Luna Davenport: Theatre + Arts Management BA(Hons) graduate

I left Dartington in 1996. How can I begin to sum up everything that has happened since then? The hundreds of anecdotes, all far too long. I remember something hidden away in a box and decide to start at the beginning, life before Dartington.

In the loft I found the box, labelled ‘Luna's vids', and stuck #546653 into the video player. I cringed behind a cushion for the next 11 minutes, but rewound it and watched it again, laughing as I remembered. It was my audition tape for Dartington, a rather naïve performance from ‘The Death of Joe Egg', followed by my speech, words telling of my huge enthusiasm for theatre and how I felt that it could change people's lives. I also spoke of Kneehigh Theatre, whose performances I saw regularly whilst growing up in Penzance, soaking them up with passion. I knew their founder members had studied at Dartington and wanted so much to follow in their footsteps. What surprised me most when watching my young self was the waistband on my jeans. Yes, they actually came up to my waist, so novel!

Dartington was a magical place for me, a place that at the age of sixteen I would never have thought of visiting, let alone applying to study. I'd left school to study hairdressing and, as far as I knew, I was going to stay on that path, but fate had other ideas. After expressing an interest in hair and makeup for theatre it was suggested that I join a drama group ‘to see how actors behaved'. I went along to the Acorn Theatre group in Penzance with a nervous stomach but found a wonderful group of people, all at least 15 years older than me, incredibly eccentric and wildly fun. In their company I forgot that I was a YTS hairdresser and became an actor too, enjoying the freedom to make a fool of myself, to sing and dance, to be the me I'd never discovered before. Instead of wanting to get them ready to go on stage I wanted to join them there, which led to my application to go to Dartington.

I loved Dartington; it was like being in another world and still feels like it was another life away. I had hard times there too and found that the thing that I loved about it, its separateness from the rest of the world, also made me feel claustrophobic. But what would life after Dartington be like after three years of living in a cocoon, seeing only theatre performed by students, or brought back by ex-students? I hadn't thought beyond that. I went into meltdown, and though at the time it was terrible, not a day passes by when I am not grateful that it hit me then, when I had the chance to discover who I really was and what I needed to make my life a happy one.
Luna Davenport

It turned out that what I needed was structure, a shock to someone who at college was considered a quirky performer and scatty in her organisation. I was offered a job at Plymouth Theatre Royal, a place I had last visited to see a panto, when I was in the Brownies. The job was in the Education department where I worked on projects that most definitely had an impact on the participants, just as I had wanted pre-Dartington, never imagining that I would find it in a ‘commercial theatre'. I stayed in theatre for 9 years, then met my husband, Miles, and moved to Horsham in West Sussex, taking up the post of Arts Development Officer for the council. It's a fantastic job where I get the opportunity to devise different arts projects for a whole range of people. I don't perform but I do have my own creative outlet, as a jeweller. I love absorbing myself in the next piece and spend hours in the workshop designing and hammering away on something special that will be cherished by the new wearer.

Twelve years on, I have a fantastic husband, two beautiful cats, a creative career and a sparkling business. Life is pretty special after Dartington.

Website: http://www.lunellaflo.moonfruit.co.uk/