honoured at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles<\/a>.<\/p>\nDean was named best new artist of the year, while Young won Best Pop Solo Performance with her soaraway hit \u201cMessy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Both artists also triumphed at the Brit Awards, Britain\u2019s flagship music ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s incredibly humbling,\u201d said Chris McInnes, their former teacher and deputy head of music at the BRIT School, which specialises in performing and creative arts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would never take credit for any of their success… we want to make the best place for those students who are going to be that successful,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
About 1,500 students, aged between 14 and 19, attend the BRIT School, where they study for and sit the regular UK curriculum exams, including GCSEs and A\u2011levels.<\/p>\n
Teenagers arrive for their day smiling, greeting teachers and the headmaster as they make their way through the corridors. <\/p>\n
Some sing snatches of songs. Others work quietly in recording studios.<\/p>\n
Behind one door, a group was rehearsing a number from the musical \u201cSix\u201d.<\/p>\n
Keyboardist Luke Crown, 18, and singer Naomi Simon, 19, were practising for a May concert.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very unique place. There\u2019s nowhere else that really you can study popular music to this intensity,\u201d said Crown.<\/p>\n
Naomi Simon has already had \u201ca really big opportunity\u201d thanks to the school \u2013 singing in the choir that backed chart-topper Raye on her latest album.<\/p>\n
None of it would have been possible if the school charged fees, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family doesn\u2019t come from a place which has lots of money… so to come to a place where finances isn\u2019t an issue for me is amazing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The school is funded about 80 per cent by the state. The rest comes from supporters, including companies, said headmaster Stuart Worden.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world needs diverse voices… and so, every background should be able to talk about how they feel about the world using the arts,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy should only people who can afford ballet lessons and ballet shoes be our dancers?\u201d<\/p>\n
Worden has worked at the school for 32 years, after it opened in the early 1990s in a low-income part of Croydon, a culturally diverse south London district.<\/p>\n
In the reception, photos of former students are displayed: one is a stunt coordinator for movies, another a lighting technician at Eurovision.<\/p>\n
McInnes recently organised a reunion for former students who left the school a decade ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether they were making huge amounts of money or whether they were household names… 10 years after they left they were still working in the industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Artists such as Adele, Raye and Dean regularly speak about the BRIT School. Raye still tests new songs with Worden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the time of my life there. It\u2019s not a stage-stage school, but of course there\u2019s kids doing pirouettes and going \u2018Aaaaaahhhhh!\u2019 in the hallways,\u201d Adele told BBC 4 radio in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was such a melting pot of every single type of teenager… It was absolute heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
During lockdown in 2020, \u201cTom Holland was one of the first students online giving actor classes from his bedroom,\u201d Worden recalled.<\/p>\n
One piece of advice McInnes gives his students is simple: \u201cBe nice to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s so many people with amazing talent, but if you\u2019re not an easy person to work with, if you\u2019re not reliable, if you\u2019re not kind and empathetic, no one is going to want to work with you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The students are also encouraged to step outside their comfort zones. Even if it is their passion, they cannot spend two years just writing R&B songs or playing heavy metal.<\/p>\n
Teachers still remember Adele performing on stage at the end\u2011of\u2011year show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember everybody came out of that show going, right, that was something else that we just saw there,\u201d said McInnes. AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2013 If there was a recipe for success in the entertainment industry, the BRIT School in London…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-633877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}