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.

A Funding Crisis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Working Together

When you write a semi regular blog you almost feel obliged to write a New Year feature.

I've been very torn about what to write, as in 2016 the world appeared to go crazy, in a year that I was instrumental in a campaign which was attempting to empower people to stop going crazy.

The #time4change initiative came out of a blog that I wrote in 2014 http://www.thereviewshub.com/blog-annemarie-lewis-thomas-support-each-other-in-2015/
10 months later and nothing had changed: http://www.thereviewshub.com/opinion-annemarie-lewis-thomas-taming-the-black-dog/ except that I was finding myself more and more on the periphery of our industry. All of my own doing I should add - nobody likes being called out, least of all me. However Equity, Spotlight, BAPAM, Drama UK. . . the list goes on, were seemingly doing nothing to address the mental health epidemic in our industry. Now in fairness to all these organisations they might have been working tirelessly behind the scenes to make changes, but when lives are at stake I don't think that you wait 20 months to reveal your grand plan (which in the end is what happened).

In March, The MTA hosted a Mental Health Conference, and the indifference that I encountered was staggering. At the conference Equity reassured us that things WERE being planned, and we just had to be patient. Sadly that is not my best feature. I'm not a sitter. Be patient as people became patients? I don't think so. I had this plan, which in itself was madness.  I tried to 'sell' the idea to someone involved in one of the aforementioned organisations. I wanted the organisation's backing, as I knew that if they got behind it we could roll it out in a week! The vitriol that followed has spurred me on throughout 2016. Yes, I'm antagonistic. Yes, I'm persistent. Yes, I tend to think in bigger pictures. Yes, I'm Welsh and my mother's daughter, and if you think that shooting down my idea with a load of personal insults will stop me, then you have no idea about Welsh heritage at all, especially Welsh women! You say no - we say, "I'll bloody show you"!

Angie Peake donated her time, the #time4change Mental Health charter was written, and off I tweeted. I tweeted constantly for months. I emailed colleagues that I had once said hello to at various shows, conferences etc. . . any link to get me through the door to colleges, theatres, production companies and agencies.  I made sure that I had a few big hitters on board before announcing the charter, as I knew that by their very presence some would naturally follow.  Fast forward 6 months and 115 organisations have signed the Charter.

I never had a desire to run a mental health campaign, I just found myself compelled to DO something. Empirical evidence was growing which supported my long standing personal belief (as documented here) and yet nobody was 'acting' on it (ironic for our industry don't you think?).
That said, I also never had a desire to open a drama college - and look where that got me?

The campaign has exasperated me - I just don't understand why people won't join. Why can't they make a commitment to send out an email? Why are people reluctant to see that there's an issue here that we're not addressing? The bullshit that I've heard this year;  Smaller colleges who could enforce the charter in a heartbeat, claiming that they have no money to implement it? Strange that - as the most that it would cost them would be for a mental health consultant to train their staff, and to speak to their students. So the cost of a consultant for a day? If your margins are that tight maybe you should rethink your business plan!  Production companies and agencies that will 'think about it'? What is there to think about? I'm asking you so send out a PDF.  That's it? Other than BAPAM none of the major organisations mentioned in the 2nd paragraph have entertained endorsing or joining the initiative. Hurrah for BAPAM I say who, as we all know, put health (mental or physical) first. Were Spotlight or Equity to join us - we could flood the industry in one go. How disappointing that both organisations have been too busy to discuss the possibility with us. As for Drama UK. . . well I had always said that they were a waste of space. Their demise in 2016 will, I believe, spur our sector on to be world class, in both our training AND our pastoral care.

However the campaign has also exhilarated me. It's enabled me to meet like minded people. People that like me, don't give up at the first hurdle. People like Pat O'Toole from Rose Bruford, who was not only 'in' from the get go, but was out to get everybody else to sign up too.  Mountview and Arts Ed - surely 2 of the most established drama colleges in the UK signed up to the charter. Honest and frank discussions with Stephen from Mountview and Chris from Arts Ed, email chats with Nick from PPA, have all restored my faith in the industry. All four are people that want to make a difference. There is no competition just differences that make us all unique BUT with a unified fight against mental health that will make us all stronger. I can't wait to work closer with all the colleges that have signed up, as we all begin to learn from each other and to give each other support as we work our way through the maze of mental health issues that we are confronted with on a daily basis. The journalist Susan Elkin who has consistently backed the initiative, writing several blogs/features on it when others didn't want to know. Mark Shenton for kindly giving the campaign 'a soft launch' in one of his blogs. Just people restoring my faith in humanity actually, in a world that was appearing to stop caring about anything other than 'self'.

The campaign is ongoing - but given that I have a college to run, shows to write, and a young family to spend time with, it will now run in the background, ready to be sent out to anybody that's interested. The colleges have all agreed to meet early this year (2017) to work out how our peer supervision is going to work.

A couple of weeks ago I was humbled to learn that The MTA has been short listed for The Stage School of the Year Award, an award that we'd already won once, back in 2012. How brilliant that the citation acknowledged #time4change as something important.

I won't name the person that insulted and patronised me way back at the start of the year, as their name isn't important. However I would like to thank them - as they know who they are. If they hadn't been so bloody rude to me I probably wouldn't have been so dogmatic about making this thing work. I'd like to think that they knew that all the time. A paradoxical intervention if you like.

Here's hoping that #time4change continues to grow in 2017. I'm looking forward to meeting with BAPAM to ensure that we keep joining up the dots - as we are only ever stronger together, and whilst that slogan didn't work for Brexit, I still believe that it works in theatre, which after all, has always been about collaboration, and working together.

Happy New Year