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My name is CJ Lloyd Webley.

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I did theatre and performance studies
and I graduated in 2015.

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I'm a writer and freelance
theatre producer.

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I work with the Birmingham Rep
and the Midlands Arts Center.

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Widening access to theatre is something
I'm really passionate about

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because I grew up in quite a disadvantaged
area in Birmingham,

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and I think as a result of that,
I just felt like it was my calling,

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or my duty to try and bring more
people in that have stories to tell.

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I decided to study theatre
and performance at Warwick

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because when I was at school,
I had a lot of energy.

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I had a lot of energetic propensities.

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I was wanting to do

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all the creative subjects.
So, at the time when I was looking for

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universities, Warwick was the number one.
And didn’t necessarily try

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to pigeonhole me into a particular area,
but it was one that enabled me to kind of

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flourish and learn and grow and discover
for myself what it was I wanted to do.

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And so, even what I look at the industry as a whole,
I’m always thinking about,

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okay, yes, there is improvement,
but how can we start to diversify

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the audiences, diversify the people in the
backstage roles, diversify the teams.

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So, the course taught me to think more

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critically about the things that I was engaging with.

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It also gave me a network
that I'm still friends with to this day.

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You know, there's so many successful
people from my particular degree.

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For us, what Warwick did was

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it enabled us to connect and collaborate
and understand what that really means.

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So now being able to have that network
that came from Warwick,

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and being able to tap into that resource,
you know, is amazing.

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I do a lot of work in the community now,
so I have a space, a community space

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where we deliver a lot of workshops
for freelancers and people

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working in the theatre industry,
trying to help them to build

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sustainable careers.
I think I would say 90 / 95% of the people

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that were on my theatre performance course
are still in the industry in some way,

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and like I say, we're still friends to this day.

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I didn't know what I wanted to do
when I came to Warwick,

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but I knew that I had an innate ability

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to make new friends, meet new people,
and bring people together.

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So, I wanted to kind of lean into that
and find ways

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and understand
where that skillset might be useful.

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Once you have Warwick in your bio,
people are already interested in you.

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So it's just about

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how do you use the skills
that you've learned on the course to now

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carve out
some kind of career for yourself?

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But you don't have to have all the answers
when you apply.

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Just do it.

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Learn the skills, gain
the network, and the rest will be history.