Potentiometer won't work
Assuming the brown board in your drawing is stripboard, I have to as the question:
What is this?

If those five wires in that column are all ground, that link is basically short circuiting your MOSFET via the green wire next to it, thus rendering your whole circuit pointless.  The LEDs will just be on full brightness permanently since the current just flows from the input power, through the LED strip, through the red/white wire, through that little white link wire, then through the green/white and/or the brown/white wires to ground.