The BRIT School, Croydon — Amy Winehouse and Adele

The BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology at 60 The Crescent in Selhurst, Croydon is a state-funded specialist arts school — no tuition fees — that has produced a remarkable concentration of British popular music talent since its opening in 1991. Amy Winehouse attended from approximately 2001 to 2003, developing her musicianship and her voice in an environment that took her talent seriously without trying to redirect it toward anything more commercially straightforward. She left without completing her studies, having already begun performing professionally, but the school's influence on her is documented in her own accounts of that period.

Adele was at the BRIT School slightly after Winehouse, graduating in 2006 — the same year Back to Black was released. Kate Nash, Leona Lewis, Jessie J, Tom Holland, and Rex Orange County are among the school's other notable alumni. The list has made the BRIT School one of the most discussed educational institutions in British popular culture: a state school in South London that has, by accident or design, produced an extraordinary proportion of the country's most successful musicians across two decades.

The school's approach — which combines rigorous arts training with the kind of creative freedom that conventional schools cannot accommodate — attracts students who already know what they are. Winehouse arrived knowing she was going to be a singer; the school gave her technique and context without interfering with the directness that made her voice so immediately recognisable. The Croydon location, far from the music industry geography of North and West London, contributes to the school's particular atmosphere: students come here to work, not to be seen doing so.