Meet Bronte Ainsley: The girl in charge of Brookes’ first ever Jailbreak

Her team is called ‘Wanderlost’


For the first time, Oxford Brookes are taking part in a huge charity event where students will travel in teams using as little funds as possible.

Bronte Ainsley is the girl in charge of this, being the first ever Jailbreak rep for Brookes, which will happen  on the weekend of February 6th.

Along with friends Anna Wickstead and Bronte Ainsley the third year English Language Communications student has called her team “Wanderlost”.

Feeling chained to the computers in the JHBB, the girls will escape on their adventures and return in time for Monday morning lectures.

They are keen to support local charities including Oxford Sexual Abuse & Rape Crisis Centre and Student Minds who help deal with personal well being, confidence and student support.

We spoke to Bronte about why she did it, and her plans for the journey.

Tara, Anna and Bronte prepare for their adventure

Why did you decide to this?

I was sat in the forum at JHB procrastinating from doing my essays, so as soon as I saw the Jailbreak advert I was really intrigued, I looked into it a little bit and found out it was only for Oxford University students, so I emailed and begged them to let me do it.

Turns out they were looking for a Brookes representative to introduce it here and were happy to hear from me.

I basically just think it sounds like a lot of fun all in the name of charity. I’m always looking for my next adventure, and since my semester abroad I think I’ve really caught the travel bug, so I wasn’t going to let an opportunity like this pass me by.

We’re going to try travel as far as possible without spending a penny, raising money for charity as we go.

The girls have to raise money before they travel and you can donate to their funds page here. As well as this being a fun new way for Brookes to help local charities, it’s exciting for the students who are typically bounds by the routines of slogging it at Harcourt and Wheatley.

A typical student holiday consists of cramming in work before you go and calling up the bank of mum and dad for funds. This will be an entirely different kind of trip.

How far do you hope to get?

I’ve heard about previous years’ students getting as far as Tokyo and Dubai, I think that’d be really cool, but we want to make sure we have fun doing it, nobody’s going to want to sponsor us to just sit on a long-haul flight, I think it’d be good if we could try to use as many different transport methods as possible, so even though we might not travel the furthest we should have plenty of opportunities to collect sponsor money on the go. I definitely think we’ll make it overseas though; we’re not really worried about that.

What will you take with you?

One group didn’t even think of packing coats and were wet and cold for the whole trip. I think we’re going to have the basics obviously, but Anna has been coming up with tonnes of crazy ideas to raise money on the move like giving massages at the airport and busking so who knows what she’ll have us packing. One important thing for me to take back though is a present for my mum, it’s her birthday during the event so I promised her I’d bring something back from wherever I visit.

Do you have a game plan?

We basically have a zero plan at the moment. It can’t really be planned, and if we ended up in America or something it’s useless without a visa, we’d travel all that way just to be stuck in an American airport. I think a team meeting is needed really.

You can follow the girls adventure via a live map here or follow their weekend away on Instagram. Sign ups end tomorrow.