The Victoria Worsfold Griffiths Bursary was established in 2009 in memory of the life of Victoria Worsfold Griffiths.
Victoria was born in Lincoln in 1969 but moved to Hathern in Leicestershire with her family when she was just nine months old. She attended the village primary school and then the local Community College, from where she went to Newcastle University to read English.
From a young age, one of Victoria’s passions was dancing and she joined the local Knightthorpe Academy of Dance at the age of seven. After graduating from university, she came to the Laban Centre (now Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) to study Choreography and Notation, which enabled her to get her first job as a choreography and dance teacher at the BRIT School in Croydon. Her time at the BRIT was immensely rewarding, and she always looked back fondly on her years there, on the shows she put on together with colleagues and on the students whose lives she influenced. She became an authority on Laban Dance Notation and later co-authored two text books on A level dance notation with Jean Jarrell.
Following her time at the BRIT School, she became Arts Adviser to Medway Council and worked as a freelance choreographer. Victoria married Andy Griffiths in 1995. Their first child was born in 2000 and while pregnant with her second child, the family moved to Munich. Her time in Munich was very happy and Victoria loved the outdoor Bavarian life. The family moved back to Leicestershire when the children reached school age but tragically, within a year, Victoria was diagnosed with a terminal malignant melanoma.
Victoria was vibrant, vivacious, generous, thoughtful, creative, friendly, positive and with a smile that would light up a room. She lived for her family and for dancing and, as such, the family agreed with her during her last days that it would be appropriate to help others progress in their dancing career. Victoria said that before being accepted at Laban, she had needed to attend the (then) Laban International Summer School which she found to be both fantastic and uplifting, so what better way could there be to remember someone who loved life and dancing than to help others to dance.