Capita chief on dancing cheap to chic

Everyone has a passion, and sometimes a passion you might not associate with them. On first meeting Rod Aldridge, the straight-talking founder of outsourcing business Capita, it is not obvious what his might be. But as he chats about his work with young people from deprived communities Mr Aldridge’s passion becomes clear — ballroom dancing.

“I danced competitively from the ages of about 9 or 10 up to something like 20,” he says coyly. “Actually, to be captain of a football team, as I was, and to also do that [ballroom dancing] did stretch some of the comments that I got at school.

“Academically I struggled, but I found a talent and that talent gave me the confidence to do things. I danced competitively in front of thousands of people and I didn’t feel fazed by it. But if you had asked me to get up and speak in front of people about a topic at school, I couldn’t have done it. What it did was give me a belief ... It gave me confidence to do things.”

Mr Aldridge is now using dance to help motivate young people in his role as the chairman of The Lowry, a theatre and arts venue in Salford, and Essentially Dance — an initiative that shows schoolteachers how to teach ballroom dancing — which was pioneered in two academies that he sponsors. He is also chair of the Department of Health’s Dance Champions programme, designed to encourage more people to get fit through dancing.

He believes that talents such as dance can help young people who struggle academically. “As I know, it’s not fun to struggle. But if you can get out of it and get the confidence, you will be light years ahead of those that are possibly more talented than you.

“Drive and motivation is what is needed,” Mr Aldridge adds. “But if your family doesn’t have it, where does it come from? I mean my family didn’t have it.

“It comes from being stimulated and being given an opportunity. It also comes from getting confidence and having the ability to work with other people, in teams, and taking risks.”

With this in mind The Lowry is launching its Young Person’s Initiative for “people who have been through quite stressful circumstances in their lives, who are not equipped to work, who lack confidence”.

Each year 30 people, aged 16-25, will be given work experience in The Lowry for between six months and a year. This will be augmented by training and education in subjects such as literacy. “What we are creating is a route for them to feel more confident about themselves and to ultimately be able to go out and get jobs,” he says. The Lowry will also offer volunteering roles to 190 people between now and 2011.

Mr Aldridge failed his 11-plus but went on to work in local government for ten years, gaining an accountancy qualification along the way, before founding Capita in 1984. He retired from the company in 2006 amid controversy over a £1 million donation to the Labour Party. Since then he has taken on a number of chairmanships and he sponsors, via the Aldridge Foundation, two academies and is building two more. He believes that arts venues such as The Lowry are central to regeneration and he would like to see them being used to deliver public services on behalf of local authorities as directed by “community interest companies” with charitable status.

“This is quite radical. There are a lot of people who interface with ‘Neets’ [people who are not in employment, education or training] and this is saying: ‘Look, why don’t you put that funding in one place and then focus on the person?’ The Lowry can be part of that because some of those programmes would involve art and entertainment. It could be a delivery partner.”

Academies, too, could do more to engage with their local communities, Mr Aldridge believes. “I think these institutions polarise around what they are doing and they don’t think out of the box about what they could do.”

His academies, which include his alma mater in Portslade, Brighton, specialise in entrepreneurialism. In front of the academy he is building in Darwen, near Blackburn, there will be “individual pods” that will act as offices and advice centres for local start-ups.

He then quotes the Prime Minister. “Cameron said the way out of a lot of our unemployment issues, especially with young people, is entrepreneurship — don’t wait for a job, go and create something. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs are people with a challenging background. It’s about changing the mindset away from expecting to get work, into one where you go out and create work.”

His own entrepreneurial tendencies have not diminished since his retirement. He was attracted to the chairmanship of The Lowry not only because of its art profile but also the business challenge; it gets just 15 per cent of its funding from the Arts Council and the local authority.

True to his Capita roots, The Lowry’s ticketing system has been developed and is taking outsourced work. “We now sell more than a million tickets a year, not just for The Lowry but 30 to 40 other organisations. We’ve turned something that was a cost centre into something which is a profit,” says Mr Aldridge. He has clearly kept his drive and ambition, along with the quickstep and cha cha cha.