From the Low Road to the High Road – how Sandy Kilpatrick found his purpose at Fircroft.
Sandy was brought up in Scotland in the seventies and eighties, in a small industrial town called East Kilbride, a place where any hope of finding a job with prospects once you’d left school relied on your academic ability. In those days, if you weren’t able to embrace school life and achieve, you were destined to work in the local factories or warehouses forever.
Although Sandy’s teachers told his parents a few times they believed he “had promise”, he found school particularly boring. He didn’t have the academic skills needed to succeed at school – and he didn’t feel the need to have them. Immersing himself in music magazines such as the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds was much more exciting to him – and much more educational. He would research more about what he read in interviews, using the local libraries, which he loved. He wrote poetry and had ambitions to start his own band. Once school was finished for Sandy, he was determined to leave East Kilbride and broaden his horizons elsewhere. Although even now he isn’t sure what gave him the courage to apply to Fircroft (after seeing a tiny advertisement in the Daily Record, the Scottish national newspaper) – but he did.
Sandy says “I still wonder what made me even consider I could go to Fircroft. What gave me the audacity to think I would be accepted. The kind of boy I was – a Scottish boy in Thatcher’s Britain, working class and with no family member ever having gone to university. There wasn’t even a tunnel never mind a tunnel with light at the end of it”.
In those days a course at Fircroft was a year long, fully residential, with the aim of students progressing to university (or a job) when they finished. As part of his application Sandy was asked to write about a book he had read, was invited to Birmingham for an interview and offered a place. At the time Sandy was working as an apprentice carpenter and being unsure of his academic skills, his parents were wary of him going to Fircroft. Pursuing higher education was never something their family had done.
Once Sandy had settled into the college, he quickly felt at home. And following their first visit to Fircroft his parents quickly approved of his new life.
Sandy liked the way religion was very rarely mentioned at Fircroft, everyone was welcome whatever their beliefs, whereas in the West of Scotland what religion you were was seen as an important part of the community. He loved the subjects he studied, which included anthropology, sociology and philosophy, and because of the way they were taught he could relate to them. Fircroft was also where Sandy taught himself to play the guitar.
He made friends with many of the students and, after finishing his course successfully, he ended up going to Lancaster University with 10 of them. He majored in English and American Literature, along with minors in Philosophy and History. At the end of his studies at Fircroft, Sandy asked his interviewer, Pam, “what made you choose me?” She replied “I didn’t. You chose yourself”.
After Lancaster University, Sandy pursued a career in music, forming his own band, Sleepwalker, and immersed himself in the Manchester music scene in the late 90’s alongside bands like Doves and Badly Drawn Boy, sharing a label with old friends Elbow. He has released a number of albums, with songs inspired by a rich variety of themes, from love to climate action and social justice – and most recent single, The Meditation Stone, was released on the 20th of September. This will be taken from the next album, Illuminations, a homage to the sublime landscapes of Norway and the Northern Lights. The album will be released in February 2025.
Sandy says he is forever grateful to Fircroft for giving him the chance and courage to pursue the life he wanted, for giving him the opportunity to spread his wings and succeed.
