I got a haircut for just a tenner in the Northern Quarter - it came with one warning

‘£60?! For a haircut?!’

I stared at the website of a fancy Northern Quarter salon, sums running round my mind. With £60 I could feed myself (and then some) for two weeks. I could book a return train to London. I could have a pretty great night out. Really, one of the last things I wanted to do with that money was get my hair cut.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the skill and craft of a really good hairdresser. When you’ve trained for years, it’s only right that you should get a decent paycheck for your work - something that is undoubtedly skilled.

But the cost of living is biting, and when you don’t have a lot of disposable income and could feed yourself for weeks on the cost of a cut and blow dry at a salon, it can feel difficult, if not impossible, to justify spending that much money on a trim.

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Enter Evolve Academy. I saw them recommended in a student Facebook group a while ago, and promptly forgot - until my hunt for a cheap haircut brought them back onto my radar.

Evolve is a training academy, meaning that whoever cuts your hair is not yet a fully qualified hairdresser. It may feel a bit risky, but the prices made it a risk I was prepared to take. £10 for a cut and blow dry? I’m sold. Worst case scenario, I leave holding back tears and head to the next cheapest salon I can find, begging them to fix it.

The academy is open on weekdays, and runs sessions at 10am and 1pm, meaning that you are more limited for appointments than in an ordinary salon. I picked a 1pm Monday slot, and found them tucked away on New George Street - coincidentally, just around the corner from where I’d last got my hair cut (over a year ago