The Stage

Sylvia Young school move to boost intake

Published Tuesday 9 December 2008 at 13:20 by Alistair Smith

The stage school that launched the careers of stars such as Leona Lewis, Denise Van Outen and Amy Winehouse is to move to new premises next year, allowing it to increase its student numbers and host more part-time courses.

Sylvia Young Theatre School, which was founded in 1980 and moved to its current home in Marylebone in 1981, has been looking to relocate to larger premises for more than two years. It is now in the process of finalising a deal which would see it secure a 75-year lease on a building near Edgware Road, which is currently used as a church.

School principal Sylvia Young had complained earlier this year that she was being forced to turn away young talent because she could not find room for more pupils in her present building.

However, the new site is three times larger than the school’s current premises and will allow it to begin taking on more students from next September. According to Young, the first increased intake will be among children aged between 11 and 13 in Years 7-9.

Young told The Stage: “We haven’t yet exchanged contracts, but it is going to happen. We want to let people know, so that people who have not been able to audition for us because we didn’t have the space could apply again. The new building will mean we don’t have to double up classrooms for academic work and stage work. Now we’ll have separate performance studios, so we won’t have to be shifting the desks backwards and forwards.

“And, it will mean we will be able to audition new students. We’ll be aiming to have two classes for each year. We don’t intend to double the number of students, because we want to make our classes smaller. We expect the number of students to gradually increase by two thirds.”

Young added that the building would also allow the school to extend its part-time classes, including those it offers for adults. The school is aiming to take up residence in the new building from September 2009, in time for the start of the new academic year.