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

Oh to have a grant to cut

So according to The Stage today 4 of the more established drama college Principals have taken a public viewpoint on the government's plans to scrap student maintenance grants: https://www.thestage.co.uk/news/2016/drama-schools-warn-grant-cuts-will-hit-poorest-students/?utm_content=buffer1a193&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

At the risk of being controversial (which I know is very unlike me), this Chicken Licken response to the news is, IMHO likely to do more harm than the scrapping of the grants in the first place.  Mountview, LAMDA, Rose Bruford and RADA Principals are now all on record practically telling the poorer students that it's now impossible.  Yet speaking as the Principal of a college that receives nothing by way of grants etc (our students are only eligible for a PCDL), I know that it is possible. Rose Bruford's Principal rightly comments on the hours that a drama student has to do, and mentions the difficulties of getting part time work around that.  Interestingly they mention the Drama UK 'standard' of 30 hours/week, yet our students do 40 hours a week and several of them have had to manage a full time job around the demands of the course.

Is that ideal, is it fair? Absolutely not.  However is it what they needed to do to survive and qualify...yes.  Have they gone on to have successful careers, we're on about 50/50 odds with that one, with one of them dangerously close to 'pushing' through the system to get quite a big break sooner rather than later. However regardless of their success right now (and I'll state really quickly that all have worked, my reticence on the subject is financially has it been worth it for them..yet), they are all determined to succeed.  That tenacity along with their talent will ensure that they're OK eventually.

Just to be clear I'm definitely NOT backing the government on this, however what I am saying is that every time they cut some arts funding or support, and we bleat about it, and point out to the world that the impossible has suddenly become harder, someone, somewhere will give up on their dream. So the government win.

I appreciate that we're in a very different position - we don't have anything that they can cut, but over the past 7 years I have written so many letters to so many organisations asking for just a little help so that we can help fund those students that are financially independent. Every time a letter comes back saying no.  The only difference in 7 years is that the letters of rejection have become nicer, acknowledging our success, but, for whatever reason, they have chosen not to support us.  Every time I receive one of those letters I get angry, because I think about the student who is working stupid hours to stay with us, and I get cross because we can't give them as much help as I want to, because not one person would help us.  I moan on FB (although I've been told off about that now), I moan at work and at home...but this year I finally realised that me moaning achieved nothing...except that I probably wasn't giving the best of myself to the college on that day, because I was cross with a faceless potential benefactor, who decided to give £££'s to one of the colleges moaning in The Stage today over giving a little bit everywhere else.  So I didn't take a wage for a bit longer, or we scraped through somehow together...and every one of those students graduated.

Today the colleges will moan, tomorrow a celeb will tell us that the working class actor and the working class theatre died a bit yesterday because of this news.  Yet isn't it time that we got real too? We don't get a 'get out of jail free' card because we're studying the arts.  How many other courses does this ruling have an impact on? The difference being of course that nobody cares about the lawyers/solicitors/surveyors etc who equally have to face the impact of less funding.  Yes they might work less hours so they can choose to work extra shifts after college - but then to be honest, why aren't those students bemoaning the ridiculous hours that they're at college studying? £27,000 to have 10 - 12 contact hours a week is surely something to protest about? Yet we hear nothing?

So to be clear...I marched in protest when Student Loans were about to be introduced, I took part in the college occupations of the late 80's (admittedly back then, not necessarily understanding the full impact of what was happening, but definitely understanding enough to camp down for a night or two), I willingly got frog marched out of a classroom a few years later when the next wave of cuts were coming in and the occupations started again (hell I even told the students who frogmarched me outside my studio, where the other staff would be...so I was practically a spy for the revolution).  I only got through college because I had a grant. Although even that annoyed me - seeing other students whose parents easily had a load of money, enjoying their termly jackpot, because their parents knew how to fill in that form, they knew how to 'present a truth', whereas my parents went for absolute honesty, resulting in me have around a tenth of some of my much wealthier contemporaries. I have said time and time again that I could not have been able to have afforded to go to my own college, had it existed then.  So politically don't be telling me that I haven't got a clue, or quoting Churchill and his infamous 'arts' speech to me.  I've been there and worn the T shirt.

However, having lived through that time, and seeing that it made no difference at all.  Everything that I protested against happened.  If I could rewind the clocks I'd protest again, but make the calling more vehement...but even then I know that we would have lost the case.  However we have NOT yet lost the young performer that can't afford to come to us.  Somehow we always will make it work.  Surely our job is to inspire the next generation and fight for them, not go on the record and tell their family and friends that they just as well give up now.

Please stop saying that it's tough for the working classes. It's tough for everyone that chooses to go into HE today. The arts are not the only ones that are impacted by this ruling.  So how about the headlines for the next wave of cuts (and goodness knows...there will be more to come)...is just a graphic...an international sign that states quite succinctly that we won't be beaten....regardless of what ever tactic they use. Slightly Brechtian I know...but a much more powerful message than rolling around the ground saying that the fight is over. Yes they would probably prefer less people to study the arts...so even more reason for us to make is possible for them.  Therein lies the power of the artist I think.