The real fame academy: Croydon's school of cool

With alumni including Amy Winehouse, Katie Melua and The Kooks, the Brit School is calling the tune. Ciar Byrne reports

Think of Croydon and the word culture does not immediately spring to my mind. Concrete perhaps, but not culture. Yet the south London suburb is emerging as the breeding ground for some of the country's most exciting musical talent.

The reason is the Brit School, Britain's only free performing arts and technology school and the creative hotbed that nurtured the talents of Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash and Katie Melua. The Kooks, The Noisettes, Imogen Heap, The Feeling, Floetry, Morcheeba, Joel Pott of Athlete and the late soul singer Lynden David-Hall are also alumni of the Croydon college.

One of its recent graduates the 19-year-old Adele Adkins, whose sultry jazz songs belie her tender age has just topped the BBC's Sound of 2008 poll, which showcases the best new talent for the coming year. Hers is the latest success story for the Brit School, which insists it does not aim to imitate Fame the 1980s television series based on the New York School of Performing Arts.

As Katie Melua explains: "You shouldn't go to the Brit School to be famous it is an educational institution where you go to learn your craft. While I was at the school, I got to meet other musicians and was exposed to a wide variety of music that influenced me. We also performed frequently, so it gave me experience of being in front of a live audience."

Adkins, who came from a distinctly unmusical family, found herself in the playground at her "pretty rough" secondary school, singing with "all the R'*'B kids" but her teachers were unsympathetic to her ambitions. She said: "They gave me a really hard time, trying to bribe me, saying that if I wanted to sing I had to play clarinet to stay in the choir. So I left."

That was when she applied to join the Brit School, an independent, state-funded city college for the technology of the arts. Since it opened in September 1991, the school has been backed by the British Record Industry Trust, the charitable arm of the British Phonographic Institute. The trust is also behind the annual Brit Awards, some of profits of which fund the school.

Adkins said: "If I hear someone is from stage school, I'd think they were a dickhead, and I know it might make me sound like that. But it had free rehearsal rooms and free equipment and I was listening to music all day, every day for years. The music course was really wicked. There was no dancing or anything like that. No jazz hands."

The stage school starriness may be absent but Brit pupils get to meet talented individuals that ordinary teenagers can only dream of. Each year, about 600 pupils attend the Brit Awards and recent visitors to the school have included Kylie Minogue and The Beatles' producer Sir George Martin. Although some ex-pupils are reluctant to admit their Brit School roots, for fear of being tarred with the "fame school" brush, Adkins and Nash have bucked the trend.

Answering critics who suggested her much-vaunted cockney roots were an affectation learnt at stage school, Nash recently retorted: "People can say performing arts school is cheesy or whatever. Some people have slagged off Brit School, but I didn't grow up in Notting Hill with a really artsy mum who had a boyfriend who was a heroin addict. I'm proper North Harrow. I used to wear Adidas tracksuit bottoms, I sold pick'*'mix, I got drunk on Smirnoff Ice and I went to a performing arts school. I'm not ashamed."

The Principal, Nick Williams, insists the Brit School is not a "talent" academy in the mould of fee-paying stage schools such as Italia Conti or Anna Scher. After all, not all of the 900 pupils are destined to become as famous as Winehouse or Melua. Mr Williams explained: "The purpose of the school is to provide education and training for young people who are seriously interested in a career in the creative industries. Being a state school is a great social leveller. Britain has a reputation for making people pay for that kind of education. It's a school meant for people from all backgrounds."

Most of the 14- to 19-year-old pupils hail from south London, but after the age of 16, about a third travel from further afield. Ten per cent attend the school from elsewhere in the UK, lodging with relatives, or in rented accommodation, which in Croydon is relatively cheap. Competition to get in to the school is tough, with about three applicants for each place.

"If you come to the school, you're coming with a fierceness of intent about what you want to achieve in your life; with a commitment, a passion, something more than just an interest," said Mr Williams.

The school aims to provide a level playing field for applicants, but the essential criteria are they must understand they are committing themselves to an arduous and tough process, that they show an aptitude for their chosen skill and that they are willing to be part of a community "It's a very social environment. Students have to bewilling to work with others," said Mr Williams.

While Mr Williams, who has presided over the school for five years, comes from the state school sector, most of his teaching staff were recruited from the creative industries and trained as teachers on the job.

There is great emphasis on providing students with the tools they will need to survive in the creative industries from copyright law to record production.

Mr Williams said: "The creative industries cover a lot more than fame. The vast majority of jobs are in the backroom. We are interested in providing intellectual and emotional support. If at the end of that they go off and have a high profile career, that's fine."

Up to age 16, students must continue to study the GCSE curriculum, as well as learning music, dance, theatre, musical theatre, media and backroom skills such as production and visual arts and design.

While they major in one "strand", pupils are encouraged to experience all aspects of the creative industries. Nash, for example, majored in theatre but later developed the song-writing skills she had cultivated during her time at the school.

Jonathan Morrish, a school governor and music industry PR, said: "It's as much about behind the camera as in front of the camera. It's about producing students who are capable of moving into all areas of media and the arts.

"There's an emphasis on areas such as video and radio production. That's one of the things that gives the school its roundedness." Above all, the teenagers bursting with creative energy are encouraged to express themselves, avoiding the peer pressures of neighbouring Croydon comprehensives.

Arthur Bolton, a music business teacher who taught Adkins "she was very committed and very focused, she always seemed to have a clear idea of what she wanted to be and where she wanted to go" believes the school's emphasis on live performance has benefited the stars who have emerged.

Sponsorship from the Brit Trust has enabled the school to install a 320-seat theatre, where performances regularly sell out, and students are also encouraged to perform in the community, as well as at major central London venues such as the Roundhouse in Camden. The school also has the latest IT and recording facilities.

Often pupils join the Brit School after feeling out of place in mainstream education. The chairman of the governors, John Deacon, said: "Many of the young people who come to us have found they haven't quite fitted in at their previous schools, where they were square pegs in round holes, and suddenly they find when they come to the Brit School they are round pegs."

The Brit School was founded under the Conservative government in 1991 as part of the city technology colleges scheme the first joint venture of its kind between the Government and business with a vocational, rather than an academic philosophy.

It is now a centre of excellence. In 2006, 93 per cent of pupils achieved five or more A to C grades at GCSE, helped by the fact that instead of teaching subjects such as maths in the traditional fashion, the school attempts to relate them to real life, for example asking aspiring musicians to work out the costs of organising a gig tour. There are plans to open a similar school in Birmingham the Eastside Academy which will have an emphasis on digital media.

Maggie Crowe, the organiser of the Brits and a governor at the Brit School, said of the students: "It's a lovely, tender age. It's the time when they're feeling their way into life and who they are as an individual, never mind where they want to be in five years time."

"The school is open from 8am to 8pm and we have to kick children out. We have very low truancy and little graffiti as we give them areas they can make beautiful. Because of that, there's a lot of respect. We choose to treat them as though they're college students."

"It's not a privileged, paying school, but they are privileged because they're allowed to mix with different enthusiasts."

Cynics might question whether it is possible to teach talent but Crowe insists that is not what the Brit School is trying to do. "You can never teach skills such as how to be an entrepreneur," she said, "but you can give a good set of ground rules."

She added: "We have an understanding that your craft is your business. The school doesn't give false illusions. We don't weigh them every day. We don't fill their head with silly things. It's very easy to be giddy but this is a serious business."