14/08/2026
12 years ago today… ❤️
We were racing against the clock.
ITV were turning up in just two weeks to film a news interview with us, and our Saturday Musical Theatre students were due to walk through the doors of their new home.
The only problem?
We barely had a studio. 😂
Back in 2014, my dad told me about a commercial property that had come up and said, “We need to go and have a look.”
I remember walking around it thinking, what are we doing? How on earth are we going to make this work?
It was an old stockroom made up of around 12 separate rooms. There was no electricity, no water, no proper flooring, ceilings were falling through and there was even an old lift running through it.
We had been teaching in rented church halls since 2010, and suddenly we had taken on this huge project with a vision of creating somewhere we could finally call our own.
And somehow… we did it.
Walls came down. Floors went in. Electricity and water went on. Studios started to appear.
And with two weeks to go before ITV arrived, we still didn’t even have the flooring down!
Looking back at the videos now, I genuinely don’t know how we did it. But we did.
That old, falling-apart stockroom became Upstage Academy… our home, our studios and one of the best decisions we ever made.
12 years later, thousands of classes, rehearsals, shows, exams, friendships and memories have happened inside those walls.
Sometimes you have to look at something that seems completely impossible and just go for it.
Believe in your dreams. Take the risk. Do the scary thing.
Because sometimes the thing you look at and think “there’s absolutely no way we can do this” turns out to be the best thing you ever did. ❤️
