All opinions expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Edinburgh.
Most of us have had that fleeting moment when we wished we could reinvent ourselves - or at least an aspect of our life. The ‘what if’ question is one of life's great irritants and the uncertainty brought about by the last two years has seen more and more people question their own choices and personal values. 2010 French graduate Louisa Robinson is one such person, and she has decided to answer the ‘what if’ by embarking on a new career that puts her firmly in the spotlight.
“I'll probably be one of the only performers you'll talk to who values security over freedom and creativity.”
Louisa could well be right, and the Durham native knows that her career trajectory has so far been guided by a need to feel safe, but with incrementally daring changes over the years. Now a London resident of four years, last year she decided to take the metaphorical dive into her dream career as a full-time actor, but only after a decade working in higher education administration.
“We all know ourselves,” she says. “But I think that sometimes you don't get to that point of wisdom and acceptance until you're in your 30s.”
So who is the real Louisa that she has been getting to know in the past year?
“I'm 35 now and I can say ‘okay, this is who I am’. I can change this about myself but not change that because it's part of my identity. This is who I relate to being, and I've realised that it's based on personal and professional values. But as a creative and someone trying to make a living, I’m very conflicted and these values often overlap.”
“Freedom and creativity are in my top five values but security is number one."
Louisa can also now call herself a professional actor with numerous theatre and screen performances under her belt, and a diligent London agent to boot.
“She’s made me realise that my strong Durham accent is my unique selling point,” Louisa says with a laugh. “In fact it’s one of the reasons she put me on her books.”
Louisa has started her own business too, which offers virtual admin support to a variety of companies, and hopes that the overlap in personal and professional values can finally complement each other.
“Freedom and creativity are in my top five values but security is number one. And with that in mind I’m trying to process map - and I know that sounds very much like corporate speak and not creative at all - but I'm trying to waterproof a fully creative life that also ticks the boxes of security.”
For Louisa, this includes financial security as well as the emotional reassurance of steady work and a settled home life. She's not naïve, however, to the challenges life as a performer could bring to maintaining these values, but it’s a mindset she's determined to stick to.
So just how did a pragmatic French graduate working in office admin come to be pursuing an acting career in London?
“It's been a slow process over years,” says Louisa. “I've wanted to act since I was 11 and studied for a term at performing arts school Stagecoach. I was brought up by my grandparents and they could only afford for me to go for that one term but I absolutely loved it. But performing arts wasn't really a thing at my regular school, and there was a gap of five or six years before I did any kind of acting again.”
By that point Louisa had been accepted to study French at the University of Edinburgh, and arrived as an eager fresher hoping to pursue her love of drama as an extra-curricular endeavour.
“But my confidence let me down,” she says. “One of my biggest regrets even to this day was not having the confidence to join the Bedlam Theatre drama group. I saw it as a little bit elitist and intimidating, and felt like I wouldn't fit in socially.
“I did, however, join Les Escogriffes [the University’s French theatre society] in my second year and performed in their annual play, but ultimately I didn't do as much acting as I would have liked at Edinburgh.”
“I just said to myself 'take a leap of faith'. 90% of actors are out of work, which is a depressingly high statistic, but on the other hand in order to succeed I needed to make myself available for any work I was offered."
After graduating Louisa returned to Durham. Her grandparents had both become ill and she moved back to live with and care for them. She also began working at a nearby university, and any ambitions to resume acting were placed firmly on the back burner.
“It comes back to security,” she says. “Looking back, that is something that has affected every decision I've made. If I’d had money and security then maybe I could have gone out and tried to achieve my goals and dreams five years earlier - and plenty of people have told me that that's what I should have done - but I felt compelled to go home and be a bit more secure and save money, to do those sensible things. I don't have any regrets from the perspective that I was able to spend those five years with my grandparents, caring for them, and when they passed away it felt like a natural progression in my life. I said to myself ‘okay, where's my life headed now? I can go to London if I want; I can forge my own path'.”
And that's exactly what she did. Although initially continuing her career in higher education, Louisa used her first few years as a Londoner to take local acting courses, and accepted roles that she could fit in around her job.
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in 2020, she continued working from home, all the time saving money and devising a plan for how she could achieve the creative yet secure career she had always wanted.
“I just said to myself 'take a leap of faith'. 90% of actors are out of work, which is a depressingly high statistic, but on the other hand in order to succeed I needed to make myself available for any work I was offered.
”Before, I was faced with dilemma after dilemma: is this opportunity good enough to make me change my life? Is this one good enough to let me give up my full time job? So during the pandemic I saved enough money to do just that: I quit my role in higher education and began to concentrate on my acting career full time, while setting up the business in my spare time.
The business, Libra VA Services, is the brainchild of Louisa and fellow graduate Bree Ngwena (pictured with Louisa). The pair have been friends since meeting at the University of Edinburgh in 2006, and it was on the suggestion of Bree’s husband that they decided to harness their joint experience in administration and the third sector to establish Libra VA Services last year. The work involves supporting small businesses with day-to-day admin, as well as offering services like finance support, marketing, events organisation, and project management. Clients range from universities to estate agents, and it offers a flexibility that allows Louisa to operate the business in tandem with her acting career.
“I feel like a bit of a chameleon,” she says. “I've got my business and my acting - the pragmatic and the creative. My next goal is to completely combine the two.”
Louisa plans to do this by adding more creative sector businesses to the books with a view to offering a service solely for them.
“Over the next 12 to 18 months I want to align my creative interests with my business. My passion is leading on creative projects so I'm asking myself if can I combine my project management skills with my career and performance background, and work in that environment for my business. It'll be a long process but that's my plan.”
"And now I’m working in a school where, yes there are aspirational pupils who want to go to Russell Group universities, but they say to me, ‘Miss, what's the point?'"
Louisa is also using her French degree by tutoring pupils in a local secondary school, and believes this has also awakened her to the kind of values driven life she wants to lead:
“I'm becoming more and more connected to what's important,” she says. “I really want to start giving back. I'm currently working in a school - a really great school – full of kids from all ethnic minorities across South London, and it's a very, very challenging environment. Working there over the last six months has really opened my eyes to how unfair and unjust our education and social systems are to the point that I'm coming home tearful everyday.”
Louisa is visibly emotional as she talks about the teenagers she teaches and says she feels a drive to help them have the same opportunities that she did:
“Even though I was affected by the class divide, being northern and working class, and not really having anyone in my orbit who had left Durham or gone to university, it was still easier for me than the kids I teach: I'm white, went to good state school, and I knew how to get the system on my side in terms of getting grants and loans.
“And now I’m working in a school where, yes there are aspirational pupils who want to go to Russell Group universities, but they say to me, ‘Miss, what's the point? Even if I do well in my exams, what are the chances of me as a black person or somebody coming from a Muslim background getting in?’. That’s heart-breaking to hear, so I want to support these kids and make a difference to the trajectory of their lives, their goals, and their choices.”
"For me, acting is very much about understanding the human connection."
And how does Louisa factor acting into this desire to give back to society?
“I think it all comes down to human interaction,” she says. “Empathy. I'm deeply interested in human psychology and why people behave and interact with each other the way they do. For me acting is very much about understanding the human connection - why we behave in certain ways; why we have chemistry with some people but not with others.
“If I can connect with people, whether that be an audience in a theatre, a single person watching me on TV at home, or teenagers in an inner-city school, and if I can then make them think and feel something about themselves and others, well - and I know it sounds like a cliché – then I feel like I'm making a difference. To me that’s satisfying my personal and professional values, and to me that’s fulfilment.”
If Louisa's story has inspired you to want to help students achieve their potential, you might be interested in the University's Insights Programme that connects current students to Edinburgh alumni working in a variety of industries.
You can find out more about Louisa's acting credits on the Spotlight website.
More information on Louisa and Bree's company, Libra VA Services, is on their website.
All photos courtesy of Louisa Robinson.
All opinions expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Edinburgh.