Musician busking at every London Tube station experiencing ‘acts of kindness’

A musician on a mission to become the first person to busk at every London Underground station while raising money for charity said he is experiencing “acts of kindness” on his journey.

Dan Tredget, 27, from Perth, Australia, is undertaking the challenge of busking at 272 Tube stations and has been sharing his journey with more than 132,000 followers on his TikTok channel @dantredgetmusic.

The challenge is going “really well”, he told the PA news agency, saying: “I’m starting to get recognised a lot more and the donations are going up more and more, which is great.”

Beginning his challenge in April 2023, the musician has now busked at 108 Tube stations, ticking off every Tube stop on the Piccadilly and Northern line – and currently making his way along the Victoria line.

In December, he was given the opportunity to perform as one of the opening acts for the Sugababes at their pop-up concert at Paddington Station.

Mr Tredget said: “The promoters got in touch with me because I think one of them saw that I was doing this challenge and they thought it would be quite appropriate that I tick off Paddington Station while supporting the Sugababes.

“It was nice to have a decent crowd come along and a few acts later the Sugababes came on so that was really cool.”

A highlight of his challenge so far is hitting his 100th station milestone on New Year’s Eve, at Tooting Broadway, where he raised a personal record of £52 in half an hour, which he has since surpassed.

He said “there’s just been lots of acts of kindness along the way that I remember, too”, such as when two brothers went up to him with a large stash of coins they kept in their kitchen for years and never acknowledged.

“They were saying that, ‘Now we finally have acknowledged its existence because we’ve decided that we wanted to give it to you’,” Mr Tredget said.

“They dropped all the coins in my case and that was just a really nice, really lovely moment. There’s been many heartwarming moments like that and it’s been really cool.”

Explaining how the challenge began, he said: “A student that I teach guitar to cancelled their lesson so I thought, ‘Oh well, I might as well just make up for the time by going into town and just busking and I might as well film it as well’.

“It kind of developed into this idea of wanting to busk across the whole London Underground.”

After busking at about 30 stations, Mr Tredget decided to turn his challenge into a fundraiser for charity and picked Glass Door Homeless Charity, a London-based organisation which provides services for those affected by homelessness.

“I started doing research on different charities and then eventually decided that the best thing to do would be to make it local, make it about London, since it is a challenge on the London Underground,” he said.

“Given that the homelessness crisis is such a big issue these days, it just seemed very relevant to make it about raising money for the homeless.”

So far, between collecting physical money and online donations, he has raised almost £800 for Glass Door.

Pascale Harvie, president and general manager at JustGiving, said: “Dan’s busking challenge is like nothing I have ever seen before.

“It was inspiring to hear that Dan took a personal challenge he set himself and selflessly turned it into a fundraiser for an amazing charity that does so much work to help the homeless in London.”

– Mr Tredget’s fundraising page can be found here: www.justgiving.com/page/dan-tredget-272