Drama college closure spotlights struggle for acting courses

The sudden closure of a 40-year-old UK drama school has exposed the difficulties of running creative institutions in the current climate, according to former staff members.

Staff and the 284 students at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA) were told over a video call on 4 April that their institution was closing with immediate effect and that its campuses in Wigan and London were being shut down with possessions still locked inside. A statement attributing the closure to the “lack of any significant new income streams” was posted online shortly afterwards.

English sector regulator the Office for Students – which said it was first notified of the college’s financial difficulties in November 2021 – is directing students to offers of places to continue their studies at Rose Bruford College in south London.

But many students said they had paid fees for the term to ALRA just days before the closure was announced, and were still waiting to hear if they would be refunded.

The college, where the British comedians Miranda Hart and Bridget Christie trained, shut despite a big restructuring effort over the past year and huge competition for places. Some students auditioned for up to five years before being accepted on to a course and paid fees well above the £9,250 tuition fee cap for undergraduate courses at English universities.

Lucy Curtis, a former associate dean at ALRA who was among those to lose her job with the closure, said staff had been kept in the dark about the financial problems and had been told to carry on with auditioning students and recruiting freelance staff for the coming term.

“You work in a school that isn’t getting cleaned, where people aren’t getting paid properly and students aren’t receiving, resources-wise, what they should be. You start to ask why,” she continued. “This is supposed to be a school with a very lucrative turnover, where students are paying £15,000 a year, so what’s going on?”

George Richmond-Scott, ALRA’s former head of performance, said the school had suffered from a history of poor financial management, but was also a victim of the economic stress caused by the pandemic.

Both the former ALRA staff members said the loss of the northern site – which charged lower fees and offered students a chance to live outside London where rents were much less expensive – would be a hard blow to the industry, which is already heavily skewed towards the capital.

They said they feared that recent progress on making drama schools more accessible and inclusive – highlighted in an open letter alleging “systemic racism” written by former ALRA students in August 2020 – would be hampered by the loss of the institution.

Despite recent changes for the better, the network of institutions training actors was still in need of a “radical shake-up”, Mr Richmond-Scott said.

Those going to drama schools “are ambitious” and have “hard-to-achieve dreams, and I think some [institutions] play on this,” he said. “There are too many of them. The courses are too big – they need to be for them to stay afloat; but equally, students come to the other side of it and are plopped out into the industry and there isn’t work for everybody.”

For Ms Curtis, the number of universities now offering degrees in theatre and acting has caused drama schools to struggle despite the “very, very different” experiences they offer.

“Universities are brilliant, but they are not vocational training,” she said. “It gives you a basis into theatre, how you make it, but not so much actor training, where you get your showcase and agent and headshots and get propelled into the industry.”

Addressing concerns that fees for the term have already been paid to ALRA, the Office for Students said in a statement that it will be "discussing a range of issues with the official receiver once they have been appointed."

"This includes the pre-payment of fees for the summer term. While it may take some time for all of these issues to be resolved, the OfS will work to help ensure that ALRA’s students are treated fairly," the statement added.

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com