Setting up a stage school, at speed, whilst studying for her finals at Lancaster University in the middle of the Covid pandemic was a terrifying prospect for Ciara Moriarty (Drama, Theatre & Performance, 2021, County), but she could not turn down an opportunity to unite her twin passions of business and theatre.

So, whilst her fellow drama students were preparing to move back to campus to begin their final year studies, Ciara was hurriedly putting together business plans, hiring singing, dancing and acting teachers and signing up pupils for her newly formed performance studios ready to open her doors at the Dukes Theatre before the university term started.

The opportunity had appeared when the owner of a drama school where Ciara had been working as an acting teacher during her first two years at Lancaster, rang her in the summer vacation to say he was closing down. As Ciara wept at the news of the loss of her dream job, her father, Edward, encouraged her to use the clientele she had built up and set up her own school.

Her leap of faith has not only turned into a successful business for her, which won her an Enterprise Vision Award 2022, but meant that she went into her final exams knowing she already had a full-time job.

“If I had not gone to Lancaster I would not have got this job which has turned into my future,” Ciara reflects. “I’m forever grateful for that.”

Her business acumen and her rapidly gained success has been recognised by Lancaster University, in giving her a Teaching Fellowship as an Entrepreneur In Residence attached to the Management School. She gives talks, hears student business pitches and helps in events involving pitching events for nearby schools.

She recognises the irony in the fact that her first encounter with the word ‘entrepreneurship’ was at the Freshers' event to choose a minor subject, to support her Drama degree. Her curiosity was pricked by her ignorance of the meaning of the word, only to discover that it was something that she’d already explored before university. The flexibility of Lancaster’s course structure allowed her to study entrepreneurship and has contributed significantly to the success of her business now.

Brought up in Liverpool, Ciara had trained as an actress at LIPA (Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts) and had gained a place at drama school, when she decided late in the application process that she wanted to pursue a university degree instead. She gained the last room in County College.

“In drama, students think that they have to be a performer, " she explains, “But I wanted to be different and to show people that it is possible to make a business around the arts. Everyone thinks that you do the arts as a hobby, but for me it is much more serious than that.”

She had already had experience of setting up a baby-sitting business as a teenager, with the help of her mother Siobhan, who helped her make business cards and set up a Facebook business page. She’d been dancing, acting and singing from her earliest days, and worked as an assistant teacher in the stage school she attended in her early teens.

Having already done so much practical theatre work at LIPA, she found it difficult to adapt at times to the more academic approach, but she gained many useful skills that she sees as being the special contribution of a drama degree - even for students who do not make a career in show business.

In her three undergraduate years, she worked as an usher at the Nuffield Theatre, where she was proud to see every single performance. She joined the Dance Society and loved it, including doing competitions.

“For many people, drama gives you confidence and shapes how well you do in life,” she explains. “It helps in many areas such as with team work and in business pitching. Also in interviews I’m able to make eye contact, speak clearly, be confident in myself and sell myself or the product.”

This is also what she wants to pass on to the more than 60 students aged 3-18 who attend her school each week. Ciara’s passion is to pass on the skills and experiences that make drama such a powerful life experience. She has many anecdotes about children who have been mute or fearful ,who are now confident speakers after lessons with her team.

She is also proud of having been able to employ students from Lancaster University as teachers, which allows them to build up experience whilst still students.

Her guiding principle has been to set up a theatre school open to everyone, that treats each child as an individual and without favouritism and to give them skills to improve their memory, confidence, mental well-being, concentration and happiness. Her hope is to create other branches across the country, but not so many that she is unable to keep a personal link with each one.

Reflecting on the moment she decided to start Performance Studios, she says: “It was a now or never moment. If I did not do it now, I would never have done it.”