n you have this amazing story with Carol where that is the community raising that child and so I'm kind of wondering again if Michael or Nick want to jump in here because there's definitely themes that I would feel resonate with with your work and it can be an assuring of just Nick do you want to explain what you've been doing don't feel like it is a mosaic again don't feel like we have to connect the threads Nick I think we might not be able to see you hold on that's a shame because he's got a lovely voice Nick are you trying to speak and we can't hear you yes he is there may be a thing on Hangout where the bar above says that you were typing and so we muted you I noticed that Hangout does that sometimes so many things to come out of that beautiful head waiting can somebody read the mouse and just is there a Nick reader in the house ok well while we're waiting for Nick to figure out technical difficulties and just keep trying Nick if you can um does anybody else feel like responding of theater plastice I know you're a very new company but do you feel in some ways your work is speaking to this kind of collectivity or do you want to jump in here well we wanted to talk about being women doing this work absolutely I I really wanted to show a video video interviews you to our work do you have that video hold up ok and Michael can you hear Michelle ok yes ok so we'll just show maybe after that video if you want I can share a thought or two of Nick's now got it great cool so let me just introduce the video really quick in the work it's called Burtry Spine Saints well and then ok so we're going to show the video to give you sort of an idea of the context we're coming from and then we were going to just start a timer and have a conversation between ourselves and then hopefully we can open it up after the timer goes off ok great well why don't we watch the video and then we'll have Michael and then we'll do the timer ok ok yes but can we just introduce this just really quickly so one of Burtry Spine's life long projects was to write the sound of American spoken language so we used American music to sort of elucidate her artistic project and you know of course it's always really important for the actor to get intimate with the words but it's very hard to do with Burtry's stuff you know so what I set up was a situation where they go all music so they were all losing for this work in five days and we memorized it over Christmas break and then we came back into the stage shit so they used blues, rap just all American genres of music and the way it evolved together and brought it to the French and this is what that was there are students that probably do not live so this is my thesis show for a really long time remind us that it is a mosaic Michael if you want to just throw out some words and I know you didn't get to see the video so it's not responding to that actually I went to Michelle's site while you were showing that so I was looking at a muted version of the same trailer you were watching it looked cool it was interesting to watch it sound different than what I was watching yeah I mean I'll be really quick just the whole notion of the relationship of contemporary ensemble practice in the US and the utopic impulse is something that's been on very explicitly on my mind and a part of my work for a long time Sojourn theater was founded in 1999 just about 15 years old now and one of our one of our first projects was one of our early projects was a piece called Cities on a Hill which actually involved us driving around the United States as we moved from the east coast to the west coast as a whole company and we set up in Portland, Oregon in late 1999, early 2000 and as we made our way across the country we stopped all over we were touring a show of ours but we would ask people about the American dream and the first piece that we made in our new home of Portland, Oregon was partly based on these encounters that we had gas stations and diners and fields and factories and all kinds of places as we literally moved from one little utopic arts community back then so the question that came out of that and that's been a part of a lot of our work in these three projects I'll mention in a moment super quick was the question of who am I responsible for and for me since 1991 when I founded another organization called Hope is Vital that was doing work with men and women who were living with HIV and or AIDS and who were homeless around the United States I was a part of starting up ensembles for about 7 or 8 years made up of men who were living in that circumstance in that life condition and local young people and always the question that came at the heart of the work as we took the work out into different communities suburban and rural was always how do you engage in a democratic society with questions of communal responsibility when you're also dealing with a society that is also kind of prioritizing the market and consumption so how do those things live alongside each other and particularly if you're involved in educational contexts where you're teaching in learning communities how are you kind of reconciling the transmission of information the building of experiences and an acknowledgement of these different kinds of conditions and systems that we're all living in and I just would sort of say now this question of what is ensemble in a contemporary American landscape is super connected for me to ask him a question ok so we've got this project called how to end poverty in 90 minutes that we premiered in Chicago last year and this year there will be versions of it seen in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and then Washington DC and it's a 90 minute event where audiences basically go on stage as cash and the audience has a period of time to determine how to use that money to attack poverty in their local community and it's a mixture of performance spectacle and facilitated dialogue and the notion of poverty is partly the content and partly a Trojan force because the real issue of the performance is how do we make a decision as 200 people about how to aim our resources towards the collective good and I'm really interested in how ensemble becomes a way not just in the room where we make but also in the engagements that we create in community a way to actually embody and explore that question how do we decide together what to do with our resources and how are we going to live together should I stop there or should I mention these two other quick things I want to be a responsible part of the mosaic I'm offering two things this needs two other quick things that we're doing we're in the midst of a two and a half year ongoing artist and residency project with Catholic Charities USA which is the largest poverty fighting organization in the U.S. that is not a part of the Catholic Church although it is related to the Catholic Church like distant and constantly tense cousins and we are actually midway through working with over 20 sites around the U.S. where we give workshops on collaborative practice we host public conversations with them around polarizing issues in community that relate to poverty and economic disparity and we of course develop encounters with people and create a performance the whole company of our, almost the whole company a dozen of us were just in San Francisco last week where we shared performance we built for them at their national convening and we're about to be with them in New Orleans actually very soon and so a question for me around that work is how do we engage with ideologically diverse colleagues and partners in difficult and challenging conversations where we are making rigorous art but we are also making rigorous public conversation and that's a big part of our work at Sojourn and maybe the third thing I will just mention is we have a project called Islands of Milwaukee where we're working with homebound seniors in low income contexts and we're partnering with the Department of Public Health the Department of Public Transit Goodwill, Salvation Army University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a number of social service organizations to basically spend two years making visible beneath the surface conversations about our community elders who are living trapped in their homes and how to bring the value of them and the necessity of public conversation about them into policy discourse with local legislators so again we're looking at how our practice of ensemble extends to all the partners and all the contexts that we can develop together to be moving our work not just into the studio into performance venues but into public settings again and again where we're always exploring notions of who am I, who are we responsible for and how is our practice about art making but also about public discourse and public policy That's my that's my thing today It's incredibly inspiring stuff I think it's lovely and it's great to hear that it's out there I know you have to go yes? In a minute or two I'm going to just listen for a little bit I'm so sorry I haven't been with you the whole weekend just to tack on to this to talk about family I would say I've been on the road so much lately that this was a rare weekend when I could be home with my family and we just made a choice that I that I would be home with my family so that's why I'm here and out with you I wish I was in the conversation but it feels resonant with trying to make the decisions we're all trying to make about where our energy is Michael has been essential in helping us to organize this virtual aspect of the whole weekend and so we thank you for all of your support and honor help and we thank you for making the choice to be with your family Of course Michael can you hear me okay? This is Catherine I have a really practical question for you Do you ever take in student interns into your group because I have a student with a great hunger to understand who lives in the world and she just woke up to the notion that it's even a phenomenon but it was something she was yearning for and I'm trying to direct her toward good people doing good things Yeah we do We have summer institutes we take interns on a project specific basis I teach at Northwestern in the undergrad and the graduate directing program so sometimes our apprentices and interns come out of that I'm going to just shut up and listen to Nick and Rachel and whoever and then I'm just going to disappear in a couple minutes but thanks for including me Thank you Michael Do we want to return to your timer discussion is the only way we all get going and then we come back to Nick and Rachel Sure So we're going to start Michelle by talking a little bit specifically about when you were working on the project that we all saw that had to do with being a woman working as a director and then also working with gender specific cast Right? Yeah Okay so the project started with forcing some three acts and it was cast with all men at Carnegie Mellon so this was the first graphic this was done and it was like all about women and having answers and so you know the process it was it was hard for a lot of it because A I was called crazy like behind my back because that was like the game going around like she is crazy and when something is crazy it's kind of all over the place that doesn't have any intention so they were not acknowledging that in fact there was intention for the rehearsal room and then this other thing that happened is people were saying that they were wondering if I knew what I was doing Do you know what you're doing are you directing is this what directing is supposed to look like because if I was in my rehearsal room and I would just be at the table and people would be talking and somebody is like they are against the wall over there and just kind of like a lot of chaos and so I literally got friends and they would just leave office and and they said do you know keep your voice up okay do you know what you're doing and then I said no I don't know what I'm doing and that's the point like that is what I'm trying to tell you yes you're right I don't exactly know what I'm doing I don't exactly know where I'm going and that is what I'm doing so that's what we're doing here because I feel like in an ensemble that I should not know very much anyway like in a way like I just from this I just came in and it was kind of like your street style American music that's all I know right now and but that was strong enough to take us all the way through the project all the way down and up and down and up and down again and because if I come in somehow knowing more like what I want what is the point of us being together I feel like I'm not creating what I want from you so it's important to just not know and you know speaking about the gender cast so you know when the show was cast it's cast by a cast and director of so you know they were like would you take the seven extra men and I was like that is weird because this is where she was dying sure let's just do that and the music that they wrote that was very like it was there was always a soloist and all the little playing instruments with their mouths so like a horn player so everybody had like a part right all these men had their own special part and then after the show closed I thought well that was very nice but I like what the women do and so I brought in women doing the same singing and their music was all together so they always sing together in harmony and the woman featured as like a man that was very interesting and also just made for like a very dynamic show and the unknown is something that we talk about a lot and we talk about this I mean honestly I don't really know what it means to be a woman to be a woman working to be a woman in the world but it feels like it makes the process my interest more open and available to discovery and accepting a space that is unwritten because you don't know because I don't know and then I'm interested in what is discovered in a place where the threads aren't quite together properly that what exists in between those spaces is as a generated impulse for idea is really compelling to me and maybe because it's where I've been so much in my life I feel like it's a really rich site for work when things don't go together when I mean well I don't know see we think very differently I think pictures and she's like words I look at her and I'm like we'll do that space well okay so yeah my hands in this and what I was imagining was like a carpet that was very we used to be women and the spaces that were in this because we talk about this and something about this space that these things are not we're talking about right now so we all three were talking about this just today about being a woman and making it work and kind of in a way things not lining up exactly or like being misunderstood there's this like tear and it's like that tear and you understand me so for example this week I haven't spoken much this weekend and it's kind of scary I was thinking about this over the whole weekend I'm just so impressed as a woman you know what I mean this whole structure like this major this whole system is like creating a situation that makes it hard for me to talk and it's like to build this personality it's like kind of sharp I see this with a lot of look it's not just me, this is like this personality it's partially due to this kind of system that we're living and like but then I thought well actually yes this is a problem like in this space right here but in some of this other space this is actually a very good personality shape to like and not like seem too much and be like a little bit like what is that person doing they're a little scared of that person you know that's been a great deal in the chat with the watcher well the watcher says you know that a director is just a very skilled watcher or a skilled seeer you know and so that's been a journey of my life and I guess I need to go into this space except it doesn't work as well because I'm supposed to do other things do you know what I'm saying like if it's not working I've been forced to talk you went further and further what's that you went further and further you said well what I heard was and I think this is the gift that women bring to the rising I think this is why there are so many in the rising and I think this is why I'm rising up for the rising and I said I think if you look at the number you're sitting at women yes it's always nice to have a positive and all that I need to know actually okay to have a straight end to be oppressed etc it has a very theatrical value the time it didn't go off it's a quiet time that's perfectly fine the spirit of mosaic I think it'd be really great to bring in Nick who is doing a lot of similar work as a male but doing a lot of work that he believes is creating community through laughter and song and we were talking last night Michelle about your upcoming trip to New Orleans and I was saying you need to meet Nick so here you can meet virtually hello can y'all hear me yeah so weird how's everybody doing it's really an honor to be able to listen to the conversation so thank you Brian for helping loop me in I guess the first thing that I thought about about the family experience is that in our ensembles in our ensemble we work with a lot of people who have children and it's really really challenged and made me a better artist like our sense of time together is valued a lot more and just a sense of priority that when you start thinking about budgeting time for childcare and those sort of things it really feels multi-generational and I think we all kind of view our work in the context of our ensembles being our family but never was that more apparent to us I feel like this year I work with an organization called Mando Bizarro and we along with three other ensembles opened a space this year called Catapult and it was a really big dream to open up our own space and we thought that the process of collectively running our space and building it out together was going to be by far the easiest thing we've ever done and it turned out to be something that really really was painful for all of us in the way of I feel like taught us a lot about the fact that we were trying to do something that we didn't have a lot of models for and so we just kept running up against all kinds of different needs there's a very about five year old ensemble we're about ten years old and our spot productions is about twenty years old so the process of building out this space together doing all of the labor on it trying to come up with collective agreements about how the space can feed all of our needs it really reminded me that about this notion of collectivity that we really are a family and for better and for worse sometimes no one treats family like family treats family but ultimately I feel like it's brought us to a stronger place and our work together and now that the space is up and running it's completely changing our work and I think we said it going through the process that this struggle is going to make us stronger and I know it's cliche but it really has brought a depth of experience to our collective that's really catalyzing the work that we're doing right now and we're undertaking the largest project that we've ever done a piece called Cry You Want and it's a two mile processional out on this land that's disappearing in coastal Louisiana and we're enough for going through that experience together I don't think we would be able to be doing the amount of work that we're all doing on this project so when I think of collectivity I really think of hard-carking a little bit to what Teresa said like you know all of my elders and the people who I stand on their shoulders you know those people who thought they were solving the problems they were actually teaching us how to struggle together and I think that that value of staying in the room and struggling together is actually the thing that creates the conditions for us to do things that are impossible and to create the conditions for the type of world that we want to live in and the type of people that we want to be which is you know inventing new things in ways of communicating it's that easy work and so yeah that's what I have right now Fantastic Thank you Teresa Can I add something Please do This is a fantastic topic because it really resonates with with this space and the idea that this separation of life and art and they all know in theater world and Los Angeles it also means the real job that pays the money for the rent for the car for the fuel for the food for everything else so all these departmentalized aspects of our life that actually in some total do not add up to the whole what the whole can bring and the concept that we have for this block is that of the village meaning that we no longer split our family and our art life and our livelihood and our where we shop and what we eat and everything else it has to have more of that total understanding that it's not you jump in the car and you go work in Santa Monica and then have to gather your stuff there and then you see other companies downtown and you just happen to live in Pasadena for instance right so this split up that I think LA is the most ubiquitous place of how split up we all are and how much resources we're wasting we're wasting our life but on average we spend 2 hours a day in the car that means out of 12 months a year 6 weeks we spend in the car that's a lot that's a lot of my life would have been spent so Brian and I we returned here we determined to find a way to have new creative developments where artists also because we all have habits and interests that we also create the detail and commercial aspects of the village that we are cooperatively invested in that as well as our spaces in which we recurse and we perform and everything has to be within walking distance and I think that allows for it freed up my imagination because when we just came back here from England we've lived now around the corner from here and that for us we no longer our house and our theater are no longer separate it's one if we need to recurse or do something and something is not happening here we know we're going to be there if we need to host somebody there is great if you're working really late and people in the morning need to come back they can speak in our house if we are hosting a big festival here and we need to find places for people to sleep we know that we have a shower and two bathrooms over there so they can sleep in the theater and they have a home to come to in the morning to have breakfast everything else this is what I'm trying to this is what I feel is resonating and it's the same thing with children so we can have collective kindergarten and if we are having classes for adults we can have classes for children because I think actually children can teach us a whole lot but my dog teaches me a lot I can only imagine what a child learned to me and it's one of the reasons Brian and I we never engaged into having children because we couldn't figure out how in this crazy setup of our life possibly add a child because I know that then we would have plugged ourselves into needing to have jobs real jobs that pay money in order to support this so we want to figure out the way to change it any ideas, any thoughts any suggestions for me would be great but of course we will have a forum for this specific subject later as some of you brought up that that is such an important matter that it requires its own environment which we will host later and we're planning to go to Lawrence and visit Nick and their development we're going to be applying for the grant so we can learn from one another and maybe not make some of those dates and of course this is also just the rich history of ensembles and collective creation I mean again I'll go back to quick connotations, easy associations but collective creation often brings up 68 brings up communal communal living communal living brings up the notions of children intergenerations of all of this stuff there is a history there that is on the one hand a beautiful alternative and a beautiful parallel tradition in which to draw strength from and is also something in which it is too easy to set it up as an opposition to the society and the mainstream dominant ways of practice and I think what we're talking about here is the much more complex notions in which as Nick put it you are creating your own conditions to struggle and to live the lives we want to live as Teresa and Rose and Lizzie were bringing up in terms of how you start living the utopia shapes your politics and your politics shape your living together and that's very much what Elia is talking about is the conditions in which we want to be living, the ways in which we see politics that might not be the same for everybody else and that's why I do want to bring in other voices I know we have Asa we have Brian Sonja Wallace and Tanya who we got to see the performance in the parking lot last night so perhaps maybe this speaks a bit with Nick's doing Crying One along this two mile stretch right Nick? yeah this two mile stretch sorry I'm muted yeah this is two miles so Tanya's work is sort of psych-generated as you put it yesterday Tanya do you feel like jumping in here or no? I'm happy to can we put up some stuff in the web I don't want to explain people they can go to the website as well or however people want to do it but we can go to a website and your website is operadellespacio.org operadellespacio.org and then there's also a YouTube channel and I'll talk between both sites can you say any more Mark? Sure opera, del, o-p-e-r-a d-l-e-s-p-a-c-i-o dot-for um the title thanks if we could pull up there's a YouTube channel as well maybe we can have a little bit of it yeah we have right down here in YouTube we got all the social media going on so the title comes uh translation the Italian word for opera means work work of the space right in the yellow that's the YouTube automatically starting work thanks what was the quote that we were doing with Nancy Keystone this morning about unknowing so long unknowing till the end with no site is that what it was? no end in sight is that what it was Michael? so on unknowing till the end no end in sight kind of another thing theater of searches that we brought up yesterday Wendell Beaver's provocation about where can it be deep diving within institutions the unknowing of that you were bringing up of what it is to be a woman the unknowing of being the director in the room of actors thinking that their director is really crazy the unknowing of a mother wanting to continue in this work the unknowing of the work wanting to support a mother it's all searching and it does seem to be without like ending so I'll just fill her in I'll just go yeah I'm ready we're ready what's going to happen is there's going to be a video playing in the background while I'm talking I'll just pull the volume down a bit so you can toggle in between my voice and the images and instead of talking about what we do I'm actually interested in talking about how we do it as an ensemble one of the challenges that keeps coming up is the desire to have the communal living and that group of people are completely dedicated to each other and that's just not possible and over the many years of making work and committing, asking people to commit a great deal of themselves to the work and then me intrinsically trying to give them as everything I can people leave and move on in the beginning when I was young I got angry and I didn't respond well and I had to learn to let go of that and accept that people are going to come and go that's part of the journey and I needed to learn how to be gracious and supportive of that and allow instead that it be not a strict ensemble but a network a network of people who are really interested in this work interested in the vocabulary, interested in the community but realistically have other things they want to do as well as artists and as people and so what I've tried to do is set it up so that people who are interested will come and train initially and kind of get to know people people have been with me for a while kind of get a sense of the other person how does it feel and then I'll say okay I'm going to work on a project and it's going to be three months of your life and it's going to be really intense and you're going to have to figure out your job situation and your money situation if you want to be a part of this and I give people plenty of time in advance so everybody says I'm in, I'm not in I need a break from you I need a break from the group for a while, whatever and so then we begin and then for those three to six months whatever that project is I'm expecting a full commitment and I will give back that full commitment as well and at the end of that six months we all take a break from each other okay maybe a month or two later we'll come back and say alright we'll start some training again see if we want to open it up to more people who's in town and with us for a while we'll send me emails and say hey I want to come back and I'll say okay great we're in the midst of something it's not a good time in three or four months we'll be opening it up again and so we just came out of we did a big project last spring and over the summer we had a project that got cancelled the producers didn't have their act together so we had a new company into it that was painful but ultimately everyone in the company thanked me and so we're going to be opening it up again and I've met some people in the rooms who I know from other places and I've said you know I might want to think about maybe checking this out we have a new project coming up in January it's a new opera working with the composer and the librettist the librettist is a company member I grew my association with Cal State to become a company in residency we have a dean and a chair we're very supportive but I think the biggest thing has been how many people in your company who's there this week or how many people are in this show right now that's who it is the questions that were raised Brian gave me the book I asked to look at the book from there that we wanted to incorporate and the question of what do we mean by ensemble and whenever people ask that notion of ensemble for me really is who's in the room right now and like was being mentioned by many people it's what each person brings into the room I have a concept I have an idea of something I'm interested in and if people in the network are interested in that they'll come and join and dedicate themselves to that if they're not they're like nah that doesn't interest me sometimes things come because company members will be like you know we've only been doing this street stuff now and I'm really bored can we do a text piece sure let's do a text piece you know and then a script will appear or something will be created collectively and then after three months six months of that everyone's like yeah let's go back and do art walk again art walk's been a great discovery this is Meet Me at Metro that was done for a number of years but we started doing the art walks and we were surprised how we were surprised that there were no performers at art walk there's a lot of music, there's a lot of drinking there's a lot of galleries and there's not a lot of live performance happening and so we would just show up at street corners and perform viewpoints based site generated work and then drunk people would join us we're like this is awesome we want to join how cool is that and we figured you know there's got to be something about what we're doing that drunk people feel like it's okay to join us part of the reason we got the Meet Me at Metro is we just did some grill-less stuff on the map and we were like what are we doing what are we doing we're doing Meet Me at Metro we just did some grill-less stuff on the Metro one day and we got caught we get in trouble a lot with the police Pasadena in Colorado but we just tell them you know we're doing performance art and they just say okay please do that somewhere else but every one of these places non-performers wanted to join in and I just thought that was really lovely that happens if there's something right about what they're doing that it doesn't feel exclusive but it feels welcoming so yeah that's a little bit about what we do there's you know the social media up the wadzu but I felt it was more important to share about how how we're working through absolutely again it's that good back to what we were talking about yesterday the notions of ensemble that are encountering ensemble the very almost trite definitions that John hints at the beginning of his book where ensemble is just a long standing company of actors and you're obviously Tanya mentioning the similar issue it has nothing to do with the amount of people or the groups of people that are with you at the moment it has more to do with the work that you're sharing with each other and then trying to share with other people a community that's not out there right now in a nice black box theater and perhaps that maybe leads into you Brian if you want to share I'm under no pressure if you don't can I ask first of all that everyone just come closer where you are in this space just come up closer you can bring chairs if you like you don't have to sit on the floor I know people have been sitting on the floor for a while but just come on in closer we've been here for a couple of days there we go come on in sit or stand or whatever it may be cool thank you I tend to work a lot I'll try to speak to what everybody said hello I tend to work a lot as a theater of the oppressed practitioner or applied theater as the less scary version is called that you're allowed to do at things like colleges which Michael was kind of hinting at that work where it interacts a lot with policy interacts a lot with kind of the lived experiences and people in their lives and trying to bring theater to that and what I just did is how I go so for a while would start every workshop he would make everyone come closer he would make them make that choice to engage or not and so I don't have particular things that I'm going to say in the framework of the last project that I did which was in an affordable housing unit in Boyle Heights with a mix of sort of Mexican immigrant parents low income, Chicano kids who've grown up all of their lives in the States you know with babies nursing as they're doing scenes that kind of thing so it kind of relates to what we've been talking about and I just want to share some unknowings with you guys and it might be a response so I think it relates to the idea of family within an ensemble and this is actually going to families and saying will you be coming ensemble so that was my first kind of thought about this was what you're doing isn't saying I'm looking for actors and then we're going to form this sort of community based on the fact that we all like this thing you're going to people and you're saying hey I want to work with this community and often what I found in doing this work is you get families and you get especially within the Latino community it's cousins and grandparents and kids and you don't necessarily even know that they're related but you realize you're like oh I've been working in kind of two extended families through this entire work and I've been working with this community and really getting the whole community you know you're working with two families and that's great in a way because what you're doing is you're not coming in and saying I'm a hegemonic white dude and I'm going to come speak Spanish at you for three months and then leave you're saying look you're already a family I'm coming in and I'm bringing this thing I'm bringing this training I'm bringing something that I want to offer you maybe you're already an ensemble maybe you're already this community I don't have to make you a community I'm trying to bring some techniques and more than that just say hey what do you want to talk about and here's a framework for how we can talk about that and that's kind of interesting I talked to a friend who I did a long formal project in Ecuador that was about theater of the oppressed with oil drilling in an indigenous community and he totally rejected that he said that's bullshit and what theater of the oppressed tends to do is you go and you group people based on these sort of tertiary aspects so you're saying oh you're all the same because you're indigenous because you live in this community because you live in this housing complex and that's not really what's the most important to people that's something that we can point to very visibly and say oh yes this is your unifying factor but to say that that is a pre-existing community and they exist before they exist after isn't necessarily true and so there is an element maybe of creating that ensemble work of making a community even within what we have this preconceived notion of being existing communities and there's something in there as well what I wrote down is family within an ensemble versus the family as an ensemble as well I think it has to do with that idea of separation of life and art are we building a village are we coming into a village that's pre-existing I've done a lot of community development work and a lot of that talk is gentrification and that's something that's going on in Hollywood to a massive degree and so I think it's an important question to raise that is it a good idea for Hollywood not all of Hollywood but for this artist's village who is that displacing who are the people who are here now how are they served by the work that's going on can we serve them better with the work that's going on or is this something where we're saying well we work here so we want to live here too so you guys can go up to Pasadena you guys can go elsewhere and that's something that I think is an issue as artists that we need to not be afraid of we need to be politically engaged with how the spaces that we're in the work that we're doing are affecting the people who already live there and we have these great ideas and there's a space to invite people as well so those are some things some questions I think that it is interesting the idea of ensemble just being as someone was saying in an interviewer book you mentioned kind of almost facetiously just an issue of time it's interesting to see coming out of this work people going on and doing other theater projects people going on you know the housing complex I work with like the kids all play basketball together and that's what they did and that playing basketball we played a lot of sound ball in the work and so you see them playing sound ball and then also playing basketball and so it just kind of entered the lexicon sound ball being like when you pass the sound to them oh I started thinking so it kind of enters the lexicon of their play and isn't necessarily a thing of and now we are doing theater it becomes a thing of okay and this is this is another thing that people know about them and it's something where I think a lot of times theater would be oppressed and anytime you have sort of instructor and instructive particularly where there are class differences national differences race differences et cetera et cetera the idea of invitation is really important and also the idea of kind of a little bit what you were talking about you're sort of inviting people to join in and to respond and to give their own thing but you're not necessarily forcing something onto them and I'll say kind of one one more thing I think that's the idea that in a lot of Boal's work that kind of points in it the meat of it is that there isn't an audience and actors and that he talks about the idea of spect actors which is you present maybe a short scene that reflects the community's issues as you talk to them probably as community members performing and then you say to everyone right so this is a problem let's talk about that problem okay now how do we solve that don't tell me get up an act in this scene get up and make your own scene in response show us the solution show us the image of the problem and the image of the solution he talks in that language a lot and it's an idea that I think is something that's interesting and to be explored where we talked a lot about ensemble in the last two days but we haven't really talked about audience and how audience fits into ensemble and we have regulars and we have donors and we have supporters and we have relationships with audience members and that's something that I think you mentioned your principles and all that like we're very conscious of in some ways but it's definitely a question that I have particularly in work where you're asking you're going into a community you're separating out actors and audience but then you're asking them not to be separate and that community is something that goes on to your work and continues after and they're kind of their own ensemble so I think my question to all of you how can the audience what we think of as the audience be part of that ensemble how do you create a micro ensemble within the space of the performance again the idea of time maybe enters into that you have two hours to make an ensemble go how does that work those are my underlings thank you do you feel like responding I know we're getting to the end of a long weekend and I'm really aware of that well we're really almost done with Rachel on viral so if anybody needs to do it please do Rachel I just want to bring in your voice because you've been a lovely beautiful face there but we haven't gotten to see you speak and I just want to give you a chance to respond in any way you want or to share some of your thoughts on collaborating and maybe just identify who you are for anybody who doesn't know who you are sure hi I just have a very surreal experience watching in this way and particularly thinking about collectivity in this collection from afar and it's appropriate somehow because I'm a playwright and performance maker I work in a lot of different ways I experiment a lot with my writing I'm not part of an ensemble right now or any kind of set collective I collaborate with ensembles a lot so I gravitate towards these kinds of gatherings because I love collaborative performance making but it feels kind of meta to me in this conversation but like out of it literally miles away I'm in the ensemble but so all of this is just making me think of the word paradox and how what I gravitate towards the performance making are these sort of contradictory things of meeting like wanting to be in that practice of collaboration but also finding myself as kind of a floater for the most part geographically and otherwise but meeting both we used to be bouncing between them and not thinking too far into one only and you know the beautiful performance at the beginning I just was like I just want to throw everything I'm thinking about children and you know it's something that's on my mind a lot in terms of someone who was very much like children one day and the clock is ticking but not knowing how to not yet being able to financially sustain that in the practice that I'm pursuing so structures structures for organizations for ensemble are something very much searching for sustainable ones and I gather some of that has come up in earlier conversations I'm sorry I haven't been able to tune into everything but you know I'm very interested in what models you all are finding out there that has been sustainable for you so far or seem to be on a path towards sustainability not there yet that's the thing that's coming up for me and all of these different threads that was there absolutely but as a writer you've been working quite a lot with a number of different people throughout the country and maybe you could just talk to that or talk to the high project in Los Angeles so you could give us a model of something that's been working for you sure sure yeah two recent projects one is the high project which is coming up this week in Los Angeles tomorrow evening at Silver Lake Library and also Saturday at Silver Lake Library and then Friday evening at the Wolk downtown in a bay there's information on Facebook I can pass it around through Brian but that is that's kind of a great temporary ensemble that has emerged through Padua Playwrights I lived in Nellie for six years and actually was that all you had talking about the how much life you spend in your car yeah I couldn't tell so I think one of my cues to happiness Nellie was not owning a car I actually lived there for six years without a car for the most part and I think that was what kept me sane because I was walking a lot and taking this subway and getting by and it was a different pace because it was a healthier pace but anyway the high project Padua Playwright there's sort of been a temporary ensemble that has formed through that project and we're actually looking a lot at collectivity in the place themselves thinking about bees and the social behaviors of bees and what is happening in the bees disappearing and how humans relate to that and how collectivity of humans rely on that so these kind of interspecies interdependencies for collectivities and what happens when one starts to go away that's happening this week those are live performances they're working progress and they'll continue to grow and come back probably in the spring or summer and then my most recent kind of full length project has been with an ensemble here in Minneapolis called Supergroup they're kind of largely dance based but very movement oriented not specific threat of dance kind of exploratory movement practices and they work with text often but they never work with the collaborating playwright and I was really interested in working with them in part because as a writer I'm very curious about breaking open this idea of story and kind of looking at how else we can get that story or get deeper with the story then only sort of action based narratives I'm just curious what else is in the skin of that so working with Supergroup we were really movement and text we were very much in conversation with each other throughout the whole process and we were letting them inform each other and all the elements we were collaborating on all the elements the visual role of it and sound and everything so working with them has been awesome we've worked together about a year and we're continuing to work together in this next year to make another piece sort of building on the things we need to follow together and I can see the appeal of being in an ensemble where you do work with those same people over and over you can just keep going so that's sort of where I'm at that's lovely thank you Rachel going deeper and deeper is really the point of what we've been doing here over the weekend and it's just a little bit of a drop down into something deeper and we're going to keep going deeper and deeper throughout our lives and our journeys as human beings but I think that I'm looking around and seeing a lot of tired faces and a lot of people that have absorbed a lot of information and shared a lot and gone through some stuff and from the thing to the stuff and so I feel like there's clearly no wrapping up but around the teapot there's no sort of summation there's no sort of practical solutions it was really a chance for us to all get together and meet and experience each other through discourse and through practice as we've done over the weekend and unless somebody really feels like they want to add or do something we can just kind of slowly wrap it up I want to thank you and all of you thank you very much so I think we'll just send it here and thank Rachel for coming and Nick and Michael earlier for joining us and I do just want to thank HowlRound and HowlRoundTV and the people out there for all the work they've done in the creating of the theater commons on the web at least and allowing us to broadcast I also want to thank Katherine absolutely for inviting us to envision and organize create this experience with whom the idea was kind of germinated the whole weekend has been has been a collaborative effort for four months in the making and one that we've been generating and germinating and making richer and it's only started to come to life now with all the people in the room and all the other people that have joined us over the weekend so we're looking forward to seeing where it goes okay I've worked with a lot of people out of there before it is it is awkward to be here it's awkward to be here I know it's hard it's hard and I've friends who teach there doing the reverse commute it's like it was a hard decision for me to go to the ballet but I still have classes at home so I do like that you don't want me to do that I don't know about I'm very struck about grad school in that I think it's really critical to go into that tattooing environment and not have any distractions because it's really it's you never get to talk to time again and so when I can see that we're trying to do both I find it detrimental on both sides both sides suffer from you and because I also teach friends and you know they first come to me and they're like I have free jobs, that I'm in school at the end of the year we'll be relooking and looking at you and I watch them slowly fall apart and we have these meetings we need to not really delve into it as an institution you're really nice but on the other hand I think for yourself as a student I remember talking about the way that you are I'm not going to lie but close enough really get the point, see something come to the event that's great I think that I think red cat maybe a bit harder I think it's over now and the way that they try is that technical scenarios they put a little time as much as it's a break in so yeah that's just my feeling about red soul because I tell you, when I left New York I left my career I was just thinking you're taking off the locker you're doing would the passage you said to be there 12 or 13 years that's what makes me think but I couldn't do it even on breaks I was back in the old days and I think institutionally gave me more money than I was going to be here standing for all this shit I was going to have to I was coming out of the basement and brought it I was just thinking you're cheating you're cheating you're doing 12 you're doing 12 I was talking to the professor Sharon and we just spent the other day and we had like parallel stories about New York how we felt that the truth in any European country the struggles with like the social faux pas we both did people ask you would you like this song or and you're like oh I'm not supposed to have an opinion oh I why did you ask me there's this whole shit oh no it's where you better have an opinion you're not a citizen of an idiot if you don't have some critical thoughts yeah it's quite extraordinary you know yes doesn't mean yes but nobody ever would say no okay that's weird just say no and then I'll argue with you trying to change your mind but that's no for me and then we go on no that's the New Yorker and out here it's like yes yes yes and then they don't return your mind so you're like why are they saying yes every so long there's this great cartoon I've been working in Houston I've been working in Houston there's this great cartoon New York in LA New York New York New York New York out of the poise they said have a nice day they said have a nice day and mother would be the speaker yeah it's like this is good every time yes what would you do on Monday? oh just enjoy yay I love you so beautiful what a great recession to be the one you seem to love doing good for sessions and I like that I love scenes really just this that contact I like the energy of the people they're very managed and they're not showcased but just doing things they're like that sounds great how do you do it? well I get a review and there isn't a long just review that's good I love you so much I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you Thank you for that. Thank you for that. Thank you so much. I got to go. I got to go. I wanted to let you go. I actually really know you know. We're at each other's everywhere. Long live. What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? What's going on? You know. We'll let you know that your boat is not so tired or we don't feel at all. We wanna make this even more closer and more comfortable. Excellent. I was doing it. That's it. That's it. America. America is the best. So, that's me on my way to America. America? I love it. Love it.


Okay, hello everyone and thank you so much for joining us tonight. I'm going to get started as it's five o'clock. Welcome everyone to the money management webinar. I'm your host, my name is Shamima and I'm a student recruitment officer of the University of Greenwich. And you're also joined by my colleague, you bet who's going to be managing the Q&A. If you have any questions during the presentation or even afterwards feel free to put them in the Q&A box or the chat box. So I'm just going to start off with housekeeping rules. As you've joined this meeting with Zoom, if you wish to say anonymous you can do so by changing your identity, so changing your name. Please just make sure that you join with our video and that you turn off your audio as well just to make sure that you can have a better experience in listening to this webinar. And like I've mentioned before, if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the Q&A function or the colleague that will answer your questions. And if you do want to come on camera and ask us questions at the end, please make sure they change your background so your identity will remain anonymous. I'm going to give a couple of things just to mention, please do not share your telephone or phone number in the chat box, sorry in the chat function, or share your email address, any photos, any home addresses, or use inappropriate languages. And make sure that you do not reveal any identity of other attendees if they want to remain anonymous. Let's get started. So what is the whole point of this webinar? So this webinar will be giving you some advice on how you can manage that money that you receive as a maintenance learner or tuition learner when you go to postgraduate. And this is an estimate, this is to estimate your income needed to survive at universities because there are various expenses that you need to consider when you come and study at any university, not just ours. And it's also to identify your personal attitude towards money management and spending. So are you a type of person that as soon as you receive that money, spends it all splashes and to go shopping, or are you a more careful person where it saves up, knows what they need to spend on and how to make sure to manage their needs and their wants as well. And also for us to give you any tips or budgeting tools to make sure that if you do want to track your money and your spending, you know how to do so. And also learn how to make some extra money while studying as well. Let's go off with the key fact that you might have known already or you might haven't. So 70% of students wish they had better financial education before going to university, definitely that that is myself as well. Sometimes our schools don't teach us completely how we should be managing our money. But obviously that is a learning curve for us when we come to university and hopefully this webinar will give you a good understanding. And you're not winning that 70%. Then we have 75% of students that end up working a part time or temporary job to supplement their student loan. Okay, because that money that you receive, trust me will not cover your costs, because you will see that especially if you're living out of a home that you need to pay your rent, your groceries or your travel, and even for sometimes equipment that is required within your courses. And the average student loan debt back in 2021 was 45. And bearing in mind, this is nationally and not specifically for London, for London is I think about around 50k and 75% of students are unlikely to pay off their student loan within the 30 years of agreement. Okay, so that's why we want to make sure that you understand the value of money and we want to change your attitude. So I have a couple of scenarios and I want you to put in the Q&A, sorry in the chat box, what is your attitudes towards money? The first scenario is you get 50% for your birthday and what would you do with that 50 pound, sorry not 50%, 50 pound, what would you do with that 50 pound? Would you A, hit the shops and spend it all, B, buy a treat and save the rest, or C, put it all in the bank for a rainy day. I'm just quickly going to open the chat and see what people's opinions are towards that first question. Okay. All right, okay, so we've got a mix of answers, so we've got a couple of people that are saying B and C, which is good. So you have a list of good understanding of the money and how should we spend. Okay, interesting. Okay, so most of you have said B or C. Okay, let's do the next question. So the next scenario is, do you know how much you spend in a week? A, no, I haven't got a clue, B, sometimes I know but don't often keep track and C is yes, I'm very organised and know exactly what and when I spend my money on. So again, let's see what people are saying. Okay, interesting. Again, very similar to the first question, which is B and C. All right, I just made a much too big. Okay. And then last scenario is what best describes you as a spender. A, I think I should be more careful, B, I'm always in control and C, I'd rather not spend much at all. Okay, a couple of viewer things. C, anyone else wants to put an answer forward? Okay. So again, we're getting this similar type of answers from the previous scenarios, which is B and C. All right then. So based on what your answers you have given, I'm just going to tell you a little bit of what that means. So if most of your answers were B, then you're a say B spender.  Make sure that you don't overspend though. Okay. I know sometimes you might have those odd impulses and want to go and buy a new laptop when you might not need one or a MacBook straight away, where you could have another brand that does the same exact job. Okay. But you know how to keep on continuing to keep a good balance as well. And then if most of you have put C, then you are definitely a super saver. You really know and enjoy saving the money. It gives a sense of power, control and security. Who doesn't want that. And then, but are you, you're paying your way when hanging out with friends though. So make sure that you don't rely on the spender Holic's friend who pay for your for your drinks when you go out for your food. When you go again when you go out, you want to make sure that some time to time you want to treat your friends as well. I'm not saying every day, but here and there you want to make sure that you go and treat your friends as two. All right, great. That's fantastic. So let's move on to the next part. So this again, I'm going to go for some couple of scenarios and I want to see what you guys think about the scenario. So this is the student violence calculator. If you've got, if you can do this, if you can go to Google and just type student violence calculator, it will take you to the government website where you will be able to see that if your household income is this amount, how much maintenance loan that you might receive. Okay. So this is a good way to estimate. Okay. I'm going to get this amount of money. This is how much is to spend it on certain items. And this is how much is to save. Okay. I'm going to go through some scenarios to see based on these people circumstances, how much maintenance loan they could receive. Let's start off with Oliver. He lives in London and is studying in London as well. And his household income is 25,000. So based on that, how much maintenance loan do you think he will receive? Do you think it's A, which is 7,450, B, which is 3,516, C, which is 11,001 pound, or D, which is 9,488, and lastly E, which is 7,987. So he lives in London and studies in London as well. And his household income is within the threshold, which is 25,000. Any guesses for anyone? Okay. So let's have a look. So he will receive, if this works perfectly, he will receive 7,987 pounds up for his maintenance loan. Okay. So this is not exactly the lowest amount and it's not the highest amount. It's an average of how much he could get based on where he's studying and where he's also staying and his household income as well. So next person. So we've got Minters that are home is in Leeds. Okay. But she is studying and living in London. So she's not staying at home. She's, she's, she's an accommodation place, which is based in London, at London University. However, her household income is a little bit more compared to Oliver, which is 35,000. So based on that scenario, how much do you think Minter will receive? Anyone? Any guesses? Okay. Someone said D, so the 9,488. Anyone wants to contradict me about or agree? Yes. Okay. So most people are saying D. So let's see. So Minter will receive actually the highest amount or one of the highest amount, which is the 11,001 pound. So the reason why is because she is going from a pace. So she's going from somewhere from outside of London to live in London and study in London. But as you guys all know, London is very expensive. Even though her household income is a little bit more compared to Oliver, she still will receive a higher amount compared to him because she's living outside. So she has to think about accommodation, rent, groceries, and all of that, all of that. So that is why this is in finance. It takes all of that into consideration and decided to give her that amount. So next person. So we've got Khaleefa's home is in London. She's studying and living in Bristol, though. And her household income is 18,000. Okay. So now this is kind of the reverse for Minters. So she, her home is in London, but she is outside of London to study and staying. And her household income is 18,000. So based on that, what amount do you think she will receive? Anyone any guesses? We've got three answers left. Okay. So I'm on for the 11K. The 11K has already gone to Minter. So what are the amounts she thinks she could receive? So we've got still A, which is 7,450, B, which is 3,516, or D, which is 9,488. Okay. So a lot of people are going with D. Okay, let's see what hers. Right. So you guys are correct. She will receive the 9,488 because the government is taking into account the fact that she does live in London and her household income is 18,000. She won't receive the higher amount, which is 11,000 because of the fact that she's going to live in Bristol. So it's not as expensive as London. Okay, perfect. So the next scenario, we have Diane, who lives in Kent and studying in, ooh, that got covered because I don't know. Okay, I think she is studying in London and her household income is 40,000. I'm just going to double check again. Oh, I can't see that. Okay, yes. So she lives in Kent. She's studying in London and her household income is 40,000. So out of the remaining two, which one do you think she will receive? Okay, a lot of you are saying A. Okay, some people are saying B as well. All right, let's have a look. So she will actually receive the A amount. So she is, because she lives in Kent and again she's living in London and London is very expensive. And even though her household income is above the threshold, she will receive the 7,450. Okay, so there are a lot of contributing factors that go into making a decision of how much maintenance you will receive. So feel free to always go and check on the student finance calculator if you're unsure of how much you can receive and then put an application for them. Okay, last one, apologies that I got covered again. So Pam's home is in London. She is studying in London as well, but she's thinking their minimum no means tested loaner. So how much, which is the last answer, but with the no mean tested loan is the 3,516. Okay, so this is the minimum that you could get. So as you can see, regardless of your income, you can still get household income. You can still take out and maintenance. Okay, so we've seen different scenarios of the of these different people, the household income and then the amount that they could get. But again, the best thing would be to go and check out the student finance calculator where you can put your own household income where you will be studying. And if you're staying in or out of outside of London, and potentially see how much amount you could get. Okay, so the next part is why budgeting matters. Okay, so budgeting matters because it helps you plan how you manage your money while studying at universities. As mentioned before, they are going to be situations where you will, you could run out of that money that you've been given by this, the government, and you will need to be able to pay rent, pay for grocery travel, and the equipment that you might need for your course. Okay, so that's why budgeting is very, very crucial. It also helps to control your spending. Okay. So it gives you a understanding also for the future when you're not studying anymore, but you are working, and you know exactly how much you need to spend, how much you want to spend on something if you want to go shopping, and also to maintain and to also have some savings for, for example, if you want to go and buy a house later on. But it also helps you track your income and expenses. And it helps you prepare for emergencies because you never know an emergency could happen.  Imagine if you've got any sign coming up, and your laptop just broke, what are you going to do? Have you got money to go and repair that? Okay. You're not going to be able to save money. Okay. So it's not just about expenses, but it's also about saving money for something that you want to buy later or you want to consider putting, for example, deposit for a house. Okay. So I'm going to talk about some budgeting techniques, or I've gone a bit too far. Okay, so budget techniques that we have. So we've got, for example, the traditional budgeting technique where, so this is technique is what, where you list your income, you list expenses, and find the difference. Then you set goals for how much you want to spend in each category, such as rent, grocery, and transport or travel. Then we've got the 80-20, and this technique you spend 80% of your income and save the 20%. Or the technique that is the kind of optimal technique we would say, and depends on each person to be honest, is the 50-30-20 rule. So this is a simplified technique where you break down your expenses into three categories.  So 50% of your income should go towards your needs. 30% should go towards your wants.  Okay. So this is kind of like the budgeting technique that we would recommend. Okay. So you've got the, so again, yeah, 50% that go into your needs. So that's rent, groceries, travel, equipment, and then 30% of which is your want, and 20% is your savings. Okay. Now, okay. As you can see, we've divided what are your needs, which is spread through the books, utilities, your wants, data, shoes, a new phone, new laptop savings, to be savings towards a deposit. It could be also saving towards a new phone or a new laptop, or saving for an emergency fund, for example, laptop breaks, or your phone breaks, or something else. Okay. Now I'm going to go back to kind of like the case that is that we mentioned before, and we're going to look at these people's expenses. And with your help, I want you to tell me if they are budgeting well or not really. I want you to tell me if a cliff is monthly expenses. So how spending, so she receives maintenance loan, if I'm not wrong, she received the 9488 pound per year. Okay. Bearing in mind that this amount doesn't come in one go. It will come in three instalments. So the first instalment in September, the next in January, and the last in April. So that is only for a year though. In the next year, you will apply again and that amount could change again based on your circumstances and your household income. So she has all these costs, so she's got rent. Okay, so she's studying in London. Okay, no, sorry. Her home is in London, but she's studying in Bristol and staying in Bristol. So she pays rent. Okay. Then she's going to membership, entertainment, transport, groceries, her mobile phone, shopping and socialising. All right. So with the 9488, that comes to 790 pound at 66 pence per month. Okay. And based on her cost, we can see that her footwork is above her income. Okay. So technically, she would be in a 3,000, sorry, not 3,354 pound and 94 pence in depth. Okay. Because her cost is way more than her income. So she will need to get a part-time job to supplement her for the cost that she has. Okay. So definitely rent is a need. You'll need to pay your rent membership. I would say is more of a want because you could go, for example, join a couple of classes that the university offers. Some of them are free as well. Okay. You don't have to go and get the gym membership from pure gym or active gym or whether other like Virgin James. Okay. You don't need that. You could go also outside, go for a run or do some activities outside. Trust me, there is a lot of options out there. Now, entertainment, again, that's a want. Okay. You don't need to have a Netflix subscription, a hoonus subscription at Amazon Prime. You don't need that. There are other ways to watch TV. Free, good, old, free view TV is a way for entertainment as well. Transport, that is definitely a need. Grocery, that is a need as well. Mobile, that's a need. And then we've got shopping, that's a want. Okay. So bearing in mind when do you want to go and buy the new laptop or do new phone or new shoes? Okay. And again, socialising is also a want. You don't have to go out every single day to go and see your friends. You want to go once or twice a week, not every day. Okay. Now, let's look at the next scenario. So we've got Oliver, who lives in London, so his home is in London and is also living and studying in London. And his household income is 25,000. And from our previous scenarios, we've seen that he receives a maintenance loan of £7,987, which monthly comes up to £665.58. Okay. So that's his monthly income. Let's have a look at his cost. So his cost is, he doesn't have rent. The reason why? Because he's staying at home. So that is something to bearing in mind. He is very useful to stay at home. Definitely, I stayed at home and he has saved me so much money. And again, I could have used that money that I could have put in rent. I've used it to them. But if I could actually afford to go and get a gym membership, or I could afford to get a Netflix account or a Amazon Prime account. Okay. Or I could have pulled more money towards transport or get, I don't know, the latest phone or something else. Okay. So we can see that his gym membership is the same, entertainment, transport, and all of these, as you can see, are wants and needs as well. And his total cost is coming up as £648.97. So at the moment, he's saving about £16.61. So as you can see, he is making a saving after all those costs. But of course, it helps when you have a little bit more. Who doesn't want to save a little bit more? So when you're comparing both of their cases, we can see that Canifa needs to get a part-time job to make sure that those expenses are being covered. And Oliver is not needing so much of a part-time job. However, if Canifa put towards, she used the 50, 30 and 20 method, so she wouldn't realise that a 50% she needed at 458.38, a 30% is 275. And then a 20% is 183. So make sure that when you do receive that maintenance note, you understand what your expenses are going to be, what you want, what your needs and what your savings are going to be. Okay. Okay. So from the Student Money Survey back in 2020, you can see that these are kind of average amounts. Again, these are nationally, this is not based on what it's under. Now expenses have gone up in London. So rent is usually £418. Then you could have grocery, which is £100 a pound per month. And then you could have, for example, coming out to £46, £43. So there are various budgeting tools that you could have a look and see how much you're putting towards all of your expenses. And yeah. So some budgeting tools that you could have access to is a great way to go on Google and find a budgeting template. Okay. These are free for anyone to use. It's not specifically for university students, but it's also for anyone, for example myself as well.  So you have all those links and we will have also at the end of the presentation, all the links on the things that we've mentioned that you can go and look for. So something to bear in mind when you come to universities, the first thing that you would want to do is open a student bank account. Okay. But there are a couple of things that you need to consider very carefully when opening a student bank account. The first thing is an overdraft. Okay. As soon as you come to university, you get all of these universities, so all these banks are telling you, come and join us, we've got this, we've got that, the overdraft is 2,000, some of us is 1,000, some of us are 500. Okay. So if you hit the overdraft, please make sure that you know how much interest you need to pay, or how quickly you need to pay that money back. Some things that different banks do is also some extras. So they give you different perks. For example, a 16 to 25 railcard, which is a great way to save on travel. Because if you join them with your oyster card, if you come to study in London, you can get a third of your off-pick travel and a third of your monthly travel. Okay. So that is a great way. So that's the kind of something that I used personally. So I used to travel off-pick from zone 2 to 3. I think it used to be, usually it's a pound 15. I was a pound 55. And I used to pay just a pound literally for my travel. So that was very helpful. And it reduced a lot of my costing. Some others do, for example, you can get free Amazon Prime, a taste card, there are so many incentives that different banks give. So have a look at the types of incentives. And make sure that also, you've got a bank close by to where you're staying or studying, because if there is an emergency, you can go to the bank and get that emergency sorted out. So here are some top picks of the different banks that kind of give different incentives and the different perks that they give out. So we've got, for example, HACC, which has a 0% overdraft. First you get 1000, second you get 2000, and third you get up to 3000. That's very good just to think about.  So there are various incentives that you can see the banks are offering. Please bear in mind that these can change when you go and start university in September. So when you sign September, you will get those information and you can see all the banks close by to you. And you can choose based on the perks or the overdraft or the terms and conditions that they offer. Now, how do you, oh, sorry, my button doesn't work all the time. Let's go back. Okay. So how to avoid bad debt. Okay. So don't borrow or you can't pay back. Okay. So that is literally the first rule. So if you can't pay back, don't borrow. Okay. So if you've taken an overdraft with a high interest charge, okay. Yeah, that goes back to the first question. If I can't pay that interest charge back, then don't take the overdraft. Avoid borrowing to fund staples purchases and pay off your overdraft balance in monthly in front. Okay. So if you've taken an overdraft, it could happen because of an emergency. Just make sure that you're able to pay off in full. If you do have, if you're not very good at managing the balances, however, if you do use it and you know how to use it, please make sure that you use it wisely. Avoid, avoid, sorry, avoid payday loans and focus more on your needs and not what you want. I think it's very in mind when it comes to when it comes to the university and to any university, we realize that living away from home is a big change. And we tend to go with going and getting take away. Okay. We tend to go out very often. We tend to go get Uber. It's not because of all these different delivery companies is so much easier to get further very quickly. But as you know, delivery costs, even if it's a one or two pound delivery, on top of that, you get in, you get in the mill that you could easily make a home for so much more cheaper. And you're saving money on top of that. And it will taste so much more better as well. So for example, if you go to Nando's, you get a half a chicken, five, one in a drink that could cost about 25 pound. And on top of that, that takes about 30 to 40 minutes. Whereas if you buy a whole chicken, again with rice, one in drink, that will only cost you seven pound. Okay, you don't have to use the whole chicken. It could use the legs, the wings, and then you can save the rest for another time. And then it will only cost you seven pounds, which is so much more cheaper compared to 25. And it takes only about 20 to 30 minutes.  Trust me, there are so many different options that you can make at home. Very quick, very cheap and so much more taste deal. Another example is going to Subway. It's easier to go and get in a Subway mill during lunchtime. Six inch with crisp and drink and cookie that could cost up to 12 pound and takes about 20 play minutes. You could do the same. And I actually did that over the weekend as well. I literally went to as a test guide, got a submarine roll and some things crisped for drinking and cookies. It tasted so much more better than the actual silver because it was fresh the ingredients I just bought it there and came home and just made it. And it cost me like it didn't cost me that much. So here it costs eight pound and it was very quick to make as well. Now the next thing is five guys. So a cheeseburger fries and a shake could cost up to 25 pound and each takes about 30 to 40 minutes, whereas you can go and get that fresh meat. And then you can make a shake at home, which will cost you only 10 pound and very quick to make. So you can see home delivery. Yes, it's very tempting because very quick, you don't have to even get out. You see only just to open the door, but making the home cooked meal. It is so much easier and also you can milk prep for the whole week. We've been for a couple of days. So you don't have to constantly make everything fresher, literally prepare some stuff put in the fridge and come back and just preheat it and then you're done. It is so much more cost effective. You're saving so much money and you're having tasty food rather than home delivery all the time or the junk go into your body. It's not nice. Some sample that we want to give you. We have the original flower, who this is a recipe that they've made for six portions only cost six pound is easy to make is healthy nutritious. So you can share with the people if you're living in accommodation, even with your family. Okay, so it's literally an easy recipe.  This is what I do every time I've got make it is a Google how to make that is a Google how to make that new lasagna recipe or new result or whatever it is is out there. You need to just go and have to get the ingredients and and and YouTube and look at that video and just make it. Yes, so that's the food station. Now we come to the. Sorry, and I apologize for that. Okay, so to the options. So when it comes to university, like we've mentioned before, maintenance is not going to be enough. You will have to get a part time job. And there are various, various ways they can get a part time job. For example, you can join the student ambassador scheme that is something that we offer at the University of Greenwich. And you could also work in hospitality or attempting tutoring, retail, or even other university jobs. So there is a lot of out there for students. It's a great way to make money, and also to get some experience or work studying. Now, next things, there are also 20 ways. So this is just a couple of ways that you could make money. And it's very easy. So, for example, it's literally completing a survey. You can become a tutor, you could do that because of COVID or COVID is just about to go. But we're still in that stage where a lot of tutoring happens online. So even the comfort of your home or your little room in accommodation. You could be a tutor during some, some kids and get that money. You could also become an extra in the film. So if you want to be in the next, the Fast and Furious film or something else, you could be an extra and make some money. And there are various clinical trials you can join. You can do Mr Shopping, competition babysitting. Trust me, there is a lot of out there. Okay. So if maintenance money is not enough for you, you're going to want to go and make money. You can go and find out because there is stuff out there. But also other ways to get some money is through scholarships and bursaries. So, for example, the University of Greenwich offers the Great Skills Scholarship and the Anne Packersport Scholarship. So those are, for example, the Great Skills Scholarship is specifically a 2000s scholarship, like it's paid in three installments. However, there are conditions that you have to meet in order to receive it. And same goes with the Anne Packersport Scholarship. And some bursaries that the University offer is, for example, the community's bursary. So if you are living at home, but you are studying a little bit further than where you are located, you can get up to 1000 pound per academic year. And again, there are different conditions that you have to meet in order to get the bursary. Or if we've got the 700 bursary, sorry, the Greenwich bursary, which is a 700 pound bursary paid into an Aspire card, maybe you get in your first year academic year, and it's a base and it's given to students who have a household income of less than 25,000. So as you can see, there are various scholarships that you can go out and find out. Some of them that we have listed are from the University of Greenwich, but they're also outside of the universities. So for example, you could go to the scholarship hub, which shows you all the scholarships that are out there, the different companies are sponsoring. And yes, you just have to see the conditions that you need to meet the legibility criteria, and if you need that, just go and apply. So that is another great way to get money. And now just a little summary of what we've talked about. So estimate how much maintenance you will receive. Make sure that you go to a student finance calculator, where you will be able to see the, you can put your household income, where you're studying, where you're currently staying, and then they will give it a rough estimate. Then you can also estimate how much you need to earn on top of this. Okay, because like we've seen with Khalifa and Oliver's, the maintenance might not always be enough based on your costs. So your needs and your wants. Practice budgeting and money, say, try and save money basically. That's what we want to tell you. And that is kind of the tip that you want to take the most out of this presentation. So make sure that you know how to budget. Notice before you start universities that don't want to be in a financial situation where you're in debt. And then you're like, okay, maybe have a problem and I need to go and save up money. So know what work you can do to help make and meet and where to find them. So, for example, the student ambassador scheme, you could become an extra in a movie, you could have service tutoring. There was a lot of options out there. And investigate if there are any bursaries or scholarships are available based on your eligibility. So if you're eligible for them, why not fight that? That is an easy way to go and get that money. So, like I mentioned before, we have some links, useful links that you guys could just leave it there so you can take a screenshot and go and read it off later. So feel free to take a screenshot for that. And now I'm just going to open it to you guys and see if you guys have any questions. Feel free to unmute yourself and or put your hand up if you have any questions. Thank you very much in terms of the presentation. Any questions at the moment. I hope everything was clear. If there is something that wasn't clear or you think I missed, I should mention again, so feel free to let me know and I'm more than happy to do so. I'm glad that it was very informative. I just want to quickly open the Q&A box if anyone has any questions. I can't see anything. So if no one has any questions, I'm just going to say thank you so much for everyone for joining us tonight. And if you do have any further questions or anything that comes up to you in your mind later on, feel free to get in touch with us. Either by calling us at 0208 double three nine thousand double three one nine thousand. Or if you want to also get in touch with us by email, or you can go to our website and you'll see a little pop up with the icon where you can speak to our team and they will give you any other information that you might want to. So yeah, and also feel free to follow us on our social media accounts you can see what the University of Greenwich is up to and see if you like that content. And yeah, so that's it from me. Thank you very much again for everyone coming tonight. And I hope you have a lovely evening.


Another day another grind higher. What's up trade hackers today's Thursday, December 19th Welcome to today's update Take a look at the S&P 500 Looking at the expected move for the week. We are budding up right up against that upper end We've got about an hour left in the market today on Thursday S&Ps up about nine points. And so just continuing that march higher. So What does one do on a death march like this? Well earnings we do some earnings trades So there's been some there's some posts today after the bell. We've got KMX. Let's take a look at KMX decent implied volatility and so we did attempt to put on a trade in KMX actually I Got filled on just a few contracts. This wasn't an official Navigation alert just because the liquidity is not quite there I want to make sure the alerts that we send out to members are absolutely Super liquid and really good trading opportunities. This was just kind of an okay one But I took a few contracts in my personal account didn't even get filled on all of them I wasn't gonna chase it But I've got a big buffer to the downside if price moves down and of course if price rips higher We'll make a little bit as well. So that's what we're playing in KMX. The other earnings was Nike Kind of a similar thing just put on an iron duck with a potential max profit going down and no risk to the upside So we'll see what happens in both of those like I said the market's still open as I'm recording this So I'm not sure what those are going to report yet. The other thing that we are looking at tomorrow Friday is the last day of trading for our Shopify Let me change this date back to today. So here's our Shopify reverse iron duck You can see we've got prices hanging out right here. So we got a really good profit Gonna hold this into tomorrow See if we can squeak out a couple more shekels and then close this one out Hopefully for a nice profit other than that we've got a we've also got an iron condor in gold That profit is ready to be harvested just giving it a little bit more time See if we can squeak out a little bit more on that one In fact, I'd like to just add this add to this now the trading cycle here It's still got 40 days until expiration So don't necessarily want to go out to the next expiration, but might look to do that if we go out to the Further expiration what do we have here like 60? Yeah 68 days to expiration on that cycle It's a little bit more than then we like but Studies actually show when implied volatility is low selling premium out further Actually is a little bit more beneficial So we might look at doing that tomorrow adding one in that in that March cycle in those longer dated options I know we did the same thing in bonds earlier this week When we sold some premium in bonds, so that's probably what we'll do I mean the the implied volatility in GLD is not great if we look at gold Ivy percentile at 27 But it's one of the higher ones on the board, right? We've got bonds We've got that gas and then really gold is next so it's not optimal I mean we like to sell premium when implied volatility is really high when either the Ivy percentile or Ivy rank is over this 50 level But we also want to stay active and what we do is we just keep our position sizes smaller and Continue to stay in the game until we get some more opportunities. So that's what we're gonna do in Gold and then lastly we added it in rut our UT We closed out of a weekly double calendar prices. I mean rut's just been strong, man Grinding higher. So we were hoping for just a tiny little pullback, but didn't happen So we went ahead and took a loss on that one and then re-entered a new one So we're in a new fresh weekly double calendar in rut The last thing I want to touch on is the VIX if we take a look at the VIX. Let's go to a one-year chart You can see it's at about 12.7 right now. So really at the at the lower end of its range You know, I mean this is this is pretty darn low compared, you know over the last year and So what does that mean? Well nothing.  And so Strategies using the VIX. We're actually working on a course right now. It's going to be Haven't decided what to call the strategy yet is it's basically to protect your portfolio from Spikes in the VIX. You can't just buy calls in the VIX. I mean, that's a losing strategy through and through Selling puts is, you know, there's just no premium in here But we've got a strategy that I think you guys are really going to like because here's the problem going back to the S&P 500 You know, what do you what do you do in a situation like this where you get these extended moves higher?  Well, when you have short delta positions using verticals and things like that I mean that becomes a significant drag on your portfolio performance And so one of the things that we're going to be rolling out is a strategy that we're utilizing in the VIX and we've been testing it for Months now, but I just want to make sure I've got the criteria correct before we release it to everybody But I think you're really going to like it because it's going to give you that protection from Spikes in the VIX which are correlated with Down moves in the market So you're going to be able to be protected on that downside without having the drag Of carrying all that short delta in your portfolio. So I'm excited to release that that's going to be some time in early 2020 I've also been in talks with a developer About a trade tracker. So tracking your roles tracking your different options trades, which the broker does not do for you Whether it's tasty works or toss they don't they don't track that for you So then of course we've got our trade tracker spreadsheet, which is kind of a nice little tool to do that with But this one is going to be kind of that spreadsheet on steroids. So it's going to it's going to be pretty cool More to come on that front. Everybody. Have a good night. We will talk to you tomorrow