“I don’t know what to do with you, Kerry! Another “F” on an easy test. If you don’t get your act together, you won’t be able to pass my class. Even worse, if you continue down the road you are threading, you will end up picking up garbage cans or cleaning the subway!”

I’d heard it all before. I was eighteen, in my last year at Colfe’s School in Lee. What surprised me this time was the venom in Mrs Mattison’s voice. She was my chemistry teacher, and like most of her colleagues, she considered me a total failure and a waste of her time.

Let me take a quick step back. My name is Kerry Brockhurst, I am twenty-six years old, and I’ve lived in Catford, London, all my life. I run a small company specialising in cleaning after outdoor events – concerts, festivals, art workshops, etc. If you had told anybody who knew me ten years ago that I would be managing my own company and be good at it, they would have laughed at your face. I guess who laughs last is what really counts.

I wouldn’t say I was a rebellious or lazy teenager. I was pretty passionate about many things – disco and electronic music, environmental issues, keeping the local parks clean and so on. The problem was none of these were part of the school program. Instead, I had to study mind-numbing stuff that I resented – Math, chemistry, biology. By the time I was sixteen, I had reached my breaking point. I stopped doing my homework regularly and wasn’t paying attention in class. My teachers tried to persuade me I was making a terrible mistake, but none of their arguments sounded particularly convincing.

The inevitable happened – I had a horrific GSCE score from Colfe’s and no realistic prospect of going to college. My parents had given up on trying to push me in any direction and were just hoping I wouldn’t end up in prison. Looking back, I must admit my teachers had a point, at least to some extent. I was an opinionated, strong-willed, non-conformist kid locked up in a conformist system. Thousands of other young boys and girls must have felt the same way – some compromised with the school system’s necessities, others didn’t. But what happened next must have shocked everyone who knew me, including my parents.

If you loved UKG (UK garage music) as much as I did, Garage Nation was one of the most important events on the calendar. The 2017 annual outdoor festival was about to take place in July at Streatham Common, and a few of my best friends surprised me with tickets for my 20th birthday. At that time, I was working at a local grocery store in Catford as a cashier – with no career prospects, no particular plan for the future, and no idea what I wanted from my life. Doubts had dangerously begun to creep in whether my high-school teachers had been right about me all along. Was I to be a failure?

However, for just one day, I decided to put my worries aside. The event was a blast! Some of the UK’s best-known DJs and MCs turned Streatham Common into a giant dance club, and the fun lasted for hours! It was after dark when the last performers went off stage, cheered by a frantic crowd. The atmosphere in the park was electric, and I didn’t want to go home just yet. Along with a group of friends, we found a nice spot to sit and share our impressions of the festival.

While the others were arguing about the best performance of the day, my attention switched to the people cleaning around the stage. Or rather – pretending to clean. They were picking up water bottles and beer cans, but at least a third of the garbage remained behind them.

Keeping parks clean has been one of my passions ever since my Mom took me to an Earth Day event to pick up garbage in Mountfields Park when I was twelve. I knew that massive events like outdoor music festivals put a lot of strain on the park authorities, but what I was seeing was nowhere near the effort required. Still, there was little I could do at this very moment.

The next day, however, the bad impressions were still needling me. I was off from work, so I decided to go to Streatham Common and check the situation. It was terrible! The festival organisers had made a mockery of the cleaning effort, and the vast lawn around the now-removed stage was littered with all kinds of garbage. I tried to contact the organisers immediately, but when they found out why I was calling, they blew me off in a second. Nobody was picking up the phone left on the Lambeth Council website – Streatham Common was under its jurisdiction.

“That won’t do!”, I thought and quickly started considering alternatives. I was a member of a volunteer Facebook group called “Keep London Parks Clean” – I couldn’t think of a better way to organise something fast. I quickly took pictures of the debacle around me and posted them to the Group wall. Since it was a working day, it took some time for the reactions to pop up, but it was an avalanche when they did. We made a shopping list of the necessary things and how many people we would need to do the job adequately. Within two hours of my post, we’ve made a comprehensive plan to clean the former festival site the next day.

Late that afternoon, I finally got a call back from Lambeth Council. They didn’t get the chance to recite their half-hearted apology – I cut them short by informing them a Facebook group had already organised a cleaning campaign for Streatham Common. I don’t know what was more funny – their shock or the relief they would not have to deal with the event organisers.

The next day’s cleaning went smoothly – a group of young people having fun while doing something good for the community. But then something totally unexpected happened. At first, I didn’t pay attention to it and could hardly imagine it would change my life. We were picking up the last remnants of litter from the park grounds. One of the older members of our Facebook group approached me and matter-of-factly noticed: “You did a fantastic job, Kerry. You saw something wrong and took the initiative. You did it quickly, efficiently and well. It might not be my place to say it, but you should seriously consider doing this for a living.”

I froze in my place. I was so used to older people telling me what I had done wrong that I didn’t know how to react to positive affirmation. I said an embarrassed “Thank you”, and that was it. But for some reason, her words stuck in my mind. Could I really do this for a living? Could I be good at it? And if so, how on Earth was it going to happen?