Ever since we met him, as the face of the charming Highlander Jamie Fraser in the STARZ time travel drama, Outlander, but also off-camera, as a spokesman for great charitable causes and ambassador of Scotland, Sam Heughan has inspired and conquered our hearts in so many different ways. What better way to pay it back than to give someone the opportunity to follow his path thanks to a arts scholarship in his honor? It’s precisely this double cause that motivated the legendary team who gave life to the Supernova Legacy Scholarship!
We at Survived The Shows had the pleasure of hosting a great Zoom chat with part of the amazing team behind the Supernova Legacy Scholarship: Lisa Shaw, Susie Reynolds, Rebeca Gutierrez and Brittaney Smith, who shared some beautiful stories about what they accomplished since the beginning of their journey and discuss launching their third fundraising campaign this January.
Marked by different personal stories, but with a great common motivation, this explosive group of women has created an initiative that best represents the philosophy that their idol Sam Heughan carries out: pay the favor of many emotions given back and give in turn someone the opportunity to follow their dreams.
It all began in the summer of 2020, when Sandra and Nicole, two of the founders of the project, had the same idea to contact the Royal Consevatoire of Scotland (RCS), an academy of dramatic arts where the Outlander star studied. To create something to honor Sam Heughan’s legacy while also helping young artists to pursue their dream in arts
Since then, a lot of beautiful things happened.
They had a successful first campaign, which ended in April 2021 at the first Supernova Legacy Gala. And after that they kept working with RCS to develop an MOA, a Memorandum of Agreement. Which determines what they do with the money the donors raise. Thanks to the amazing contribution of Outlander and Sam’s fans all over the world, but not only, six students received a Supernova Legacy Scholarship that allowed them to attend RCS without worrying about the economic factor. The scholarship itself covers either tuition fees and non-tuition fees like their living accomodation and other expenses they may have while attending drama school.
After a little break to recharge themselves after so much hard work, the team started working on a new campaign. Since they agreed to work with RCS for a three-year period. They took a risk and launched a second campaign within the same year, in November 2021. Which culminated at last year’s Supernova Legacy Gala in late April 2022.
Now, with the new year coming in, they’re launching their THIRD Supernova Legacy fundraising campaign.
What’s next is to continue helping students at RCS. I think up until this point we’ve helped 10 students that are in the drama school, and we’ve also contributed money to a Ukrainian bursary fund at RCS. So, I think our goal for this campaign is to really support the students that are currently there because we’ve helped them get to RCS, we’ve helped them reach the opportunity to attend RCS, but we want to make sure that they can continue to stay at RCS.
Lisa Shaw
Besides allowing young students to follow their dreams and join the drama program at RCS, this past year the Supernova Legacy team also helped numerous displaced Ukranian students.
Since we had some extra funds leftover, Julie from RCS asked us this summer if they could use those funds for six Ukrainian students that needed pretty much everything. Housing and stuff like that, because at the time they were all living on a cruise ship in the waters of Scotland. And then a couple months later, Julie informed us that the money was never used to help the students with housing because the place that they were staying decided not to charge them. So then, she asked us if we would let them use the money with this bursary fund at RCS. And so the money was put into this bursary fund, which there are now about 24 Ukrainian students that the fund will be used for now.
Susie Reynolds
This year the group welcomed two Supernova newbies: Brittaney and Amy!
Discussing what drew them to the Supernova Legacy project, Brittany pointed out what a pleasure has been to work alongside the original team and contribute to such an inspiring inititative, being a college graduate in the arts herself and knowing how important scholarships are.
I wouldn’t have been able to attend school if it wasn’t for scholarships and grants, and I was also the first person in my family to go into the arts. So, it’s really to have something like Supernova Legacy that has a scholarship set just for drama and arts. I love that because most of the time they get looked over in the sense like, ‘Oh, you can’t make a career out of it’. I was told that growing up and I just, I stuck with what I liked and doing the arts and when I found them, of course through like the whole Outlander vine, I loved what they were doing and supporting those in the arts and drama. I didn’t particularly go into drama, mine was more drawing-based. But I just wanted to help others in like the same predicament I was in because like I said before, I wouldn’t have been able to afford college myself if it wasn’t for scholarships, and I love what these ladies have started.
Brittaney Smith
The girls couldn’t feel more rewarded of such hard work. But they recognize they couldn’t have done any of this without the contribution of all the amazing donors who joined the campaign. Without their help those students wouldn’t be achieving anything they had with the help of this scholarship.
Throwing back at all the amazing experiences you lived while working at the Supernova Legacy project, what’s the one thing that’s been most rewarding for each of you?
REBECA: To actually see one graduate finish and I’m looking forward to the other ones that we’re going to help out finish the process. Even it was just one – at least we know that we’re heading the right direction. I think that was a testament in a sense of Supernova itself, the donors that helped us support all the students and actually have one graduate from that collective of 10 that we had.
SUSIE: I have to agree with what Rebecca said because as, you know, a founding member of supernova, it’s so great to see the students that we’ve helped actually graduate. You know we’ve heard of different interviews that our one graduate has had. And doing what he loves and he got that chance because we helped. It’s very rewarding to know that he’s out there, making his own star.
And you know, also what’s really rewarding to me is being with these ladies.
I love being with them and doing all this stuff with them and the amount of support that we get from our donors is just mind-boggling. You know, our goal was to raise $50,000 in our three-year campaign and we surpassed $50,000 just in two years. So, it’s just very rewarding to know that we have that support and I love that. I love all of that.
LISA: I echo everything that Rebecca and Susie said, 100% yes. Especially, you know, Brian graduated this year and these kids that we give scholarships to, you kind of feel like a personal attachment to them. We nicknamed them our Supernova babies. To see one of our first babies kind of graduate and go off and become his own star is incredibly rewarding. Working with a fabulous team, it’s brought so many opportunities for us to meet people from all over the world, you know? And we started at the height of COVID when everything was pretty bleak, and we’ve managed to turn that kind of sense of despair into something really hopeful. And to me that’s incredibly rewarding. We know it’s a lot of work, but good work leads to, you know, good rewards and so we’re really pleased with what we’ve done so far.
On the other hand, what’s been the most challenging part?
SUSIE: The most challenging thing for me has been time. There’s not enough hours in the day or the week or month to get everything done between my personal life and supernova. But balance is what we have to do, right? We have to find a way to balance that, and we do. I’ve lost sleep, but on the other hand, we’ve had fun, we’ve laughed, we’ve had really productive meetings. And really, I don’t know sometimes it’s a challenge, but I guess sometimes it’s also a reward.
REBECA: The time, I guess. For me it might be a little different because one, I only have one child and she’s already an adult – Not that I’m saying that my family does not matter, because it does – But I guess when you have like you know with Susie, she has her grandchildren. So, so collectively as a supernova team we try to help each other in a sense of if one can’t finish one thing we’ll try to support. So, in that sense I guess it goes back to time. If I could help the six ladies or the five ladies, including myself, in anything that I can to alleviate some stuff that they can’t do, I would take it off their plate.
I think it’s time, but at the same token, To sacrifice certain things, you’ll get a reward at the end
Overall, it’s hard, but it’s a labour of love. Not everything runs smoothly. Life doesn’t run smoothly. And I think us ladies – I’ve done that in the two years, of course, with the regular OG’s in the first year – the mission of what we’re doing has not stopped and has not wavered in that sense for me.
LISA: I would agree time for sure. We all have full time jobs in addition to our family responsibilities and doing something like this takes an enormous amount of time. So balancing that is definitely been a challenge. I would also say there’s been a huge learning curve at every turn. You know, the first year that we did it, we really didn’t know what we were doing at all. We had zero idea. We just kind of went with it and figured it out as we went.
And in our second year, of course we had insight, but we also had the pressure of not disappointing because now people kind of knew who we were. So that was a challenge to try each year I think to try and top yourself. You know the more successful you are, the harder it is to keep up with that or to beat that in some way.
And we’ve had a lot of turnover.
I mean I love that Brittany has joined us this year. Amy’s not with us and she’s joined us this year. Rebecca joined us in our second year but, with that turnover comes a learning curve for them too. So, you know, I think there’s been a lot of new things that we’ve had to learn. We’ve grown as a on the business end. We’ve grown up learning about the INS and outs of non-profits. The more we get notoriety as a nonprofit, the more we learn that’s involved in it.
And so I think just kind of always being in that position of learning. Learning can be a bit exhausting. But as everyone has said, you know, it’s incredibly rewarding at the same time and it’s definitely worth it.
Anyone, from any part of the world, can join the project and donate.
Just go to their website www.supernovalegacy.com, and make a donation. It’s possible to donate directly through the Just Giving page or by purchasing merchandise, whose profit will be entirely donated to the scholarship.
To know more about the project and keep yourself updated on what’s next for Supernova Legacy Scholarship, follow the team on Instagram @supernovalegacyscholarship, Facebook Supernova Legacy Scholarship and Twitter @supernovalegac1!
Keep following us for more news on Outlander Season 7 and its cast!
Chiara
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