Deja Vu

Last year when I wrote about our 2021 closing announcement, I blogged about an inevitable conclusion to a cut in government funding, Brexit, and a global pandemic. I wrote about feeling that I'd been desperately trying to steer an out-of-control juggernaut, but I simply couldn't stop it from driving off the road. Then after we had been "saved" I noted how much easier it had been to steer us back to the main road with so many people helping me to hold the wheel.

I was sad last year but I had managed to process a lot of my grief by the time the closing announcement had been made. The "save" came out of the blue, and to be honest it took me a few months to get back into the swing of things. However, by the time we started our new academic year in Oct 2021 I'd recalibrated myself and dared to look forward to what might be achieved. When Trinity announced their criteria change things took a really up-beat turn as finally there was a path to a more certain future.

For those that weren't aware of last year's closure we announced that we were done for, the graduates and students campaigned for us to be 'saved', and a few benefactors made themselves known to us offering to fund the shortfall to get us through the year, and a crowdfunding campaign raised awareness for the college as well as funds. 

To be clear we literally only agreed to continue the college as we were sure (after due diligence) that we had secured £250K - the amount that we had stated that we needed to run for a full year. If we had been in any doubt at all that the people & organisations that had reached out to us offering help were not able to fulfil that obligation we would not have continued. Whilst we hadn't wanted it to end, we were at a good place to finish. We had money in the bank to ensure that it was a good ending. It was a "peaceful" end with as much integrity as we could muster. 

I felt physically sick when we were suddenly told that some of that income was not going to be realised.  To say that I was blindsided was an understatement, to say that I had feelings about the fact that this revelation had not been made sooner would also be an understatement. Circumstances change of course, but a simple communication around that fact would have bought us time to regroup or budget differently. 

However, all was not lost. . . there was still hope as we were in the middle of our Trinity validation process. Getting validated would open up a whole new funding stream which would finally allow our students to have financial help from the government. Step forward Trinity. . . 

The Trinity validation process started off exceptionally well, we'd applied within weeks of the criteria change, the pre-validation visit was booked in nice and early, the glowing verbal report on the day and the talk around how optimistic we could be about being fully validated by July gave me a renewed energy and focus. Our applications were back up to pre-pandemic levels and, we were beginning to curate a brilliant cohort due to start training with us in Oct 2022. The students in training were storming it day after day with our class of 2022 one by one securing agent representation. I had a zoom meeting with the 2 Trinity assessors in early March when they told me their recommendations and helped me to think about how we could implement them easily (as the recommendations were all around the paperwork stuff). I made the changes by the next day and was told to expect the report the w/c 14th March. On March 15th I was told there was a slight delay because covid had struck and the person needing to check the report was off work. When I chased the report a week later I was sadly informed by an out-of-office email that our main assessor was now off ill too. As the days turned to weeks and into months and the assessor was still off I contacted Trinity to ask if somebody else could look at the report as it was all but finished. 

I won't bore with you the details of the sorry saga but the report finally arrived 4 months later, or as I like to count it . . . 15 emails later. 15 emails chasing the report, finding out along the way that crucial information had not been shared (as our main assessor was off sick and they didn't have access to the numerous emails exchanges which included links to videos, submissions of recommendations) and re-sharing them with the relevant Trinity department. 

Eventually, I had a meeting booked for 4pm on 12th July to go through the report. On asking to see the report prior to the meeting I was sent it at 3pm on 12th July! Once again I'm going to skip through details here. . . but trust me when I say that they're all horrific as the bottom line was - we were attempting to be validated for the Trinity Level 6 Diploma in Musical Theatre, with the majority of our students going to elect to major in acting - yet the report barely had anything in it about singing and acting - it was pretty much all about the dance, plus I should add littered with inaccuracies and contradictions, to be precise 6 pages of inaccuracies . . . and the report was only 9 pages long.  Whilst classroom observations had been written up about our dance classes, it appears that there were no observations about the classes that our main assessor had observed on his own and no reference at all to the earlier recommendations that I had been told back in March, and no reference to all those changes having been implemented. 

Here's another thought that I'd just like to leave here too for people assessing/validating looking at screen work or archived recordings of shows for quality control. Some links on certain platforms trigger an email notification to the person who controls that account. So "if" you click, oh I don't know (plucks figure from mid air) 6 links within an hour, and then the analytics show that you watched 100% of one show yet the next link was opened within 5 mins, and so on, it raises suspicions with the people that have paid for your time and the people that are relying on your diligence.  Anyway. . . 

We immediately complained to Trinity complete with some compelling evidence around our suspicions of them not having access to our main assessor's notes, eventually, they got back to us only for them to try and dilute the complaint down to a don't be bitter it didn't work out for you kind of response. They kindly suggested that we simply waited for them to complete the report, after all, fact-checking was part of their due diligence. I strangely didn't think that 6 pages of corrections and inaccuracies were evidence of due diligence, so now we have to wait as we embark on stages 2 and 3 of the Trinity complaints procedure, as an independent arbiter considers our case. With each stage taking 30 days that meant that the last lifeline had also disappeared. . . once again at a bitterly late hour. 

Right now our focus is on helping our first years (and the newbies if they want it) to find new places to train, and on getting the class of 2022 through the finishing line and onto graduation.

People who have worked with me for years know how fastidious I am about paying people and companies promptly so both the showcase and the graduation were already paid for before the horrors of the past few weeks unravelled - so the college community will have some "closure" 

Finding myself for the 2nd time in 13 months speaking to my students  & my graduates having to say that we were closing (again) was truly horrible.  Like last year though what struck me was the kindness. One of our main priorities now is obviously our 6 first years - who were almost instantaneously invited to join the graduating year for their showcase. So that's what we'll do. The final showcase will now feature our 15 graduates and our 6 first years. Once again the "community" of the college will win with kindness.

It was an extraordinary 14 years for a tiny college. We helped to change the narrative around mental health and mental illness, we proved that an accelerated learning course was possible, we kick-started 207 careers, 100% of our students graduated having secured an independent agent, we were the first Musical Theatre college to do a 50/50 stage/screen split, we remain the only college to have been named as The Stage "School of the Year" twice, we always attempted to put student (and staff) welfare first, we actively supported new writing and new writers throughout our history, and we've called out every bit of bullsh*t that we've encountered along the way.  I now proudly label myself a disruptor, albeit an accidental one.

As a member of the Board said to me this week - I started the college to be the antithesis of the establishment, I kept calling out for regulation, I was adamant that results should lead to funding, and I was eventually brought down by a regulatory body who were the gatekeepers to the funding stream. . . isn't it ironic? To add to the irony, regular readers of this blog know how much I despair with people that don't reply to emails in a timely fashion. . . another bitter irony to add to the pile.

As for me. . . I need to process the last few weeks, most definitely work through the anger & disappointment I feel about how we ended up finishing, and then think about what comes next.  

Time for a rethink

 As the Tory leadership battle continues this weekend saw both Truss and Sunak throwing the spotlight onto education. As with all their Tory-pleasing soundbites both had come up with what many people perceived to be radical ideas.

Now at the moment, I consider myself to be stranded in some political wasteland. Previously I considered myself a 'moderate' Labour supporter with a touch of Liberalism thrown in for good measure, yet more recently I, like many others, seem to be searching around for a party that truly does 'fit' with what I believe. The only thing that I'm 100% confident of is that I'm 0% Tory.  A party notoriously out for themselves, supporting the rich whilst so many in the UK go without just doesn't sit well with me at all - call me old-fashioned.  So nobody could be more surprised than me when I suddenly started to take a positive interest in what Truss and Sunak were saying over the weekend.

Truss went all in for nothing with plans to completely overhaul the education system in the UK, with the headline-grabbing soundbite of changing Higher Education's academic year. She suggested stopping the Summer rush of waiting for the exam results and then claiming places, and changing it to a "we know our results. . . give us a place" sort of system. 

The fact of the matter is that we've been stuck in an archaic educational system for decades. Sure it's been tweaked within an inch of its life over the years, out went O Levels, in came GCSEs, exams and continuous assessment scrape by together as unharmonious bedfellows, as we remain adamant that a 3-hour memory test is still the best way to ascertain who's academic. Of course, the result of the current system is a societal model that labels people as intelligent or not at 16 years. It places untold pressure on our teens to achieve success at a time that is already really hard - adolescence. The system doesn't take the "whole person" into consideration - so those teens battling illness, trauma, and basic demographic issues are issued an helpful label before they've had a chance to work out who they really are.

Then thanks to Tony Blair's vision of a world where 50% of young people went to university (university being perceived as the only successful route into the workplace), we're now left with the systemic issue of what about the rest? The role of vocational training has been diminished, with funding (or lack of) quickly following, apprenticeships are forever changing but never for the better, BTECs (once deemed for the academically less gifted) have decreased in real-world value. 

So I think that Truss is onto something with her 'shake it all up approach', except of course, as with every Truss soundbite, there appears to be no real substance or plan behind the headline.

Meanwhile, Sunak has gone for the easy target of limiting the degrees that don't lead to economic growth or to put it more bluntly, let's get rid of arts and the humanities. For some bizarre reason, the Tories love the idea of vandalising the arts in the UK, failing to fully recognise it seems that the arts are all around them, and if it wasn't for the arts their worlds would be much sadder. It's like they don't correlate that the opera, ballet, theatre, and the tv that they watch have all evolved from years of training, vocational training that is.

However, I do believe that Sunak is onto something too. Off the top of my head, I could name a number of universities that are currently offering performing arts degrees that are not fit for purpose. I can name the universities that went from offering one or two brilliant performing arts courses to offering a portfolio of performing arts courses. . . most of which were not and are not fit for purpose. It's the basic law of economics and supply and demand. Performing arts courses are hugely oversubscribed, predominantly because unlike more academic studies you can't keep cramming students into a lecture theatre, so the courses are restricted by the numbers that they can teach at one time. So the demand is huge but the opportunities are small. Step forward opportunistic universities looking to create other revenue streams.

In theory, this is great right? More courses = more opportunities, however in reality this does not play out. We're seeing courses that are claiming to get people industry-ready offering ridiculous contact hours of just 12-16 week. Absolutely impossible to build up a skillset within that timeframe. So the courses focus on private study or peer devised modules, so the students "think" that they're training, but in reality, they're simply mucking about with their friends.

On some of these courses, the staff are woefully unqualified to teach their subject, yet they're attempting to teach the next generation how to enter an industry that they have no first-hand knowledge of. I mean it's bonkers, yet they're all still oversubscribed. Such is the legacy and myth around a university education, parents would rather their children go to study at an ill-equipped university than wait for a place at a college that can truly deliver the goods because they believe that the very mention of the "degree" will get their child a job.

As I note every single time, a university can knock out a quick box-ticking degree course in no time at all, that course, regardless of how inadequate it is, will automatically be eligible for a government funding stream. Sunak is right to want to audit some of those courses. I would like to think that the money that they'd save on the "not fit for purpose" courses would be instantly rerouted into all the amazing courses out there that truly deliver results. I'd also love to think that Sunak would expand his thinking and actually place some value on vocational training - however, I realise that this would truly be the Christmas miracle that we've been waiting years for.

Whoever wins the leadership race there is so much work to do in education, and I guess the only thing that we can all be sure of - is that neither of them will put in that work

As always the comments are open and I'd love to hear what you think

Timeline of a mental health crisis

 Having ranted several times this week over what I perceive to be the hypocrisy of Equity suddenly launching a mental health charter, I've chosen to timeline the events that led me to this annoyance.

So Equity's charter was launched after the publication of this paper published in the Guardian:  https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/may/12/performing-arts-depression-equity-covid-job-insecurity However it seems to me that the review that has prompted them into action has failed to address the number of people that enter our industry that are predisposed to mental illness but this is surely a key component to understanding the complexities of mental health issues within our industry.

We all have mental health - but the fight around breaking down the stigma around mental illness has been completely hijacked and sidelined by the media's reporting of mental health and well-being and stops us once again from dealing with the real issues.  

Back in 2014, I started speaking publicly about the fact that having a clinician doing the counselling at The MTA had led us to discover that seemingly a large percentage of our students had some underlying mental illness. I questioned whether we were just "unlucky" in our cohorts, or whether this was a trend replicated in other colleges. Nobody would engage in this conversation other than to tell me that I was being stupid.  Around the same time, a survey on the other side of the world discovered that 1 in 3 of our industry were predisposed to a mental illness, much higher than the 1 in 4 of civvy street. On discovering that fact I actively started campaigning to try and get more colleges to address the issue, as it felt more than coincidental that this tiny college in North London had the same findings as a survey in a country on the other side of the world. The common factor must be our industry.

In 2016 we attempted to have a conference of drama colleges to speak to colleagues to find out if their experiences were the same as ours and to attempt to put in a plan of action to address the issue. As is documented the meeting was poorly attended, but with the people that did bother to turn up it was brutally obvious that the issue extended far beyond The MTA, it's just that The MTA were naming it, and attempting to deal with it differently. It should be noted that 2 Equity reps were in attendance at that conference and both heard the same stories as I did that day. . . go figure.

When I muted the idea of a charter as a result of that meeting I was told by an Equity rep that my approach was wrong, that Equity could not get behind such a campaign because the remit was too large. When I attempted to put a case against this, I was told that I was too difficult to work with and therefore they would not have anything else to do with the campaign.

In July 2016 we launched the #time4change mental health charter - attempting to educate people on what mental illness really was. I literally begged Equity and Spotlight to get involved in this campaign and both refused. I asked them to distribute the charter out to its members (which would have cost them nothing), and both refused. At the time Equity were adamant that they were about to deal with the issue with their Arts Mind website (which launched some time that same year - but which also clearly served a different purpose). It was around a year later that Equity eventually sent something out to its members about the charter. A low-key aside in one of their newsletters.

In 2014 it was clear that our industry was seeing an increase (or finally recognising perhaps) in the number of people that entered our industry with an underlying mental illness. Seeing those numbers rising year on year I blogged at the start of the pandemic that the mental illness epidemic that already existed in the UK was going to explode after the lockdowns. People who would usually keep busy to stop themselves from focussing on their minds were suddenly left in silence and alone. 

Over on The MTA's Instagram, we've done a series of interviews with students that were diagnosed with a mental illness at college. All of them say the same - the symptoms were there from an early age but doctors refused to believe that they were ill. In other words, there are countless adolescents being dismissed with "growing pains" who could be getting early intervention help with mental illnesses. An intervention that could have prevented a later in life crisis.

Our industry is the ultimate escape route for many - it's a place to find your 'tribe', like-minded people that are attempting to fit in. Lots are running away from difficult pasts, but I've come to believe that lots are also running away from difficult 'mental states'. Anxiety and depression are rife, but are these created by the industry, or were they already loaded into people's DNA before this career was even an option?

We've come to almost celebrate a declaration of anxiety as opposed to encouraging people to seek medical help in order to make their lives more manageable. People who are already fighting an undiagnosed mental illness will be low on resilience to deal with all the other stuff that our industry throws at us - and yes this includes appalling treatment towards freelancers, stress over pay, working conditions and all the other things in the new survey.

My reason for ranting is that I don't want to wait a decade until all the HR stuff has been dealt with for people to discover that there's still a mental health crisis in our industry. I've already witnessed too many times how devasting a mental health crisis can be. Our NHS is simply not equipped to deal with a crisis (as strange as that sounds). I've documented before how I've seen somebody have to get arrested in a bid to get the right mental health care as they were considered not ill enough to be taken into hospital, but clearly not well enough to function successfully in society.  Or what about the ED sufferers, considered not 'thin' enough to access the services that they truly need?

We shouldn't pathologise regular hardships, but nor should we minimise ill health just because society's stigma has stopped us from recognising early symptoms.

In 2019 I (ironically) was asked to give a keynote speech at Equity's ArtsMind Symposium. I sat and listened when people made the exact same discoveries that I had been campaigning about years earlier. I spoke about finding out that BAPAM had published a paper about the mental health crisis in our industry. A study that had concluded that best practices for drama colleges should include a clinician-led service around pastoral care.  I had noted in my speech that I found it odd that The MTA had never been approached as a case study in this review given that we had been running a clinician-led service since we started.  I'll note here though that it's now 3 years since that speech and we are still the only college to have a clinician-led service!

Equity, Spotlight, the Federation of Drama Schools are all working within their own little echo chambers, afraid to open up the discussions to the outsiders that could be perceived to be disrupters waiting to smash down those gates that they all keep so well. I believe that The MTA has paid quite a high price by me unwittingly being one of those disrupters. 

So forgive me when I rant - but it's been 8 years now of shouting about the same things, and STILL nothing is being done about it. If Equity had gotten behind our campaign years ago we might now have one of the most robust industries around. 

There are several organisations trying to change the narrative, but that noise shouldn't come from "us", it should come from the organisations that actually have the authority to make a change, not from the people on the outside constantly banging on the door of the establishment.

Who are we lying to? The covid fightback continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happened to the Money Tree?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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