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The Day One Trust

The Day One Trust is the brainchild of its founder, Ed Butcher, who also co-founded both the East London Academy of Music (ELAM) and London Screen Academy (LSA). A few days of working with the Trust is a few days wishing that you had gone to one of their Academies.

At the beginning of 2020, they were in the process of creating a vision – one that they wanted to have the stories and ambitions of their pupils firmly at its heart. But until then, their own ideas had been weighed down by the kind of doubts and doublethink that many of us get stuck with. That’s where I came in.

I proposed a package of written and video content – featuring pupils, teachers and staff – which they could use to start crafting a vision for the Trust.

Initially that simply meant walking around the Academies and speaking to pupils and teachers about the Academies and the Trust. That led to a series of conversations that were peppered with surprising thoughts and reflections, and always full of praise for the Day One Trust.

That content gave them what they needed to really ground the future of their work in the voice of their community, staff and teachers.

To find out more about the Day One Trust, click here.

We asked Will to come in and provide us with new ideas for how we could describe our work, while putting the voice of pupils firmly at the heart of these efforts. Very quickly Will understood the obstacles we’d come up against before really speaking to our staff and pupils to find out more about them. What we got out of that work was exactly what we needed.”
– Ed Butcher, CEO
 

 
I’ve known since I was 14 that I wanted to be in the film industry. …I know that if I want to make money doing what I love, this place will teach me how to get there. Here you meet so many people with the same ambition to work in film. Those connections are amazing. Because even though the films we’re making are all so different, we find ways of helping each other.”
– Niko, pupil

I used to dread waking up so early when I was at secondary schools. But now, I’m excited to go in for a new day and find out what I’m learning. There’s so much opportunity here. I never thought I’d get given this much. Because I’m literally just a normal kid, my family’s not wealthy. But I come here, and I can do all that stuff everyone else can do. “
– Lily-May, pupil