the jobbing actor/techie in the UK. There is more chance that they've saved up for the inevitable rainy day scenario. That said some people just don't have it in them to save regardless of income, so this isn't guaranteed, however the potential to save is there. I don't think that the majority of the UK industry (on and off stage) have this dilemma. We all live in a somewhat hand to mouth environment, and have long since consoled ourselves with the fact that our souls are full even if our bank accounts aren't. The majority of our industry need the next wage packet, which is why you see people closing in a successful show on the Saturday, going to work in their 'crap job' or 'muggle job' by the Monday. In a way it's kept us all grounded for years, it's hard to get 'up yourself' when you know that you'll be back in civvy street within a few weeks.

So suddenly an entire industry faces a very uncertain future. We all go online to tell the world how frightened we are, and we feel the need to let everybody know what our struggle is. Some of us will be resolute, telling our friends that we'll get through this, as after all, a life without hope is no life at all. However now that people have been prevented from going out, the online chatter is at breaking point. Suddenly we're all experts in what the government 'should' have done, we've all understood the logistical variations of this mystery 'virus', we've all researched what every other country has done, and we've all worked out what the solution 'should' have been. More than that, we feel the need to tell everybody about our own discoveries.  Of course the fact of the matter is that none of us have a clue. We're all scared (for ourselves, our loved ones, our industry, even humanity), and are all simply 'acting out' that fear in the only space that's left for us to roam - social media.

We see a 'cure' or a 'prevention' tweet and it becomes our civil duty to share it amongst our friends and followers, as we all attempt to save the world. Of course that's all we've shared is 'fake news', or rather 'fake hope', as hope is the only thing that we have.

I've long blogged about the mental health crises in our industry, and I've always maintained that the industry hasn't created these illnesses, but rather our industry attracts people who are more susceptible to mental illness, as it provides all of us with an altered reality. We can all pretend to live in a different world for a while. A show (ironically given the pressures around doing one), is almost a mental health break. So what now for an entire industry that revels in living in the 'other' now that it's suddenly been catapulted into the here and now, and what's more, the here and now is even more unstable than our industry. To add to the issue nobody amongst us has immunity. For sure there are the wealthy amongst us that can ride this out, but they are few and far between. From graduates to jobbing performers/techies everybody has had the rug pulled from out of them.

People with anxiety who are already trying to make sense of the world have suddenly lost their anchor, people with depression that can see no good in the world can get that view confirmed within seconds on social media, people with OCD desperately trying to control their environment as it is suddenly find themselves in a world that can't control itself. And so the list goes on. The one thing that we can be sure about is that every mental illness will be made worse by this pandemic.  People can no longer run to the theatre to escape their own 'minds'.

So I guess that this is the perfect opportunity to hit these conditions head on. How many people that deliberately keep themselves busy in order not to think have suddenly found themselves in self isolation? As an aside isn't it weird how something like 'self isolation' which sounds like something straight out of a B movie has suddenly become part of our every day language? Anyway I digress.

There are lots of therapies available online - why not check out what's on offer? https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/adults/iapt/ Whilst the NHS is struggling right now there is still free help out there. See the enforced downtime as an opportunity to 'reset' and 'reboot'. How many of you have kept putting it off because you've allegedly been too busy? Well you ain't busy now - get proactive about your mental health.

Limit your online surfing - it'll either make you more worried, more angry, or bizarrely make you feel more isolated. Even in self isolation it's possible to live more in the 'real world'. FaceTime and Skype your friends. I went to pop a post up on one of The MTA groups the other day, and instead opted for a livestream as I was aware that a number of my graduates were either stuck in far away places or stuck in self isolation in the UK. So potentially even 'seeing' and 'hearing' my post was more reassuring than some written thing.  I mean I clearly could have made it worse for some of them, but they had the option to turn me off (and I'm confident that at various times over the years they've yearned to do that - so it was a win/win)

Somehow this will pass, and somehow we will all get through it.
Our industry has an amazing sense of community, and right now we need that community more than ever. As you're checking on your friends to see if they have a cough and a fever, maybe check on how their mental health is doing too? I've long believed that mental illness is at epidemic levels within our industry, and I suspect that the physical pandemic will make those levels raise even higher. Now is a time for actioning help, not living in denial it's a great #time4change

24/7 Equity mental health and well-being helpline: 0800 917 6470

Has the education system 'broken' vocational training?

How many wannabe actors or indeed their parents have ever read a casting brief? My suspicion is not very many. Let's face it, when you're young and naive you believe that your talent is so great that one of the great directors or producers is going to spot you in a school play/amdram production, pluck you away from your small-town sensibilities, and whisk you off to the 'bright lights'. As a supportive parent, it's unfeasible to think that your child won't succeed. After all - they clearly have 'it' (whatever 'it' is).

In reality, a casting brief is a set of requirements for a specific role/job - what it never asks for, is your qualification. No brief goes out requiring a BA(Hons) in theatre, or a BTEC in performing arts. So why are colleges flocking to hook up with universities in order to offer these golden pieces of paper then? Quite simply it's all to do with finance. All government funding streams or government top up streams require a college to prove via examination results that they are doing a good job. So when the drama colleges suddenly started to offer degrees just over a decade ago, it wasn't because they felt that it benefitted the future careers of their students, as they know (like we all know), that their degree isn't really the 'back-up' that parents seem to think that it is. If you decide on a career swap, you'll be going back to college anyway in order to be trained in the area that you've chosen your new career to be. However what they don't tell you, is that lots of colleges will also allow you to do these educational top-ups with proof of a different kind of education, and with proof of your career to date. Once you're into postgrad education the criteria for entry is more reflective of life. Of course, by this point you've used up all your government-supported financial help, so you are entirely funding your new career path on your own.

However, for many non-vocational colleges performing arts courses are a complete cash cow. We are in an oversubscribed industry, with everybody secretly thinking that their talent will be enough to give them a career, therefore it doesn't matter where they train. I once did some work with some 3rd years on a musical theatre degree course at a regular university. They had recently just finished a self-led project aka cheap to run as it required no staff involvement aka a waste of time. They were paying £27K to train themselves. I auditioned someone from another university who was preparing for their showcase. . . a student-directed showcase, which staff could be called in to assist them in should they have a difficulty. This particular student acknowledged that the showcase was simply an end of course show - there was absolutely no chance of an agent coming to see them in their student-led performance. They had been working on the showcase (and their showcase alone) for the whole of the term. They were also paying £27K to train themselves.

As drama colleges clambered to get affiliated to universities with the promise of better resources, more finance, infrastructure support, what some of them lost sight of was the training experience. As the universities saw the numbers of people applying for these courses they increased their intake, and indeed in a few instances increased the number of courses that they were offering too. What they didn't do though was increase the quality of the training.

I taught in HE when this was beginning to happen. I suddenly found myself teaching an acting to camera class with a cohort of students that included students majoring in things like graphic design, engineering, in fact, you name it, there was probably somebody in the class that was studying it. The module had been diluted from its specialism into a 'filler' module for anybody in the university. I resigned after 1 semester of teaching, having taught the course for 2 years previously. The students that needed that module were fighting to get on it but had to fight people that had no requirement of the skillset.

We know that we're in an oversubscribed industry. We also know that the situation has got worse,
with new courses and colleges popping up every year. The long-established colleges have also been expanding, be that with new courses or just by increasing their numbers. Courses that once operated with 20-40 students can now have in excess of 150 students/year. It's the simple economics of supply and demand, isn't it? If you're auditioning thousands of people every year for a handful of places, why wouldn't you expand your model in order to accommodate more students and create a bigger revenue? With a bigger revenue stream, you can build bigger and better premises, which will attract more students, which increases the demand.

And so it continues.

Suddenly training actors has become a lucrative industry for some. Alongside the weird and wonderful new courses that are springing up, we have the bread and butter courses which create a cunning revenue stream for the colleges. Students not actually ready for a 3-year training course, can now easily find a 'foundation course' which will charge them to get prepared for training. If you've done a degree where you've been primarily self-taught, you'll need additional (aka 'some') training, so pop on a post-grad course as well. The bread and butter of the already lucrative filling of the 'main course'.

Obviously having founded a college which pioneered the 2-year model I already have some questions about the traditional 3-year model (though also completely understand why lots of people need that time to solidify things, I just realise that not everybody does). So I have even more questions now that training to be a performer is taking some people 5 years - or to be more specific is costing people 5 years worth of fees.  Yet those same colleges are being urged to think about the socio-economic diversity of their student intake.

It's a tough model to break though. Most wannabe performers grow up wanting to go to one of the 'main' colleges. The colleges that they've seen in programmes since they were little. They don't differentiate the fact that they're seeing that college's name so often because they've been going for 50 or more years, or indeed that they're seeing a college's name because that college is spewing out hundreds of wannabe performers every year, so if only 5% of them are doing well, it's enough to make an impact on the programme references. It's interesting to note that none of these established colleges readily publicise their long term stats. How many of the class of 2005, for example, have actually managed to have a sustained career? Instead, they'll (understandably) focus on the alumni that have the more popular public following, even though they might have graduated decades ago.

The market is cornered. You grow up wanting to be a performer going to the college that your idol went to. You're not good enough for that yet, so they pop you on their foundation course (and charge you for the privilege of course). You're happy to be there, as, after all, your idol went there so it's bound to be great, and surely the £10K investment in the foundation course will get repaid when you secure funding for their main course at the end of the year. Of course in reality that only happens for a few people, the others are still unsuccessful at their dream college, but now they're also £10k poorer, their parents have bought into the myth that they need a degree, so off they pop to the nearest university to get the 'golden ticket' degree. 4 years later and over £50K poorer (adding together living costs and tuition costs), they leave college, with no chance of working, haven't got a clue how to get work (as a lot of the university courses genuinely don't teach you that skill, just check a few internet forums for proof of the number of graduates asking really basic questions around working in the industry), are unable to sign up for Spotlight (which automatically limits their career. . . I mean as unfair as that statement is, it is also a fact) and find themselves looking for a new career, with their parents lauding the fact that their 'fall back' degree has proven to be a saviour.

And so it continues.

Meanwhile, for those of us that have resolutely stayed in vocational training, and have remained small by choice, in order to maintain a good staff/student ratio - our students are being hit from all angles. They have the 'grown-ups' getting concerned because they're not getting a formal qualification, financially they are not entitled to any government support at all - even though they are working in excess of 40 contact hours/week. As they scramble around looking for sponsors organisations like Equity and Spotlight, who are quick to take their money to join up to the union and the register, won't put a purely vocational college on their self assessed 'approved' list, which would allow us to at least submit our students for certain bursary awards like those funded by SOLT, solely because we don't offer a formal qualification. Yet we're the only college to maintain an open record of every single one of our graduates - proving that we're more likely to create a sustainable career for our students than a lot of the other colleges on their list. So to recap, the training is valid enough for a career (our students can join both Equity and Spotlight), but we can't knock down the walls of the establishment in order to get closer to some much needed financial help for our students, because we don't offer a 'golden ticket' degree. That'll be the same degree that you never see requested on a casting brief. Where do most of those casting briefs get posted? On Spotlight.

This week we've seen a long-established college that took the poison chalice of a university 'merger' close. We've already seen other courses at other colleges get shut down as unviable. Is this a trend, or just a few much-needed pruning exercises? As the established colleges get bigger and the complaints about the numbers increase, we see no decline in the number of applicants, as parents (and students) accept the 'herd' mentality, as (please refer back to the first paragraph), and believe that the 'cream will always rise', and 'they have to learn to deal with the competition anyway'. Personally I'd rather my child learn to deal with competition at a school sports day, not when they're 16 and I'm being asked to pay £9k-£14k a year, but maybe that's because I don't have access to that sort of money? The college buildings get bigger and better, enticing more and more people that "College X" is the go-to place - just look at the number of rooms it has? Of course, they only need 120 studios because they have so many students, but a college building of that size will also increase its running costs, so best take an extra 50 students a year in order to support it.

And so it continues.

Since I opened The MTA in 2009 I've been shouting about the fact that our industry needs regulating. To be clear - that's not by the old boy network that has been effectively self-regulating since the start of the time. It needs an independent body to look at ALL the courses and ALL the colleges to see who is really delivering what. Audit the staff, audit the finance, audit the true story around pastoral care (don't get me started on that one again), and audit the true facts of sustainable careers. The government should stop funding those degrees that are purely providing 'life skills' yet claiming to be offering a 'career'. I completely buy into the idea that a college education is great, but when funds are short, let's not be funding a degree that isn't worth the paper that it's written on. Fund the courses that are getting the results. In other words let's get some transparency out there and stop the myth that has been co-created by so many people and organisations, all of whom have a vested interest in the findings. Then let's get those facts out to schools and the wannabes and their parents.

Upselling Education

A Nation of Shopkeepers - or Why is Upselling Courses the Latest Trend?

Back in 1776 (a nice Musical Theatre referenced year), Adam Smith called Britain a 'Nation of Shopkeepers'. 2 and a half centuries later that phrase is still correct. We sometimes only think of America as the 'place of dreams', but here in the UK we are also surrounded by people who have started from nothing and created their own businesses turning them into global market leaders.

I'm in awe of the people that have managed to do that, and admire their single-mindedness. However I believe that education is different. I feel really strongly that people shouldn't profit from education. Now it's a tough one as all colleges are encouraged to have a large financial 'safety net' in case of emergencies, so with that recommendation comes a need to create a cushion of money that's available should something awful happen, so some profiteering is essentially built into the business plans before you start training anyone.

Nowadays to train to be an actor is hugely expensive - indeed to train to be anything is almost guaranteeing you to have a bill of at least £27k. I think that sometimes because the Student Loans have been around for so long, people lose sight of what that much money really means. Many drama courses cost even more than that. In fact you can now be charged as much as £54K for a course at a top college. To put that into perspective, you could buy a house in some parts of the country for what it would cost you to train at a top drama/dance college.

With the average cost of training to be a performer now sitting at around £40k I find it rather upsetting to see colleges effectively upselling.  The most obvious example of this is the number of colleges that you can now apply to, and whilst you don't get offered a place on their 3 year programme, you do get offered a place on their Foundation Course? Now to me this makes no sense. It's like going into a shop to buy bread and coming out with fabric conditioner. It's not what you were applying for, but somehow you've ended up buying it. These courses though are not cheap - you can expect to pay £7k-£10k for a Foundation course.

So to be clear you could end up paying in excess of £60K for your training at the end of it all (and that doesn't include your living expenses).

In addition to this several colleges are now charging extra for certain things - but things that you'd expect to be included in the price of the course. Extra charges for 1:1 singing lessons, 'show fees', where people are contributing to the cost of the shows, in other words we essentially have colleges offering a premium package, whereby if they pay extra you can take part in extra stuff.

All of the above really starts to add up - and nobody is regulating this industry!

In fairness to the colleges that run Foundation courses alongside their 3 year option, they all (as I understand it), make it really clear to the people on their course that there is no guarantee that they'll get onto their main programme at the end of the year?

So to go back to the beginning, you applied for one course, you weren't deemed ready for it, so they've offered you another one in a bid to improve your skillset, you've taken the course (because let's face it, that college was your first choice, so you're hoping to woo them over the course of the year), then at the end of the year the majority of people will be £10k poorer and still won't get into their first choice college. However that is now £10k that you've invested out of your 'training money'.

I understand that lots of people do the foundation courses as they're hoping that their skillset will improve so much they'll be more likely to receive some elusive DaDa funding. So they're essentially gambling with their money in a bid to secure funding for the next phase of their training.  Sadly for the majority of students on these courses though, this won't happen. So when they eventually DO get onto a 3 year programme (or like The MTA . . . a two year programme), they can no longer afford their training, as they spent it on the gamble.

Reading on line, students are turning down places on well respected courses because they've been offered a foundation course at their preferred college. I just don't get it though. I mean if you're from a 'money's no object' background, then do what you like, but a lot of these students are actually from backgrounds where parents are struggling to pay the fees.

I suppose the argument from the college's point of view is that if they were to call them back in order to specifically audition for their foundation courses, they would be costing the applicant more money in travel etc. But surely a every course is looking for something different?

Before everybody comments stating that their foundation course was amazing, and they wouldn't be where they were without it etc, let me be clear. I'm not dismissing the training and the value of a foundation course, I'm just not so keen on the fact that you end up being offered a course that you never applied for.  Maybe I'm wrong, maybe some colleges have something like a tick box on their application form asking you if you'd like to be considered for any of their courses? If so - bravo to them.

For those places who don't make it clear which course people are really going for though - maybe some transparency?

It's an uncomfortable truth that whilst 'we' at The MTA are getting people industry-ready in 2 years, some people are now doing 4 years or more in order to train to be a performer. The costs involved are huge. Just don't spend all of your savings on the gamble.