Studied Travel & Tourism, Leisure & Tourism and Performing Arts

Now Artistic Director of a street theatre company in Hampshire

Age: 25
Completed course: 2008

Which courses did you study at Harlow College?
I studied Travel and Toursim, Leisure and Tourism and Performing Arts. I did one year of BTEC Diploma Performing Arts and I then went on to do National Diploma Performing Arts.

What you are doing now?
I'm the Artistic Director of a Hampshire based street theatre company. We run artistic workshops, from puppetry to clowning to group theatre work, art installations, fire shows, things like that.

What do you find most enjoyable?
I find art installations the most rewarding because I use sound and imagery together in an artistic way, using material that my audience can relate to and get involved with. Some people cry, some people laugh, some people just don’t know how to take the experience. So I think combining different elements is what I like most about doing installations.

What are your responsibilities in the business?
I’m the Artistic Director of the company. I do clowning, fire work and art installations. My partner is the Workshop Director and administrator, he also does puppetry and clowning.

How many people are involved?
It all depends on what type of work that we do, but when we go out but we have up to 26 people involved.

Going back to your time here at Harlow College. I’m guessing it was the performing arts course that inspired you do what you’re doing now?
It was. I loved it so much and I loved performing on stage. We did a performance called All Sorts in the theatre. I started then to look into the history of clowning and I started to create my own character. I created him from scratch and performed him and I enjoyed performing it so much that my tutor at the time booked me onto the Winchester University open day and said "go and look at this course". It was the first time the course had been run, so we were the guinea pigs in a way. I said “okay, cool, lets go.” So I went and had a look at the course, and I was like, wow, this is what I want to be doing.

So your tutor was partly responsible for pointing you in the right direction?
Oh, definitely! I really take my hat off to the tutor because I would never have looked at that course otherwise.

So was the guidance and the support you got here at the college beneficial to you?
Absolutely. It was fantastic here. There was always someone to talk to, always someone to ask advice from, and they definitely helped to push me in the right direction. They never kind of said, "oh, no, you don’t want to do that".

What would be your advice be to someone applying to university?
Go and look at a couple of universities. If you can find out who your lecturers might be, Google them as well. The reason I say that is I googled and I found out the lecturer was a master of clowning, he was a doctor of movement and his background was phenomenal.

Any tips for anyone writing their application to uni?
I might not be the best person to ask that because I wasn’t great at writing my university application because I was still nervous at the time.

Did our Guidance team here help you with that?
Yeah, they helped me a lot. I can’t remember the name of the lady who helped me but she was fantastic, and I kept coming back everyday to get it right. She was always there and she would always book me in.

Someone may be inspired by your story, think they would like to do what you do, but don’t really know much about it – what advice would you give them?
Well, going back to when I first started, I didn’t know much about it really, just the history of clowning. So when I got to university, I did everything they offered me, from stilt walking, to unicycling, to juggling, everything. Do everything you can and embrace everything you can and soon enough you'll find your feet.

Keeping an open mind I guess, as well?
Definitely keep an open mind because the theatre and the street are totally different, but keep an open mind and always push yourself as far as you can.