An Explanation...

Hey, friends!

In March 2014 I auditioned at Guildford School of Acting for their MA Musical Theatre course and was successful in getting a place to start studying there in September 2014. Before I auditioned I knew that the course fees were going to be steep and they ended up totalling £15,730 for the 1 year course. When I first got the place I had all of these ideas about possible fundraisers I could do and bursaries I could apply for but then I realised I wasn't moving as quickly as I thought I was. Time was running out and before I knew it it was June. I had sent out many, many letters to grants organisations and charitable trusts asking if they would sponsor me to help pay my tuition fees. Most of these letters just came back as a no - reasons being that I had applied too late.
This is when I knew I needed to kick my ass in to high gear and actually try to fundraise instead of waiting for responses that I might never get. I set up a Fundraising Concert at my old school (Kingswood Academy) for the 29th August and I started to advertise this around on Facebook and Twitter. On top of this I had set up a fundraising page with GoFundMe entitled 'Get Jack To Guildford' which I made £120 from. The fundraiser I organised featured myself and 4 friends (some of whom had come from out of the city especially to perform) singing a few songs from Musicals. After the show had finished and I'd had much help from the performers, the Host (Jonathan Parker) and the techies I had helping me (Melissa and Ryan) I ended up making £150 from the show. I was quite pleased with that as the night was so flawed and it just didn't end up being the show I had hoped it would be.
I applied for a Professional and Career Development Loan from Barclays in June and after sending it and re-sending it three times they finally came back to me that my application had been successful. After losing out on funding and not having fundraised too much myself looking at the scale of this massive loan and it's repayments was daunting. I would finish my course in Guildford and have to immediately start paying back £200 per month for the next 5 years. It made me come to my senses *song cue* very quickly and made me start to re-evaluate my options. I could go to Guildford with this loan and scrape by for the next year and then probably have to move back home to Hull for god knows how long trying to work to pay off this loan, or I could withdraw my place at Guildford, get a full time job and save up all year, auditioning for Guildford again earlier than I did this year and really trying hard to secure some funding as soon as I get my place there again - if I do. The first option would have probably left me doing the opposite of what I would have been doing the course to achieve - which is to be on the stage professionally.
Ultimately I decided that I had no option but to withdraw my place at Guildford and just try again next year. I've been told that the first batch of MA auditions are in December and that I don't have to pay for my audition because I was accepted this year, which is great. All I can do now is hope that I'm accepted again. I think I will try and steer clear of the 'GoFundMe' type route this time round as, although it's been helpful, it does feel like I haven't earned the funds.
For anyone wondering any money that I raised from the Fundraiser or other donations have been put in to a bank account separate to my own so that I cannot access them and I plan on saving them to do with what you all donated for me to do this year - only next year instead. I hope nobody has any objections to this. As for this next year of my life...Well - I'm calling this Day 1 of my 'gap year' and I plan to spend it working, going to classes, making myself a better person and performer and ultimately putting myself in a better position to go to Guildford next year than I was this year - both financially and physically.
I hope, if anyone has actually got to the end of this long winded post (and I hope you have), that you understand what a very, very hard decision all of this has been for me and it definitely comes with a heavy heart. I also hope that people understand that I had saved a LOT of money for this myself without the Fundraiser or the funding pages and I know some people think they know everything about other people's business but when it comes to me and the money I spend in my free time please rest assured that it is my money I'm spending and not any money that anyone so kindly donated to me.
I really hope I've not missed anything out but it's late and I really just want to get this post out there so Guildford friends I will see you in time and everyone else - drop me a message and let's not lose touch wherever in the world you may be :)

Jack

Guildford life money